Documentary Educational Resources

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/evolution-of-violence.html

Guatemala. The war ended long ago. Though the people want to forget it, the violence continues, and it has spread throughout the society like cancer. Each day, journalists wait to report on the next murder victim, and a social worker helps the relatives of women who have been killed.

The global hunger for cheap resources has been another cause of violence, and a war over bananas has taken on a life of its own. The society suffers from the aftermath of the 36-year civil war. Mass graves are found in the mountains, former rebels mourn their comrades, and a war criminal has nightmares about all the things he's done. Peace continues to elude Guatemala.

Purchase: Available Soon

by George C. Stoney (1963, 33 min)
Made with the Cleveland Police Dept.
from the "Five Films on Police" collection.

These films are a view of police officers as instruments for social service for all rather than just law enforcement bringing down on criminals the punishment of the law. They were made for use during group discussions where the police could share their immediate experiences with one another and with the people from hospitals in their communities. Written material supplemented the films during these discussions, which encouraged the participants to cite their own experiences. Instead of just blaming the police and making them feel guilty, this dialog created some understanding.

This film was designed to make police officers aware that alcohol can disguise or mask serious physical and mental illnesses.

Purchase: Available Soon

by George C. Stoney (1964, 32 min)
Made with the Cleveland Police Dept.
from the "Five Films on Police" collection.

These films are a view of police officers as instruments for social service for all rather than just law enforcement bringing down on criminals the punishment of the law. They were made for use during group discussions where the police could share their immediate experiences with one another and with the people from hospitals in their communities. Written material supplemented the films during these discussions, which encouraged the participants to cite their own experiences. Instead of just blaming the police and making them feel guilty, this dialog created some understanding.

Targeted toward police officers, this film discusses personal and emotional problems related to the job.

Purchase: Available Soon

by George C. Stoney (1966, 22 min)
Made with the Cleveland Police Dept.
from the "Five Films on Police" collection.

These films are a view of police officers as instruments for social service for all rather than just law enforcement bringing down on criminals the punishment of the law. They were made for use during group discussions where the police could share their immediate experiences with one another and with the people from hospitals in their communities. Written material supplemented the films during these discussions, which encouraged the participants to cite their own experiences. Instead of just blaming the police and making them feel guilty, this dialog created some understanding.

This film was designed to show police how they can work more sensitively with the communities they serve.

Purchase: Available Soon

by George C. Stoney (1962, 33 min)
Made with the Chicago Police Dept.
from the "Five Films on Police" collection.

These films are a view of police officers as instruments for social service for all rather than just law enforcement bringing down on criminals the punishment of the law. They were made for use during group discussions where the police could share their immediate experiences with one another and with the people from hospitals in their communities. Written material supplemented the films during these discussions, which encouraged the participants to cite their own experiences. Instead of just blaming the police and making them feel guilty, this dialog created some understanding.

This film was designed to teach police officers how to interact with suicidal individuals.

Purchase: Available Soon

by George C. Stoney (1960, 32 min)
Made with New Orleans Police Dept.
from the "Five Films on Police" collection.

These films are a view of police officers as instruments for social service for all rather than just law enforcement bringing down on criminals the punishment of the law. They were made for use during group discussions where the police could share their immediate experiences with one another and with the people from hospitals in their communities. Written material supplemented the films during these discussions, which encouraged the participants to cite their own experiences. Instead of just blaming the police and making them feel guilty, this dialog created some understanding.

This film was designed to help police officers understand how to respond to situations involving people with mental illnesses.

Purchase at http://www.der.org/films/life-without-words.html

Dulce Maria (28) and Francisco (22) have been raised their entire lives without access to any written, spoken, or signed language on a farm in northern Nicaragua. They are visited by a Deaf sign-language teacher who works for a local NGO and is determined to teach the siblings their first words. As the two begin their awakening to language, their resistance is clear, but so is their marvel at the teacher and this process.

Their stories are interwoven with the economic and familial history of their family. As we enter their isolated world, uncomfortable questions arise about education, psychology, language, ethics, class, and NGO work.

