Titles Available as of July 2022
This is a selective list of streaming video holdings in the American University Library. Streaming guides are created by doing multiple keyword searches in the library catalog to capture as many titles on a topic as possible. For complete up-to-date streaming holdings, please refer to our streaming catalog.
DOCUMENTARIES
Abandoned: The Betrayal of America’s Immigrants
Illustrates the impact of 1996 immigration laws. Through intimate portraits of legal residents and asylum seekers, and shocking footage of their treatment behind bars, this video reveals the truths behind the current anti-immigrant sentiment and the multimillion-dollar prison industry's profit from this legislation.
Based on a personal story by Dr. Frank Kitamoto of Bainbridge Island, Washington, who was among the first of 110,000 West Coast Japanese Americans forced from their homes.
Ama tells an important and untold story: the abuses committed against Native American women by the US Government during the 1960s and 70s. The women were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools. They were subjected to forced relocation away from their traditional lands and, perhaps worst of all, they were subjected to involuntary sterilization.
This program examines the legal issues relevant to the 13th Amendment and the controversy surrounding its passage. Legal experts explain the basis of the debate; historical reenactments of those debates provide viewers with insights into its social and economic underpinnings.
Anatomy of Hate: A Dialogue for Hope
To make this film, director Michael Ramsdell spent six years among organizations that define themselves in ideological opposition to other groups, sometimes with extreme hatred. As he spent time with white supremacists, Muslim extremists, militant fundamentalist Christians, participants on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and American combatants in Iraq, he began to unravel the mystery of the anatomy of hate. The resulting documentary mixes profoundly disturbing footage of racist and antigay tirades with interviews from sociologists and neuroscientists who explain the psychological - rather than political or religious - mechanisms that make people take violent action against other groups. Throughout the film, stories of redemption told by former hate group members prove that inner change is possible. While the film can be difficult to watch, it should prompt thoughtful discussion in sociology, psychology, anthropology, and political science classes.
Featuring interviews with experts who describe why crimes against gays have reached such a boiling point, this edition of Investigative Reports takes a discerning look at an escalating issue in American society.
Black Power: America's Armed Resistance
This follow-up documentary to KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy sees filmmaker Dan Murdoch back in the USA to revisit some of the people he met from the Ku Klux Klan and also meet members of the Black Liberation Movement. Having previously documented clashes between these two opposing visions of America—a resurgent KKK and a growing Black Power movement—his aim now is to find out what black power means, what its motivations are and why this movement seems to be gaining traction. With rare access to members of the Black Liberation Movement, Murdoch quickly finds himself in the midst of an armed black militia, outraged at the treatment of black people at the hands of police, patrolling the streets of their communities and calling for change.
Come Hell or High Water: The Battle for Turkey Creek
Follows the painful but inspiring journey of Derrick Evans, a Boston teacher who moves home to coastal Mississippi when the graves of his ancestors are bulldozed to make way for the sprawling city of Gulfport. Over the course of a decade, Derrick and his neighbors stand up to powerful corporate interests and politicians and face ordeals that include Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil disaster in their struggle for self-determination and environmental justice.
Dark Days is a documentary that explores the surprisingly domestic subterranean world of a homeless community living in a train tunnel beneath New York City. Through stories both heartbreaking and hilarious, tunnel dwellers reveal their reasons for taking refuge and their struggle to survive underground. With a hypnotic soundtrack by legendary DJ Shadow, Dark Days is an enduring classic.
Does God really condemn loving homosexual relationships? Is the chasm separating Christianity from gays and lesbians too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate? These questions and more are answered in this award-winning documentary, which brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and Biblical scripture - and reveals that religious anti-gay bias is based almost solely upon a misinterpretation of the Bible.
