To aid in the selection of videos for your class and research needs, we've created a large number of filmographies on many subject areas.
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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.
Tapped. 2010, 1 streaming video file (75 min.). "Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right, or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? ... [T]his timely documentary is a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a commodity: our water. From the production of plastic, to the ocean in which so many bottles end up, this ... documentary follows the bottled water trail through the communities which are the unwitting chips on the corporate table. A powerful portrait of the lives affected by the bottled water industry, this ... film features those caught at the intersection of big business and the public's right to water."--Container. Streaming video
The Absent House
Pioneering architect Fernando Abruña Charneco, FAIA, confronts climate change with his sustainable constructions. An apprentice of R. Buckminster Fuller, Charneco puts nature first before erecting a building -- a practice which would later be labeled as sustainable green architecture.
Streaming video
The age of stupid. 2010, 1 streaming video file (89 min.). Pete Postlethwaite (the only fictional character) stars as an archivist living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, who spends his days looking at old footage of seven people, from the years leading up to 2015 when a cataclysmic climate change took place. As he sifts through the relics of our lost and misguided civilization, the archivist asks why Earth's inhabitants did nothing to reverse the effects of climate change while they still had the chance. DVD 7818 and Streaming video
The Babushkas of Chernobyl
THE BABUSHKAS OF CHERNOBYL journeys into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone several decades after the world’s worst nuclear disaster in April 1986. The tightly regulated 1000 square mile Dead Zone remains one of the most radioactively contaminated places on Earth, complete with military border guards.
Surprisingly, a defiant, spirited group of elderly women scratches out an existence in this lethal landscape. The resilient babushkas are the last survivors of a small community who refused to leave their ancestral homes after the Chernobyl disaster.
Streaming video
The carbon rush. 1 videodisc (84 min.). "From indigenous rain forest dwellers having their way of life completely threatened, to dozens of Campesinos assassinated, to the livelihood of waste pickers at landfills taken away, THE CARBON RUSH travels across four continents and brings us up close to projects working through the United Nations, Kyoto Protocol designed Clean Development Mechanism. This groundbreaking documentary feature asks the fundamental questions 'What happens when we manipulate markets to solve the climate crisis? Who stands to gain and who stands to suffer?'"--Film website. DVD 6063
The future of food. 2005, 2 videodiscs (ca. 88 min.). An in-depth investigation of the disturbing truth behind unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade and an exploration of alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture. DVD 2357
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden
Darwin meets Hitchcock in this true-crime tale of paradise found and lost. A extraordinary documentary portrait of a 1930s murder mystery as strange and alluring as the famous archipelago itself. Fleeing conventional society, a Berlin doctor and his mistress start a new life on uninhabited Floreana Island. But after the international press sensationalizes the exploits of the island's 'Adam and Eve,' others flock there, including a self-styled Swiss Family Robinson.
DVD 11611 and Streaming video
The greening of Southie. 2008, 1 streaming video file (72 min.). The story of The Macallen Building, Boston's first LEED certified residential 'green' building, and the people that made it possible. Streaming video
The Hadza: The Last of the First
One of the last true hunter-gatherer tribes, the East African Hadza try to maintain their sustainable lifestyle. They have lived on their land near the Rift Valley in Tanzania for over 50,000 years. Like other indigenous peoples around the globe, the Hadza now face grave challenges to their way of life. The Hadza: The Last of the First is a call to action to guarantee a land corridor for their survival.
Streaming video
The island President. 2012, 1 videodisc (101 min.). President Mohammed Nasheed of the Maldives is confronting a problem greater than any other world leader has ever faced - the survival of his country and everyone in it. Nasheed, who brought democracy to the Maldives after decades of despotic rule, now faces an even greater challenge: as one of the most low-lying countries in the world, a rise of three feet in sea level would submerge the 1200 islands of the Maldives and make them uninhabitable. HOME USE COLLECTION 10861
The Land of Many Palaces
In the next 20 years, the Chinese government aims to move a quarter of a billion farmers from the countryside to new cities: the largest migration of people in the history of the world. What does this progress look like? And what is being left behind? This extraordinary and often comic ob-doc follows the huge changes in the lives of rural people as they are transplanted to a ready-made metropolis and abandon their ancient way of living.
Streaming video
The last mountain. 2011, 1 videodisc (95 min.). The fight for the last great mountain in America's Appalachian heartland pits the mining giant that wants to explode it to extract the coal within, against the community fighting to preserve the mountain and build a wind farm on its ridges instead. Robert Kennedy Jr. joins the fight to preserve the mountain. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 9163
The light bulb conspiracy: the untold story of planned obsolescence. 2010, 1 videodisc (52 min.). Traces the untold story of Planned Obsolescence, the deliberate shortening of product life spans to guarantee consumer demand, from its beginnings in the 1920s. DVD 10648
The Living Fire
With the thick snow melting in the breathtaking Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, spring is approaching and three men must prepare for an arduous journey up into the mountains. The Living Fire is a moving and captivating tale of three shepherds, each at a different stage in his life. Bound by tradition, they reflect on the meaning of their own existence as the contemporary world encroaches on their remote community and threatens to destroy their way of life.