A film by Adam Isenberg
color, 71 min, 2013

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/evolution-of-violence.html

Guatemala. The war ended long ago. Though the people want to forget it, the violence continues, and it has spread throughout the society like cancer. Each day, journalists wait to report on the next murder victim, and a social worker helps the relatives of women who have been killed.

The global hunger for cheap resources has been another cause of violence, and a war over bananas has taken on a life of its own. The society suffers from the aftermath of the 36-year civil war. Mass graves are found in the mountains, former rebels mourn their comrades, and a war criminal has nightmares about all the things he's done. Peace continues to elude Guatemala.

What would life be like without language? For too many deaf people raised in rural outposts, access to a sign-language community is denied and they are condemned to a life without words.

Such injustice deserves our attention and is explored with care in this haunting story of two deaf siblings, Dulce Maria (28) and Francisco (22), who have been raised their entire lives without access to any written, spoken, or signed language on a farm in northern Nicaragua. They are visited by a Deaf sign-language teacher who works for a local NGO and is determined to teach the siblings their first words. As the two begin their awakening to language, their resistance is clear, but so is their marvel at the teacher and this process.

Their stories are interwoven with the economic and familial history of their family. As we enter their isolated world, uncomfortable questions arise about education, psychology, language, ethics, class, and NGO work.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/ameer-got-his-gun.html

Ameer, a young Israeli, Moslem Arab volunteers to join the Israeli Defense Forces with the innocent belief that this induction will turn him into an equal citizen. Drawing fire from Jewish and Palestinian societies, he sets on a tough voyage to civic and self definition. Ameer, an eternal optimist wishes to be both a proud Arab and an enthusiastic Israeli, while his only enemy is reality.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/fambul-tok.html

Victims and perpetrators of Sierra Leone's brutal civil war come together for the first time in an unprecedented program of tradition-based truth-telling and forgiveness ceremonies. Through reviving their ancient practice of "Fambul Tok" (family talk), Sierra Leoneans are building sustainable peace at the grass-roots level -- succeeding where the international communitys post-conflict efforts failed. Filled with lessons for the West, this film explores the depths of a culture that believes that true justice lies in redemption and healing for individuals -- and that forgiveness is the surest path to restoring dignity and building strong communities.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/chairman-and-the-lions.html

The Maasai leader of a Tanzanian village battles many lions that threaten his community—land grabbers, 'bush' lawyers, migration and lack of education.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/its-a-young-country.html

Commissioned to make a film for a teaching case at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, filmmaker Charles Mann drew upon his seven years as a working economist in Turkey to give valuable insight into the country's cultural and economic transformation.

Mann's knowledge of the country and the language combines with co-filmmaker Franco Sacchi's inspired cinematography to produce a superb film in which contemporary Turkey is seen both from the viewpoint of leading bankers seeking to chart a path for future growth and by Turkey's premier economic historian, Professor Yahya Sezai Tezel.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/lifecycles.html

Malawi is a small country in South East Africa that has reached a turning point — it will either sink into unknown depths of despair and poverty or it must grow and change with AIDS as a catalyst. Lifecycles: A Story of AIDS in Malawi explores the themes of sex, witchcraft, poverty, death and religion in relation to AIDS.

With a soulful soundtrack from Bobby McFerrin, the film was shot over eight months and encompasses both the depth and breadth of a culture under siege. Lifecycles captures the intimate stories of people living with AIDS, traditional healers who claim to cure it, and prostitutes who put themselves at risk each night.

Educated and powerful politicians speak frankly about losing 29 members of parliament to AIDS, and one of only thirty-seven HIV positive Malawians then receiving ARV treatment shares his feelings of unmerited privilege.

Lifecycles is both earnest and uplifted as it uses the words of Malawians to reveal a nation for whom illness is mistaken for a witch's spell and physical love is dangerous.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/on-edge.html

The film focuses on daily life in a poor housing estate in Porto and, in particular, on a group of children aged between 8 and 14. It follows their life outdoors always inventing new games. Parents are seldom home and children have space and freedom to create their own rules, games of power many times copying the models they know from home. Sometimes things get really tough, other times there is a feeling of harmony and melancholy in the neighbourhood.