On September 15, 1963, a bomb destroyed a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls who were there for Sunday school. It was a crime that shocked the nation-and a defining moment in the history of America's civil-rights movement. Nearly 35 years later, acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee tells the full story of the bombing, through heart-wrenching testimonials from surviving members of the victims' families, insights from Bill Cosby, Walter Cronkite, Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King and many others, and a rare and revealing interview with former Alabama Governor George Wallace.
Genocide in the First Half of the 20th Century
State-sanctioned violence has always existed, but technological advances have facilitated its use as a viable means of exerting political power. This program continues the examination of the history of genocide, focusing on the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, the 1923 Rosewood Massacre, Stalin's forced Ukrainian famine, the Japanese Rape of Nanking, and the Holocaust. A host of survivors, experts, and scholars include Martha Barnett, president of the American Bar Association; Eddie Faye Gates; Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking; Yehuda Bauer, director of the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research; and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel.
Worlds collide when a former neo-Nazi skinhead and the gay victim of his hate crime attack meet by chance 25 years after the incident that dramatically shaped their lives. Together, they embark on a journal of forgiveness that challenges both to grapple with their beliefs and fears, eventually leading to an improbable collaboration and friendship.
The Great White Hoax: Donald Trump and the Politics of Race and Class in America
The Great White Hoax, featuring acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores how American political leaders of both parties have been tapping into white anxiety, stoking white grievance, and scapegoating people of color for decades to divide and conquer working class voters and shore up political support. The film's primary focus is Donald Trump's race-baiting 2016 campaign for the presidency. But it also widens its scope to show how Trump's charged rhetoric about African-Americans, Latinos, and Muslims fits within a longstanding historical pattern, offering a stunning survey of how racism and racial scapegoating have shaped American politics for centuries. The Great White Hoax is an ideal resource for courses that look at race relations, white privilege, the intersectionality of race, class, and gender identities, presidential politics, and political propaganda.
The U.S. leads the world in firearm-related deaths, while next-door-neighbor Canada has significantly fewer. Why? In this program, filmed in the wake of the hate-motivated shootings at Los Angeles' North Valley Jewish Community Center, ABC News anchor Ted Koppel looks at America's love-hate relationship with guns, contrasting it with Canadian attitudes and policies. Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper and Vancouver Deputy Chief Constable Gary Greer share their points of view on the right of gun ownership, reasons for purchasing guns, types of guns considered legal, background checks, and other topics.
On this episode of Nightline, Eva Pilgrim examines white supremacy in America culminating with the Charlottesville protests. Interviews include David Dukes, Richard Spencer, Matt Heimbach,Richard Cohen, and Cokie Roberts.
Hate on Trial: Challenging the First Amendment
In the early 90s, a young Ethiopian was beaten to death by a group of white supremacist "skinheads" in Portland, Oregon. This three-part program covers the subsequent civil trial of white supremacist leader Tom Metzger and his son, charged by the victim's parents with inciting the violence through inflammatory racist statements. Bill Moyers explains the basis of the $12.5-million civil suit, and discusses its implications within the context of First Amendment rights. Chilling testimony from the Metzgers and their followers highlights the problem of racism. Trial lawyers, activists, and journalists analyze key points raised in the courtroom and the First Amendment issue of "the right to hate versus the right to hurt.
Hate Crimes in the Heartland is an award-winning documentary film and community outreach project that explores our national epidemic of hate crimes through the lens of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Emmy-winning producer Rachel Lyon explores two stories, over 90 years apart, that both dissect current issues of civil rights and the media's impact on justice. The film begins in Tulsa in 2012, where two white men drove through the African-American Greenwood neighborhood targeting blacks at random, killing three and leaving two others in critical condition. The film follows the murders, the ensuing social media uproar, the manhunt, and ultimate prosecution and death penalty sentencing of two suspects.
