Filmography - Area Studies: South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania

This is a selective list of video holdings in the American University Library. Filmographies are created by doing multiple keyword searches in the catalog to capture as many titles on a topic as possible. 

For complete, up-to-date holdings please search the library catalog search box on the Media Services homepage. (http://www.american.edu/library/mediaservices/) Finding Aids on the same page includes other subject oriented content.

For more information take a look at the Streaming Video Guides and Browsing Collections.

Note: "Vietnam War" and "War on Terror" (in Afghanistan) are addressed in specific filmographies on those topics. Feature films are also excluded from this list with the exception of a few that depict important historical events that aren’t well covered by documentaries (e.g. The Killing Fields).

Arms for the Poor: The Global Impact of the Weapons Industry. 2006. 1 streaming video (30 min.). Has the arms trade derailed America's national conscience? This program articulates a disturbing point of view: that for all its generosity and leadership, the world's wealthiest country is better known for a mammoth military budget that enriches weapons manufacturers and feeds destructive conflicts. Featuring appearances by several activists and dignitaries-including Elie Wiesel, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and the Dalai Lama-the film shows how the policies of the industrialized world often lead to poverty and suffering in the name of national interest.Indonesia's invasion of East Timor and Cambodia's land-mine plague provide instructive, albeit tragic, examples. Streaming video

Cambodia: The Virginity Trade. 2008. 1 streaming video (60 min.). Some Asian traditions hold that sex with a virgin will bring a man good luck and health. Tragically, the custom is far from moribund-in the dark world of Southeast Asian prostitution there is a growing demand for younger and younger companions. This program reveals the disturbing inner workings of Cambodia's child-sex industry as well as its manifold human consequences. Viewers meet teenage girls who entered the trade as high-priced virgins-some under coercion, others to support their families, all ending up trapped in slavery. Additional interviews feature activists from human rights NGOs such as APLE, an agency with ties to France, and LICADHO, a group based in Cambodia. Streaming video

Conflict on a Local Scale. 2009. 1 streaming video (25 min.). This program examines types of conflict that can occur at the local level, whether that locality is a single town, a region, or an entire country. After generally addressing armed conflict-different types of war, where they tend to proliferate, and kinds of weaponry used-Conflict on a Local Scale illustrates unarmed conflict through five examples. They include a clash of recreational interests in Britain's Lake District; in Cambodia, the forced eviction of residents from confiscated oceanfront real estate; the potential expansion of England's Heathrow Airport, which would necessitate the leveling of an entire town; tensions over inadequate water supplies in Ukraine, an instance of cooperative conflict resolution; and a municipal planning crisis involving a supermarket chain in the British town of Ottery St. Mary. Viewable/printable educational resources are available online. A part of the series Geography of Conflict. Streaming video

The conscience of Nhem En. 2008. 1 videodisc (26 min.). Nhem En was 16 years old when he worked as a photographer at the notorious Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, also known as S-21, where 17,000 people were tortured and killed from 1975 to 1979. Of the thousands of men, women, and children who posed for him, Nhem En did not offer aid or a single consoling word. Today, he defends his part in the horror, stating that everyone would do what he did. Only eight people are known to have walked out of S-21 alive. Three of them tell their remarkable stories of survival. - from website. DVD 7173

Far East: Expeditions to Empires-Albert Kahn's Archive of the Planet. 2008. 1 streaming video (51 min.). From 1914 through much of the 1920s, Albert Kahn's photographic team was hard at work in Asia, amassing culturally and historically vital images for the Archive of the Planet. This program recounts journeys through Indochina and greater Asia in which the Kahn team opened up a world most Europeans had never dreamed of. Viewers discover Vietnam through its beggars, Tet celebrants, and elegantly dressed Mandarin administrators; Cambodia, through traditional dancers and the imposing Angkor City complex; Japan, through rapidly Westernizing homes, dress, and hairstyles; and India, through pictures of maharajas and other authorities rendered powerless by British rule. Contains brief nudity. A BBC/Musee Albert-Kahn (Departement des Hauts-de-Seine-France) Co-production. Streaming video

Inside the Khmer Rouge.  Ethnographic video online. 2007. 1 streaming video (45 min.). Documentary tracing the history and circumstances of the rise, fall, and re-emergence of the Khmer Rouge as a military and political power in Cambodia. Streaming video