This is a special summer: people are expecting the European Football Cup and the possible victory of the Portuguese team will raise the morale of a country in full recession. Kids and adults are hypersensitive, feelings go over the top. TVs are put outdoors and the games of the European cup are followed by children and adults as an almost religious ritual.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/those-with-voice.html

A pacifist group of radio engineers travel days to man the transmitter cabin in the hills of Chiapas, providing the surrounding communities with information about current events, family health, and national politics. An archaeologist in Massachusetts explains how his field has changed throughout the twentieth century. And an international film festival brings together visionaries from twenty-three countries including a girl from Finland searching for love and a Cree man working to keep his peoples' oral history alive.

These stories illustrate the complexities of the indigenous experience today while at the same time promoting the universality of the human spirit. Through it all we find the undeniable desire to speak and be heard.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/forest-of-bliss.html

Forest of Bliss is an unsparing yet redemptive account of the inevitable griefs, religious passions and frequent happinesses that punctuate daily life in Benares, India's most holy city. The film unfolds from one sunrise to the next without commentary, subtitles or dialogue. It is an attempt to give the viewer a wholly authentic, though greatly magnified and concentrated, sense of participation in the experiences examined by the film.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/rivers-of-sand.html

The people portrayed in this film are called Hamar. They dwell in the thorny scrubland of southwestern Ethiopia. They are isolated by some distant choice that now limits their movement and defines their condition. In their isolation, they seemed to have refined this not uncommon principle of social organization to a remarkably pure state. At least until recently, it has resulted in their retaining a highly traditional way of life. Part of that tradition was the open, even flamboyant, acknowledgement of male supremacy.

Hamar men are masters and their women are slaves. The film is an attempt to disclose not only the activities of the Hamar, but also the effect on mood and behavior, of a life governed by sexual inequality.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/dead-birds.html

Dead Birds is a film about the Dani, a people dwelling in the Grand Valley of the Baliem high in the mountains of West Irian. When I shot the film in 1961, the Dani had an almost classic Neolithic culture. They were exceptional in the way they focussed their energies and based their values on an elaborate system of intertribal warfare and revenge. Neighboring groups of Dani clans, separated by uncultivated strips of no man's land, engaged in frequent formal battles. When a warrior was killed in battle or died from a wound and even when a woman or a child lost their life in an enemy raid, the victors celebrated and the victims mourned. Because each death had to be avenged, the balance was continually being adjusted with the spirits of the aggrieved lifted and the ghosts of slain comrades satisfied as soon as a compensating enemy life was taken. There was no thought in the Dani world of wars ever ending, unless it rained or became dark. Without war there would be no way to satisfy the ghosts. Wars were also the best way they knew to keep a terrible harmony in a life which would be, without the strife they invented, mostly hard and dull.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/paths-of-hope.html

This latest installment from the Development Communications Workshop provides insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by families in three contrasting communities in Costa Rica. Developed for an innovative teaching collaboration between Southern New Hampshire University and EARTH University, the film looks at key community economic development issues as seen by the region's residents, university students, and faculty.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/conversations-with-jean-rouch.html

This intimate, revealing film of conversations between Jean Rouch and a number of filmmakers and friends including John Marshall is unlike any past films on Rouch's life and work. It was shot over a two-year period, 1978-80 by his friend, Ann McIntosh, who taught video under Ricky Leacock at MIT. There are some fascinating insights as he discusses his methodology with students at Harvard and Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. He also reflects on war and the role he played as an engineer in France during WWII and lighter moments vacationing with his wife.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/girl-next-door.html

In 1995, Oklahoma housewife Stacy Baker posed for a photograph that changed her life. Encouraged by her husband to pose nude for a contest, she was soon gracing the cover of Hustler and accepting offers to perform in X-rated films. Finding liberation through breast implants and her new career, she files for divorce and becomes "Stacy Valentine." Award-winning filmmaker Christine Fugate spent two years documenting Valentine's rise to fame in the adult film industry, as well as her quest to find real love and happiness. The camera follows the actress through her daily grind: the tedious production days, unforeseen crises on the set, industry gossip circles, and frequent trips to the plastic surgeon. Eventually, Stacy Valentine earns the title of "Best American Starlet."