Using the shocking racist murder of James Byrd as a starting point, this disturbing program investigates America's proliferating hate groups. The KKK's Charles Lee; the founder of Aryan Nations and his successor, Pastor Neumann Britton; and William Pierce, head of the National Alliance and author of The Turner Diaries, calmly proclaim their chilling views on "racial patriotism" and "positive hate. Countering, Julian Bond, of the NAACP; Irv Rubin, national chairman of the Jewish Defense League; Robert Blitzer, bureau chief of the FBI's domestic terrorism unit; and others explore the mentality of intolerance, abetted by the subversive Christian Identity movement.
"Human Terrain' is two stories in one. The first exposes the U.S. effort to enlist the best and the brightest of American universities in a struggle for the hearts and minds of its enemies ... The other story is about a brilliant young scholar who leaves the university to join a Human Terrain team. After working as a humanitarian activist and winning a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford, Michael Bhatia returned to Brown University to conduct research on military cultural awareness. A year later, he left to embed as a Human Terrain member with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan. On May 7, 2008, en route to mediate an inter-tribal dispute, his Humvee hit a roadside bomb and Bhatia was killed along with two other soldiers. Asking what happens when war becomes academic and academics go to war, the two stories merge in tragedy."--Distributor website.
The detention of migrants has become a multi-billion dollar industry in which immigrants are sold to the highest bidder and traded like mere products. The Corrections Corporation of America, The Geo Group, and the Management and Training Corporation run over 200 facilities all over the nation. These facilities offer over 150,000 bed spaces and rake in a total profit of close to five billion dollars per year. The fact that these detention centers get paid for the number of people that are in the center per night offers, therefore, no incentive to speed up the legal processes and let the detainees leave the facility.
This disturbing documentary profiles a chilling subculture among American youth. For over a decade, the clash between racist and anti-racist youth has been virtually invisible, but now, ever younger members are taking control of the white supremacy movement. Rising against them are a group of anti- racist skinheads, punk rockers and mainstream kids who call themselves the Anti Racist Action (ARA). These groups are often indistinguishable as they battle one another. The filmmaker, Beverly Peterson, had extraordinary access to the hate-filled adolescents at war with each other. Their confrontations have led to assaults and even murder, confounding their parents, their communities, as well as the police. While organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Americans for Democratic Action encourage unity demonstrations to counter the Klan s hate rallies, it is the violent kids of the ARA that seem to be most effective in combating the white supremacists.
In a small-town Jena, Louisiana, six families are fighting for their sons' lives. Two nooses are left as a warning to black students trying to integrate their playground, fights break out across town, a white man pulls a shotgun on black students, someone burns down most of the school, the DA puts six black students on trial for attempted murder, and the quiet town of Jena becomes the site of the largest civil rights demonstration in the South since the 1960s. This film presents the story of racial inequality and violence, once hidden and now becoming painfully apparent. It is a powerful symbol for, and example of, how racial justice works in America - where the lynching noose has now been replaced by the DA's pen.
KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy
With race relations stretched to breaking point in some American cities, the supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan says it's seeing a surge in membership. They claim that white Americans - angry at what they perceive as attacks on their heritage - are joining in large numbers, convinced they must prepare for a race war. With access to the leaders of the Loyal White Knights chapter in North Carolina, this film follows their secretive rituals. The Klan travels to the South Carolina Statehouse in Charleston to protest against the removal of the confederate flag. But when Black Power groups turn out to demonstrate the two opposing visions of America violently come face to face.
In October 1998, Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left to die. The horror of this murder pushed Laramie into the media spotlight and sparked a nationwide debate about homophobia, gay-bashing and hate crimes. Filmmaker Beverly Seckinger, who grew up in Laramie, was compelled to return to her hometown to see how this event had altered the site of her own closeted adolescence. Along the way she meets "God-hates-fags" Westboro Baptist Church Reverend Fred Phelps, who condemns Shepard and all LGBTQ people to a merciless eternity in hell. But Seckinger meets many more--students, teachers, parents, and clergy--wrestling with painful complexities, speaking out and taking action.