John Pilger. Year zero : the silent death of Cambodia. 2006. 1 videodiscs (124 min.). John Pilger vividly reveals the brutality and murderous political ambitions of the Pol Pot / Khmer Rouge totalitarian regime which bought genocide and despair to the people of Cambodia while neighboring countries, including Australia, shamefully ignored the immense human suffering and unspeakable crimes that bloodied this once beautiful country. Nicaragua: a nation's right to survive: John Pilger's 1983 film about the small nation of Nicaragua and its right to survive investigates the corruption in Central America. In 1979, the Sandinistas won a popular revolution in Nicaragua, putting an end to decades of the corrupt US-backed Somoza dictatorship. They based their reformist ideology on that of the English Co-operative Movement, but was to prove too radical for the Reagan administration. Burp! Pepsi v Coke in the ice cold war: This film traces the history of these brands against the backdrop of global politics. The second world war was the perfect vehicle for Coca-Cola distribution (including to the Nazis), bottling plants on frontlines paid for by the US war department. Nixon got Kremlin supremo, Khrushchev, to pose drinking Pepsi, which became the first US product made in the Soviet Union. In 1949, Mao kicked Coca-Cola out of China. President Carter got it back in 1978. It is a study of the links between corporate and political power. In Chile, Pepsi Cola's boss ran a daily paper which was used by the CIA to help Pinochet's bloody coup. Flying the flag: arming the world: John Pilger and David Munro look behind the political rhetoric and discover the world of international arms dealing. DVD 6691

Journey into Buddhism. 2007. 1 videodisc (85 min.). Explore the lost civilization of Angkor in Cambodia, including the largest temple in the world - the magnificent Angkor Wat. Travel through Hindu Bali, the jungles of Java, and the Buddhist Borbudur. DVD 3493

K'sai chivit: Threads of life. Ethnographic video online. 2007. 1 streaming video (20 min.). Explores the sacred art of Khmer silk weaving and the role it plays in the life of a young Cambodian woman, Um Lao. This ancient art was almost lost but orgnizations like UNESCO have set up training programs to revitalize the art. The film depicts the master weaver and his student as they weave and sell their cloth. The film also focuses on the social and psychological impact this has on Um Lao. Streaming video

The killing fields. 2001. 1 videodisc (141 min.). Dith Pran is an aide, translator and friend of a journalist who is covering the war in Cambodia. He is eventually exiled to the labor camps in Cambodia's countryside, where he endures four years of starvation, torture and war before escaping to Thailand. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1874

The Missing Picture. 2014.1 videodisc (96 min.). Explores filmmaker Rithy Panh's quest to create the missing images during the period when the Khmer Rouge ruled over Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The film uses wood figures, archival footage, and narration to recreate his firsthand experiences and those of his family and friends' suffering during the communist regime. DVD 7602 Streaming Video

Not the numbers game. WWF earth report. 1996. 1 videodisc (43 min.). Looks at how several developing countries have progressed in meeting the agreements signed at the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in which peoples' needs rather than population numbers were emphasized in discussions. Video contains six short segments that examine the conditions of women in these countries and their efforts to attain their dreams while dealing with pregnancy, poverty, lack of birth control, lack of education, genital mutilation, low social status, low paying industrial jobs, and other problems that make their lives difficult. DVD 4213

Opening the Eyes: Deciphering the History of the Khmer Empire. 2009. 1 streaming video (53 min.). The gigantic Angkor temple complex in Cambodia is a testament in stone to the Khmer-miles of inscriptions that only Professor Thomas Maxwell and a handful of other experts can decipher. But time is running out as erosion and the ever-increasing influx of tourists take their toll on the carvings at this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Using Maxwell's research into the ceremonial eye-opening ritual as a point of entry, this program delves into the history and culture of the Khmer empire and the efforts of the Angkor Inscriptions Survey to preserve the fast-fading record of that civilization. Streaming video

Outbreak in Asia: How a Flu Pandemic Is Born. 2006. 1 streaming video (50 min.). An avian influenza epidemic will almost certainly begin where poultry is slaughtered in poorly managed, unsanitary conditions. This semi-dramatized program starts in rural Cambodia, where a mutated H5N1 virus spreads easily from an infected chicken into the local population and prompts a swift response from World Health Organization field workers. Depicting the WHO containment strategy in detail, the program also illustrates how a single wayward villager could render all such measures useless, despite the best efforts of science and the international community. Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group, explains the science of cross-species infection, while Dr. Catherine Macken of the Los Alamos National Laboratory displays chilling computer simulations of outbreak patterns. Original BBCW broadcast title: Pandemic Part one. Streaming video

S21. 2003. 1 videodisc (101 min.). This program chronicles the human rights abuses of the Khmer Rouge after they seized power in Cambodia in 1975. In this documentary, filmmaker and survivor Rithy Panh confronts his captors, some of whom were as young as 12 years old when they committed their atrocities. DVD 2330

The Timber Mafia: The Economics of Deforestation. 2002. 1 videodisc and 1 streaming video (45 min.). In countries such as Brazil, Cameroon, Cambodia, and the Philippines, organized timber rackets are booming, selling rare wood illegally cut from national parks and nature preserves. Such mercenary deforestation threatens countless species and has already changed global weather patterns. Often filmed covertly, this program goes inside the illegal timber traffic in Indonesia, examining the profits and attendant corruption, as well as exposing ongoing logging operations. Economics of the trade and countermeasures are discussed by key figures and experts, including the Indonesian Forestry Minister, the U.K. Environment Minister, and members of the Environmental Investigation Agency, Malaysian Timber Council, and Worldwide Fund for Nature. DVD 1152. Streaming video