Streaming video
The Next industrial revolution William McDonough, Michael Braungart & the birth of the sustainable economy. 2001, 1 streaming media file (55 min.). Explores how businesses are transforming themselves to work with nature and profitability. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2835 Streaming video
The Pearl Button
The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds the voices of the Earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of a mysterious button that was discovered in its seabed. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline, the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian indigenous people, of the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.
DVD 14794 and Streaming video
The real dirt on farmer John. 2008, 1 videodisc (82 min.). The award-winning true story of third-generation American farmer John Peterson's hero's journey of success, tribulation, failure and rebirth. He's not only a farmer, he's an artist too. DVD 3619
The story of stuff with Annie Leonard. 2007, 1 videodisc (20 min.). The goal in producing the film is to raise awareness about the often hidden impacts of production and consumption, to highlight the connections between a wide range of issues, and to spark discussion about both the systemic nature of the problem and effective strategies to address them. DVD 3871
The True Cost
This is a story about clothing. It's about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. THE TRUE COST is a groundbreaking documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider, who really pays the price for our clothing?
Streaming video
The Wisdom to Survive
THE WISDOM TO SURVIVE accepts the consensus of scientists that climate change has already arrived, and asks, what is keeping us from action? The film explores how unlimited growth and greed are destroying the life support system of the planet, the social fabric of the society, and the lives of billions of people.
Streaming video
The world according to Monsanto. 2008, 1 videodisc (109 min.). Monsanto Company is the world's leader in agricultural chemicals, seed and genetically modified crops, as well as being one of the most controversial companies in industrial history. This film uses hitherto unpublished documents and testimonies of victims, scientists and politicians to expose Monsanto's lack of care in protecting the environment and the health of those exposed to their products. Shows how the company promoted such products as Roundup (glyphosate), bovine growth hormone, and genetically modified plants. HOME USE COLLECTION 5587
This Changes Everything
Filmed in nine countries and five continents over four years, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change.
Directed by Avi Lewis, and inspired by Naomi Klein’s international non-fiction bestseller of the same name, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.
Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Klein’s narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there.
DVD 12931 and Streaming video
Time to Choose
Climate change is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced – and it is also our greatest opportunity. We have the solutions we need, but we are in a race against the clock to implement them in time.
Academy Award®-Winning documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson (Inside Job, No End in Sight) turns his lens to address worldwide climate change challenges and solutions. Featuring narration by award-winning actor Oscar Isaac, TIME TO CHOOSE leaves audiences understanding not only what is wrong, but what can to be done to fix this global threat.
Streaming video
Trashed. 2006, 1 videodisc (77 min.). "Analyzes the causes and effects of the seemingly innocuous act of 'taking out the garbage', while showcasing the individuals, activists, corporate and advocacy groups working to effect change and reform the current model" -- Container. DVD 4475
Trashed. 2013, 1 videodisc (97 min.). Looks at the risks to the food chain and environment through pollution of our air, land, and sea by waste. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 8154
Unacceptable Levels
Unacceptable Levels examines the results of the chemical revolution of the 1940s through the eyes of affable filmmaker Ed Brown, a father seeking to understand the world in which he and his wife are raising their children. To create this debut documentary, one man traveled extensively with his camera to find and interview top minds in the fields of science, advocacy, and law. Weaving their testimonies into a compelling narrative, Brown presents us with the story of how the chemical revolution brought us to where we are, and of where, if we’re not vigilant, it may take us.
DVD 7622 and Streaming video
Unlocking the Cage
Follows animal rights lawyer Steven Wise in his unprecedented challenge to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans. After thirty years of struggling with ineffective animal welfare laws, Steve and his legal team, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), are making history by filing the first lawsuits that seek to transform an animal from a thing with no rights to a person with legal protections. Supported by affidavits from primatologists around the world, Steve maintains that, based on scientific evidence, cognitively complex animals such as chimpanzees, whales, dolphins, and elephants have the capacity for limited personhood rights (such as bodily liberty) that would protect them from physical abuse. Using writs of habeas corpus (historically used to free humans from unlawful imprisonment), Wise argues on behalf of four captive chimpanzees in New York State. Unlocking the Cage captures a monumental shift in our culture, as the public and judicial system show increasing receptiveness to Steve's impassioned arguments. It is an intimate look at a lawsuit that could forever transform our legal system, and one man's lifelong quest to protect "nonhuman" animals.