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/one-and-the-many.html

This anthropological documentary film offers an in-depth look at the Tantrik, Aghori, holy seekers of Northern India who are the living disciples of the great Guru Gorakh Nath. In their search for the One amongst the many, the Naths believe only a true guru can guide them through the paradoxes of human life in their search for a centre where nothing must exist. Following his journey of discovery in The Lover and The Beloved (DER 2012), Rajive McMullen goes deeper into Tantra presenting here his own guru's story.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/on-the-other-side.html

Each summer, Jamaican migrant farm workers flood the sleepy towns of rural Massachusetts, arriving to work the tobacco harvest—the staple crop of the region and the last to rely solely on manual labor. Traveling 3,000 miles, they spend up to eight months out of each year working amongst the vast sea of tobacco plants and suspended high above the rafters of the sheds where the plants are hung to dry.

On the Other Side, the first documentary from B-Line Films, follows this group of Jamaicans through the highs and lows of the tobacco season, where they must make the best of a life far from home and cope with the mundane and often unpredictable nature of farm work. After enduring 80-hour workweeks in the race to harvest the tobacco, their feelings of pride and accomplishment become short lived, as tensions rise when keeping steady work suddenly becomes difficult. Their journey culminates with the bittersweet end of the season, when returning home to their families means leaving behind the surrogate family they have been part of for so long.

Media coverage of migrant workers tends to focus on the sensational—inhumane working conditions, poor housing, or other forms of exploitation. The story we discovered is far more subtle. Told in the workers' own words, On the Other Side rises above the political to focus on the often-overlooked human face of migrant labor. What emerges is an inspirational story of sacrifice and love of family; of hard work and dedication; of bitter isolation and loneliness.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/mallamall.html

Globalization is causing India's traditional marketplace culture to undergo rapid changes. The growing middle-class desires a western life style, in which mega malls take precedence over street vendors. But how will this affect the traditional economy so many people count on? Lalita Krishna's Mallamall is a sensory portrayal of India's burgeoning retail industry through stories of the people whose lives depend upon it.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/media-archaeology.html

Using the Boston region as a laboratory for exploring different modes of urban representation across both history and media, A Media Archaeology of Boston exhibits a carefully-selected excavation of the city's spaces through a montage of short films, photographs, postcards, and soundscapes of the larger metropolitan area. Far from a comprehensive survey, A Media Archaeology of Boston aims to provoke new experiences of the city and, simultaneously, to challenge everyday perceptions of it.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/if-it-doesnt-rain.html

Revisting the families and communities of the original If It Doesn't Rain, this short film highlights the continuing struggle to improve their lives, especially to manage and minimize risk. Enriched by eight features, the DVD provides insight into the the role of government programs, the impact of migration, and the power of community organization. An indexed menu of supplemental shorts faciliates classroom discussion.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/newcomers.html

Fresh as the day it was made in 1963, this George Stoney film explores the challenges faced by people migrating from the Appalachian region to the city. The necessity to move to find work, is set against the backdrop of the challenges of the urban living and the struggle to rebuild a sense of community.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/if-it-doesnt-rain.html

What is poverty? This short documentary on households and communites in rural Southern Mexico reveals the complexities of this question and strategies people use to manage and minimize risk. Designed to provoke discussion, this disc includes three in-depth special features (Trout Farm, Oportunidades, The Tequio System) on community projects and government aid programs.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/el-field.html

In a time when immigration has taken the political center stage across the globe, El Field contributes to the discussion by providing a compelling portrait in motion of the life, work and industry of a forgotten section of the largest, busiest land transit border in the world. El Field presents visual historic information that induces the audience to form their own impressions on migrant labor and the industry that employs them.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/smokin-fish.html

Cory Mann, a quirky Tlingit businessman, gets hungry for smoked salmon, nostalgic for his childhood, and decides to spend a summer smoking salmon at his family's traditional fish camp in Juneau, Alaska. By turns tragic, bizarre, or just plain ridiculous, Smokin' Fish tells the story of one man's attempts to navigate the messy collision between the modern world and an ancient culture.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/framing-the-other.html

The Mursi tribe resides in the basin of the Omo River, in the east African state of Ethiopia. Mursi women are known for placing large plates in their lower lips and wearing enormous, richly decorated earrings, which has become a subject of tourist attraction in recent years.

