Hot Docs: The Light in Her Eyes

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

The Light in Her Eyes (DVD 10782) tells the fascinating story of a Muslim preacher whose school has led to more women taking active involvement in the Islamic community. The filmmaker notes that western feminism tends to be secular; in contrast, the women here use their religious education as a backbone for their own movement. It's an interesting juxtaposition of a religion that is typically not associated with strong feminist tendencies with the burgeoning women's movement inside it.

Official description from the film's website:

Houda al-Habash, a conservative Muslim preacher, founded a Qur’an school for girls in Damascus 30 years ago.

Every summer, her female students immerse themselves in a rigorous study of Islam. A surprising cultural shift is under way—women are claiming space within the mosque.

Shot right before the uprising in Syria erupted, The Light in Her Eyes offers an extraordinary portrait of a leader who challenges the women of her community to live according to Islam, without giving up their dreams.

Hot Docs: Human Geography

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

Human Geography: Making Sense of Planet Earth (DVD 10629) is a four-disc series that introduces the new and developing field of human geography. Human geography fuses traditional geographic studies with the social sciences, developing an understanding of how human population spreads, transfers, and develops in relation to space. It's all a little confusing to wrap your head around, which is why a series like this comes in handy. At 215 minutes, Human Geography covers everything from an overview of how the field works to the nitty-gritty about economic development and culture.

Official description from container:

As the human population marches toward 10 billion people, understanding where people live, how they are connected, and how they are shaping different parts of the planet is essential. Host Dr. Alexander B. Murphy opens the door to the field of human geography, a vital perspective for making sense of the rapidly changing, increasingly interconnected world of the 21st century. He shows us that if we cannot think geographically we are bound to fail in confronting future challenges.

View a trailer on Ambrose Video's website.

Hot Docs: The Uprising of '34

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

The Uprising of '34 (DVD 10617) tells the story of a massive but largely unremembered textile worker strike from 1934. It was at the time the largest labor strike in the history of the United States and lasted for nearly a month, greatly impacting the South's textile industry and ending in a major, lasting defeat for the unions in the South. This documentary interviews participants in the strike and explores the strike's lasting but forgotten effects on the current state of labor unions.

Official description from the publisher's website:

In 1934, Southern textile workers took the lead in a nationwide strike that saw half a million walk off their jobs in the largest single-industry strike in the history of the United States. For a time, these new union members, in response to New Deal legislation, stood up for their rights and became a force to be reckoned with in the South. Then management moved in and crushed the strike. Some mill workers were murdered, thousands more were blacklisted, and many were so intimidated that "union" became a dirty word in Southern communities for decades to come.

Barely publicized, rarely acknowledged in history books, the General Textile Strike of 1934 remains a stirring yet amazingly forgotten chapter in Southern history. The Uprising of '34, a film by famed documentarian George Stoney and independent filmmakers Judith Helfand and Susanne Rostock, examines this hidden legacy of the labor movement in the South and its impact today.

Hot Docs: The Boy Game

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

The Boy Game (DVD 8955) views bullying from a gendered perspective. The film – only 16 minutes long – posits that the bullying epidemic is in part caused by social pressure among boys to conform to the resilient, tough gender norms common among males of their age group. Interestingly, The Boy Game is not a documentary, but rather a short film that uses a fictionalized encounter based on real testimony. Its story of three boys struggling with their outward image is used to draw attention to real gender and social pressures.

Official description from the distributor's website:

The Boy Game tackles bullying among boys at its core:the culture of toughness and silence boys live by. Targets need to be protected, absolutely, but rather than vilify bullies, The Boy Game looks to unpack the the complex dynamics that lead some boys to bully and the majority to stand watching in silent conflict.

The truth is all boys suffer under cultural codes that demand toughness and silence. Boys desperately need a way to talk about the painful gender straitjacketing they are subject to, to develop the resilience needed to stand up, be themselves, and redefine masculinity in terms of emotional, tolerant strength.