Nazi America: A Secret History
This A&E Special traces the history of Nazism in America from its early days to today's neo-Nazis, who rely on both their constitutionally protected freedom of speech and radical action to advance their agenda of Aryan purity.
This edition of Investigative Reports provides a chilling look at the skinheads, a volatile movement that became increasingly subtle and sophisticated in spreading its divisive and dangerous message. Unlike the original skinheads - too extreme to become a significant threat to society - the new skinheads worked hard to blend in with society as they coordinated their ongoing campaigns of extreme violence with other organized hate groups such as the KKK and Aryan Nation.
Patriot Guard Riders takes us on a solemn ride to funerals of young soldiers killed in action. Our guides are a 200,000-strong motorcycle group formed to protect grieving families from members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who harass them for allowing their sons and daughters to serve. The riders escort the the fallen soldiers from the airfield to the burial grounds, where they form a protective shield of honor and respect. The film underscores a tragic truth: Soldiers are dying and their families are suffering. It reveals an unlikely but powerful bond between the riders, the grieving families and the military. Their poignant stories chronicle the emergence of a new kind of patriotism in America, where we honor the troops even if we don't believe in the war.
Puzzles: When Hate Comes to Town
As civil rights for LGBT and other minority groups are won violent backlashes have been known to increase. Today LGBT people are far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crimes. PUZZLES tells the story of a hate crime in a gay bar called Puzzles Lounge in New Bedford, MA when a teenager entered and brutally attacked its patrons. As a result two different worlds collide, a homophobic hate crime offender and his victims. Puzzles explores the correlation between American economic desperation and homophobia, intolerance, and, ultimately, violence.
In Jackson, Mississippi-a city only grazed by Hurricane Katrina-thousands of African-Americans face conditions familiar to the people of New Orleans. This NBC News documentary looks at problems that persist in Jackson and other American cities, despite progress, decades after the civil rights movement. Following several students at an inner city Jackson high school over the course of an academic year, the program demonstrates how drugs, poverty, teen pregnancy, and the absence of a father shape the lives of many young black people. Parents, educators, Jackson's mayor, and wealthy African-Americans are also interviewed about the difficulties in their community. In addition, the film explores ways in which whites have or have not helped.
Should Americans Fear Islam?: A Town Hall Meeting
Islam has millions of adherents in the United States. Yet, for many non-Muslim Americans, the religion remains shrouded in mystery-and even fear. Modeled on town hall discussions, this ABC News program features a panel of experts and activists who sift through the challenges surrounding Islam in post-9/11 America. Moderator Christiane Amanpour speaks with Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and a leading organizer behind the planned New York City mosque and Islamic community center; Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran; Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch; Peter Gadiel of the 9/11 Families for a Secure America Foundation; Donna Marsh O'Connor of the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows; Reza Aslan, author of No God But God and Beyond Fundamentalism; and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Nomad.
Spreading the Hate, The Dark Side of the Internet
An in depth look at hate in the 21st century. America's recent rise in hate crimes sparked this in-depth look at all the possible reasons why.
The heart of this journey is the brutal murder of James Byrd, Jr in Jasper, Texas. But this is not an anatomy of his murder, rather, it is an evocation of how this event fits in to a landscape and climate as much mental as physical.
This film documents the increasingly common conversation taking place in homes across the country between parents of color and their children, especially sons, about how to behave if they are ever stopped by the police.
Understanding Hate Crimes: A Service for Jeremy
What happens when intolerance and hatred lead to tragedy? A Service for Jeremy presents one scenario. Fifteen-year-old Jeremy is abducted and beaten to death by fellow high school students because he is gay. Such tragedies are routinely played out in various forms across the country as victims are targeted because they are Black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, poor, gay, or just different. This video closely follows a handful of students through the days immediately following the murder of Jeremy. From the confessions of the killers to the media coverage, visitation, and final service for the dead teenager, students question the forces that led to Jeremy's murder and grapple with the task of organizing a memorial service for a student few people really knew.