Each year, hundreds of Western tourists come to see the unusually adorned natives; posing for camera-toting visitors has become the main source of income for the Mursi. To make more money, they embellish their "costumes" and finery to appear more exotic to the outsiders. However, by exaggerating their habits and lifestyle in such a manner they are beginning to cause their original, authentic culture to disintegrate.

Framing the Other portrays the complex relationship between tourism and indigenous communities by revealing the intimate and intriguing thoughts of a Mursi woman from Southern Ethiopia and a Dutch tourist as they prepare to meet each other. This humorous, yet simultaneously chilling film shows the destructive impact tourism has on traditional communities.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/stori-tumbuna.html

In 2001 Paul Wolffram, a cultural researcher, travelled to one of the most isolated and unique corners of the earth. He eventually spent over two years living and working among the Lak people in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea. As his relationships with the people grew he began to glimpse a hidden reality, a dark and menacing history that loomed over his host community. Over time the sense that something is amiss grows. As his curiosity deepens Paul brings to light dark secrets that set in motion a compelling and deadly set of events.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/maasai-migrants-series.html

The seven videos contained in this DVD were made in Tanzania between 2008 and 2010 by participants in the Maasai Migrants Field School, directed by Peter Biella of San Francisco State University's Program in Visual Anthropology. The primary purpose of the videos in the series is to educate urban and rural Maasai about the consequences of migration, especially its relationship to poverty and the spread of HIV. The films have been produced through a continuing collaboration with Maasai-led and other NGOs, and they are being screened and discussed in Maasai regions throughout Tanzania. Their purpose is to trigger emotional reactions that prompt viewers to engage in important — though otherwise rare and uncomfortable — conversations, about poverty, migration, and sexual practices. The series also constitutes a self-critical history of a project in applied anthropology and gives an example for applied practitioners who may wish to use video in their work.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/funeral-season.html


Funeral Season takes the viewer through the red dust of Cameroon's laterite slopes and into the heart of the Bamileke country, where one funeral flows into the next. These death celebrations provide an opportunity to see elaborate costumes and masks, festive songs and dances, and lavish feasts, while illuminating the communal links which bind the Bamileke as an ethnic group and society. Along the way, the director befriends his guides and becomes increasingly haunted by memories of his own ancestors. At times, the dialogues alienate him from the locals; at other times they bring the two closer together. Like the dead and the living, they belong to two different worlds often mirroring each other.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/ngaben.html

The Balinese cremation ceremony, or ngaben, has primarily been known in the West as either a major tourist attraction that dazzles visitors with the splendor, intricacy, and drama of its performance, or as fodder for long-standing anthropological arguments about personhood and emotion on the island that debated whether or not Balinese people expressed, or even experienced, grief. According to Balinese Hindu beliefs, cremation is one of the most important steps in a person's spiritual life, and a heavy responsibility to the family, because it is through cremation that the physical body is returned to its five constituent elements and the soul is cleansed and released from the body to ascend to heaven and be reincarnated.

Ngaben: Emotion and Restraint in a Balinese Heart takes an impressionistic look at the ngaben from the perspective of a mourning son, Nyoman Asub, and reveals the intimacy, sadness, and tenderness at the core of this funerary ritual and the feeling and force that underlie an exquisite cultural tradition. Amidst ample cultural and interpretive understandings of the cremation ceremony, the film purposefully provides a personalistic, impressionistic, and poetic glimpse of the process and the complex emotions involved.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/standing-on-the-edge.html

Standing on the Edge of a Thorn is an intimate portrait of a family in rural Indonesia grappling with poverty, mental illness, and participation in the sex trade. Shot over the course of 12 years, the film centers on Iman Rohani, a former civil servant struggling with a mental disorder, who takes in Tri, an unwed pregnant teenager 30 years his junior. Iman refuses to marry Tri, which would have made her an accepted member of the village. Instead, the couple are scorned by the other villagers and become isolated. Over time, trapped by traditional values that stigmatize their relationship, Iman and Tri sink even deeper into destitution and make a series of choices that lead Tri into a life a prostitution and violence.