DVD 14785 and Streaming video
Vegucated. 2010, 1 videodisc (NTSC, 77 min.). "Vegucated is a feature-length documentary that follows three meat- and cheese-loving New Yorkers who agree to adopt a vegan diet for six weeks. Lured with true tales of weight lost and health regained, they begin to uncover hidden sides of animal agriculture and soon start to wonder whether solutions offered in films like Food, Inc. go far enough. Before long, they find themselves risking everything to expose an industry they supported just weeks before. But can their conviction carry them when times get tough? Part science class, and part adventure story, this entertaining documentary showcases the rapid and at times comedic evolution of three people who share one journey and ultimately discover their own paths in creating a kinder, cleaner, greener world, one bite at a time. HOME USE COLLECTION 10521
Virunga
In the forested depths of eastern Congo lies Virunga National Park, one of the most biodiverse places on earth and home to the planet’s last remaining mountain gorillas. In this wild but enchanted environment, a small and embattled team of park rangers – including an ex-child soldier turned ranger, a caretaker of orphan gorillas and a dedicated conservationist – protect this UNESCO World Heritage site from armed militia, poachers and the dark forces struggling to control Congo’s rich natural resources.
Streaming video
Waste land. 2011, 1 videodisc (99 min.). Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes viewers on an emotional journey to the world's largest landfill of the day, Jardim Gramacho. Here the catadores, who number in the thousands, work under the hot sun collecting recyclable materials such as bottles, plastic, and metal to be sold to wholesalers. Muniz invites the catadores to add refuse to his art, photographing the work from overhead. The finished artwork will then be on display in museums and auctions around the world. DVD 8166
Wasted! The Story of Food Waste
Through the eyes of chef heroes like Anthony Bourdain, Dan Barber, Mario Batali, and more, audience will see how the world's most influential chefs make the most of every kind of food, transforming what most people would consider scraps into incredible dishes that create a more secure food system.
DVD 14945
Water on the table. 2010, 1 streaming video file (79 min.). Water on the Table features Maude Barlow, who is considered 'an international water warrior' for her crusade to have water declared a human right...More than a portrait of an activist, [the film] presents several dramatic opposing arguments. Barlow's critics are policy and economic experts who argue that water is no different than any other resource, and that the best way to protect freshwater is to privatize it. Streaming video
Water Warriors
WATER WARRIORS is the story of a community’s successful resistance against the oil and gas industry. When an energy company begins searching for natural gas in New Brunswick, Canada, indigenous and white families unite to drive out the company in a campaign to protect their water and way of life.
Streaming video
Watermark
Following their success with Manufactured Landscapes, photographer Edward Burtynsky and filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal reunite to explore the ways in which humanity has shaped, manipulated and depleted one of its most vital and compromised resources: water.
DVD 11635
Weather the storm. 2008, 1 streaming video file (37 min.). Filmed in ports from western Canada to France, from Scotland to Senegal. It introduces viewers to the logic underlying both industrial and artisanal fishing economies. Enormous industrial "floating factories" follow the fish wherever they are abundant. The fishing communities of the Bigouden, on France's rugged western coast, are determined to fight back. These small town fishermen have launched a sophisticated and multi-faceted strategy to stay small and successful in the face of global competition. Streaming video
When Two Worlds Collide
In this tense and immersive tour de force, audiences are taken directly into the line of fire between powerful, opposing Peruvian leaders who will stop at nothing to keep their respective goals intact. On the one side is President Alan Garcia, who, eager to enter the world stage, begins aggressively extracting oil, minerals, and gas from untouched indigenous Amazonian land. He is quickly met with fierce opposition from indigenous leader Alberto Pizango, whose impassioned speeches against Garcia’s destructive actions prove a powerful rallying cry to throngs of his supporters. When Garcia continues to ignore their pleas, a tense war of words erupts into deadly violence.
Streaming video
Who killed the electric car? 2006, 1 videodisc (93 min.). Investigates the development and demise of the fuel-efficient, environment-friendly electric car. Examines the Bush administration's role in the car's being peremptory pulled from production, the influence of the automobile industry and oil interests, and implications for the future of sustainable energy in the United States. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 9711
Women and Water
From birth through to death, water plays an essential role in every stage of life. And in India, as with most poorer societies, it is women who are responsible for finding water, and using it. Women and Water is a beautiful, poetic examination of Indian society through the prism of water and shows how this most elemental of resources is denied to the most needy. Life is water, water is life— no matter whether you are rich or poor.
Streaming video
YERT your environmental road trip. 2012, 1 videodisc (113 min.). 50 States. One year. Zero Garbage? Called to action by a planet in peril, three friends hit the road, traveling with hop, humor, and all of their garbage, to find out what Americans can do to save the planet. From outrageous green personalities like Missouri's Eco-Elvis and Florida's Earth Man, to a cave community in the mountains of Idaho, to incredible new ventures that transform garbage into almost anything. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 10863