In 2008, eighth-grader Brandon McInerney shot classmate Larry King at point blank range. Unraveling this tragedy from point of impact, the film reveals the heartbreaking circumstances that led to the shocking crime as well as the aftermath.
Valentino's Ghost: The Politics Behind Images
Valentino's ghost takes viewers on a chronological journey through more than a century of images of Muslims, Arabs and Islam in the U.S. media, from the early 20th-century fantasies of romantic sheiks to today's damaging stereotypes as evil fanatics. Through interviews with Robert Fisk, Niall Ferguson, and John Mearsheimer amongst others, the film shows the way in which the changing image of Arabs and Muslims has mirrored America's political agenda in the Middle East. Valentino's Ghost aims to sharpen viewers' media literacy and increase their skills in questioning media representations, especially those of minority groups and people with whom our government is in conflict. The film ends with a report of a few Hollywood films that have provided complex images and avoided ethnic stereotyping.
White Like Me, based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a stunning reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we've entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today. For years, Tim Wise's bestselling books and spellbinding lectures have challenged some of our most basic assumptions about race in America. White Like Me is the first film to bring the full range of his work to the screen -- to show how white privilege continues to shape individual attitudes, electoral politics, and government policy in ways too many white people never stop to think about.
This Academy-Award nominated film is a powerful statement about racism in working-class America. It relates the stark facts of Vincent Chin's brutal murder. A 27-year-old Chinese-American, Chin was celebrating his last days of bachelorhood in a Detroit bar. An argument broke out between him and Ron Ebens, a Chrysler Motors foreman. Ebens shouted ethnic insults, the fight moved outside, and before onlookers, Ebens bludgeoned Chin to death with a baseball bat. In the ensuing trial, Ebens was let off with a suspended sentence and a small fine. Outrage filled the Asian-American community to the point where they organized an unprecedented civil rights protest. His bereaved mother, brought up to be self-effacing, successfully led a nationwide crusade for a retrial. This tragic story is interwoven with the whole fabric of timely social concerns. It addresses issues such as the failure of our judicial system to value every citizen's rights equally, the collapse of the automobile industry under pressure from Japanese imports, and the souring of the American dream for the blue collar worker.
Why the Hate?: America, From a Muslim Point of View
In the aftermath of September 11th, George W. Bush made an ultimatum to the world: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." But for many followers of Islam-a global community that includes more than a billion devotees-the choice is not that simple. This timely ABC News program explores the mixed emotions felt by many Muslims toward the U.S. Topics on the agenda include American culture, often perceived as offensive, and U.S. foreign policy, frequently viewed as threatening. By capturing individual opinions and attitudes, correspondent Chris Bury addresses common themes in an effort to answer the question of a stunned American populace: "Why do they hate us so much?
FEATURE FILMS
The life and times of Teena Marie Brandon provides the basis for this biographical drama featuring Hillary Swank as a 21-year-old Nebraskan who passed herself off as a boy before aquaintances turned on her in a violent attack. One week later, she and two others were shot to death by the same pair. Under the direction of first-time filmmaker Kimberly Peirce, this true story is based on a sensational murder case in which the hatred and fear of unorthodox sexuality ran deep.
Traces the course of a single day on a block in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. It's the hottest day of the year, a scorching 24-hour period that will change the lives of its residents forever.
Starr Carter is constantly switching between two worlds: the poor, mostly black, neighborhood where she lives and the rich, mostly white, prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Now, facing pressures from all sides of the community, Starr must find her voice and stand up for what's right.
Lenny Nero sells dreams and hustles nightmares, dealing in real-life experiences through a new technology that makes every sensation immediate. But, on the eve of the new millennium (1999/2000), Lenny and his friend Mace, are suddenly caught in a deadly web of conspiracy, murder, and betrayal - plunging them into their own nightmare world.