The narrator of the film is Iman and Tri's daughter, Lisa, who has witnessed most of these events. Starting when Lisa was a young child, the film documents her unfolding sense of self and identity against the backdrop of a destitute and unstable family. As the film progresses, Lisa struggles to understand her parent's predicaments, while she herself is being drawn into the sex trade. At the end of the film, we experience Lisa as a 16-year old-teenager, attempting to free herself from her parent's conflicts and troubles, as she plans to leave the village to pursue a new life in urban Indonesia.

Purchase: http://der.org/films/bon-mustang-to-menri.html

Bon: Mustang to Menri tells the story of Asonam, a 10 yr. old boy from Mustang, who made a journey from his homeland, the ancient kingdom of Mustang (now part of Nepal) to Menri Monastery in Northern India. There Asonam made the commitment to become a Geshe, equivalent to a PhD, and after 13 additional years of education in languages, philosophy, debate, and Bon traditions he achieved this goal.

Decades after leaving his village, Asonam returns with the education, skill and will to answer a critically emerging need of the people of Mustang, those who follow Bon as well as those who follow other religious paths, by establishing a cultural center that will support and encourage the sustainability of their ancient and traditional heritage.

Asonam's life is interwoven with the story of Bon and the efforts of the 33rd Abbot of Menri, who built Menri Monastery in Northern India after the destruction of the old Menri monastery in Tibet. This remarkable Abbot, as the head of an ancient lineage for over forty years, has orchestrated the preservation of Tibetan Bon culture and the education of thousands of monks, nuns and Bon children. He granted his approval and blessings with access to the monastery for this project.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/i-dream-of-mummers.html

I Dream of Mummers is a story about a custom, called kukeri, in which masked people dance at the end of Winter and the beginning of Spring. The custom's origins are hidden far back in the past — a tradition that has become part of the history of an entire nation. It is found in many places in Bulgaria, but here, in the village of Sushitsa, it has almost completely preserved its authenticity and can still be seen as it was performed centuries ago.

This is a film about a small village and its inhabitants, about an ancient tradition that they have preserved almost intact to this day, and about a friendship as undying as the tradition itself.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/duduki.html

The Georgian duduki is known by different names in neighboring countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. In Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, ethnomusicologists Hugo Zemp and Nino Tsitsishvili filmed a rehearsal for an upcoming concert, where master musician Eldar Shoshitashvili and his students perform traditional repertoires of Middle-Eastern origin but also westernized songs developed by Georgian musicians since the 20th century and styles derived from the rural polyphonic singing.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/vineyard-chronicle.html

How does one make wine from grapes? Following the rhythm of the four seasons of a wine grower's year, Vineyard Chronicle shows us the work, the worries and the joys of a family of wine growers and producers, the Potterats of Lavaux, Switzerland. Three generations who live and work together, keeping up old-time traditions.

Techniques may have changed and know-how may have improved, but the pitched region of Lavaux has seen relatively little mechanization due to the small size of the holdings. The love of a job well done is what sets these "gardeners of the vine" apart, with their delight in healthy grapes and the need to see and touch what they produce.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/a-country-auction.html

A Country Auction Film Project, based on the ethnographic research of Robert Aibel, Chris Musello and Jay Ruby, consists of a trio of films covering a period of almost 30 years.

In 1983 three ethnographers and a documentary filmmaker collaboratively produced two films — A Country Auction and Can I Get A Quarter? — that documented ethnographic research conducted on estate sales held in a rural Central Pennsylvania community. Over the next 25 years, these films were screened in numerous film festivals, broadcast on public television, and reviewed in academic journals.

The consensus among the filmmakers was that few people appeared to comprehend their intentions in producing the films. In 2008 they decided to return to the community where A Country Auction was filmed and hold an anniversary screening. In addition, the four filmmakers came together for a critical discussion about the successes and failures of the original Auction film. This discussion became the basis of a third film, Reflexive Musings: A Country Auction Study Film.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/a-country-auction.html

A Country Auction Film Project, based on the ethnographic research of Robert Aibel, Chris Musello and Jay Ruby, consists of a trio of films covering a period of almost 30 years.

In 1983 three ethnographers and a documentary filmmaker collaboratively produced two films — A Country Auction and Can I Get A Quarter? — that documented ethnographic research conducted on estate sales held in a rural Central Pennsylvania community. Over the next 25 years, these films were screened in numerous film festivals, broadcast on public television, and reviewed in academic journals.

The consensus among the filmmakers was that few people appeared to comprehend their intentions in producing the films. In 2008 they decided to return to the community where A Country Auction was filmed and hold an anniversary screening. In addition, the four filmmakers came together for a critical discussion about the successes and failures of the original Auction film. This discussion became the basis of a third film, Reflexive Musings: A Country Auction Study Film.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/unity-through-culture.html

Soanin Kilangit is determined to unite his people and attract international
tourism through a cultural revival on the South Pacific island of Baluan. He
organizes the largest cultural festival ever held on the island, but while reviving the old cultural practices of log drumming and penis dances, a struggle to define the past, present and future of Baluan culture develops.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/fantome-island.html

In 1945 seven year-old Joe Eggmolesse was diagnosed with Leprosy. He was taken from his family under police escort and transported by rail and sea over a thousand kilometres to Fantome Island where he was to be incarcerated for the next ten years.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/swiss-yodelling-series.html

A wedding in the main village of the Muotatal, a valley of the Swiss Pre-Alps, allows us to discover four different types of yodel performances, the local term for yodel being 'Juuz' (pronounced yootz). A 'Yodel Mass' in church is followed by a local yootz arranged for the choir who sings in the organ loft. At dinner a family entertains the wedding party. The day ends in an inn with friends singing for their own pleasure, and guests dancing.

This film video is part of a 2-DVD set of 126 minutes, also including the following documentaries of which excerpts are on YouTube: "Yootzing and Yodelling", "Head Voice, Chest Voice"; "Glattalp".

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/theres-no-hole-in-my-head.html

In 2007, aged 54, Abby Hale was diagnosed with early onset of Alzheimer's. As a mom and medical practitioner Abby eloquently shares with grace and insight what she has both gained and lost as a result of this harsh and cruel disease. This film allows us a rare glimpse into a world that is becoming increasingly common in our society, but is rarely discussed in such an honest and open way.

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/swiss-yodelling-series.html

In the Muotatal, a small valley of the Swiss Pre-Alps, local yodels are called 'Juuz' (pronounced yootz). The film shows traditional performances that accompany different peasant activities as well as people sitting together at home or in the local inn, and stage presentations of yodel choirs at both a concert and a folk festival. Performers of both styles discuss the differences between their practices.

This video is part of a 2-DVD set of 126 minutes, including the following documentaries of which excerpts can also be seen on YouTube: "Head Voice, Chest Voice"; "The Wedding of Susanna and Josef"; "Glattalp".

Purchase: http://www.der.org/films/swiss-yodelling-series.html

Innovative graphic animations with sync sound visualize the features of yodelling structure and performance in the Muotatal valley of the Swiss Pre-Alps. These graphics allow us to recognize two different styles of voice technique and performance: that of the traditional yodel called locally 'Juuz' (pronounced yootz) sung by peasants and other villagers for their own pleasure, and the polished yodelling of a renowned soloist performing at yodel festivals.

This video is part of a 2-DVD set of 126 minutes, including the following documentaries of which excerpts can also be seen on YouTube: "Yootzing and Yodelling"; "The Wedding of Susanna and Josef", "Glattalp"