Based on off-the-record interviews with boys nationwide, then fashioned into a hard hitting scenario, it was shot like a doc to capture the intense pressures boys face every day.

Hot Docs: Nuclear Savage

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

Nuclear Savage (DVD 10606) puts a lens on the untold victims of nuclear testing. The effects of nuclear weaponry are well documented, yet few discuss the lives of the people intentionally exposed to radiation during nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. The film uses a combination of historical documents – some recently unearthed – and interviews with those who lived through nuclear testing. It reveals the tragic story of people dealing with the fallout of America's militaristic pursuits.

Official description from the film's website:

Adam Jonas Horowitz shot his first film in the Marshall Islands in 1986, and was shocked by what he found there, in this former American military colony in middle of the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive coconuts, leaking nuclear waste repositories, and densely populated slums were all the direct result of 67 Cold War U.S. nuclear bomb tests that vaporized islands and devastated entire populations.

Twenty years later, Adam returned to these islands to make this award winning shocking political and cultural documentary exposé titled Nuclear Savage; a heartbreaking and intimate ethnographic portrait of Pacific Islanders struggling for dignity and survival after decades of intentional radiation poisoning at the hands of the American government. Relying on recently declassified U.S. government documents,devastating survivor testimony, and incredible unseen archival footage, this untold and true detective story reveals how U.S. scientists turned a Pacific paradise into a radioactive hell. Marshall islanders were used as human guinea pigs for three decades to study the effects of nuclear fallout on human beings with devastating results. Nuclear Savage is a shocking tale that pierces the heart of our democratic principles.

Hot Docs: How to Start a Revolution

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

How to Start a Revolution (DVD 10642) travels the globe to demonstrate the influence of Gene Sharp, a noted political scientist whose writings on nonviolent revolution and protest have been used worldwide. From Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War to Egypt during the height of the Arab Spring, Sharp's writings have influenced generations of political upheaval. The film attempts to bring more credit to Sharp's writings and the ways that they have shaped freedom.

Official description from the film's website:

Half a world away from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, an ageing American intellectual shuffles around his cluttered terrace house in a working-class Boston neighbourhood. His name is Gene Sharp. White-haired and now in his mid-eighties, he grows orchids, he has yet to master the internet and he hardly seems like a dangerous man. But for the world’s dictators his ideas can be the catalyst for the end of their regime.

Few people outside the world of academia have ever heard his name, but his writings on nonviolent revolution (most notably ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’, a 93-page, 198-step guide to toppling dictators, available free for download in 40 languages) have inspired a new generation of protesters living under authoritarian regimes who yearn for democratic freedom.

This new film HOW TO START A REVOLUTION reveals how Gene’s ideas work in action. The film uses extended interviews with Gene himself, his assistant, his followers and leaders of revolutionary movements worldwide, as well as user-generated content from around the globe, to reveal the power of nonviolent revolution on the streets.

Hot Docs: A Wild Idea

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

A Wild Idea (DVD 10631) covers one of the most intriguing economic and environmental deals in recent memory: international interests will pay Ecuador not to tap the massive oil reserves near the Amazon River. It's a radical idea that could save a region, have enormous environmental impact, and set a precedent for the future of international environmental collaboration – should Ecuador accept the deal.

Official description from the film's website:

The film takes the viewer to the Yasuní National Park, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, capturing the rain forest’s stunning biodiversity. It also focuses in the millions of barrels of oil lying beneath the part of the park known as the ITT Block.

Exploiting the ITT seemed to be the logical step Ecuador had to take, but political changes have transformed the way the country views oil development. Through testimony representing different perspectives and rich archival video, A Wild Idea shows how the seemingly utopian ideal of keeping valuable oil underground turned into an official proposal.

As the film progresses, the complex initiative becomes easy to understand. The audience sees what’s at stake if the proposal is not accepted. And the political twists and turns that made it possible and that could also threaten the success of this revolutionary idea.

Hot Docs: Kansas vs Darwin

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

Kansas vs Darwin (DVD 10562) addresses the ongoing argument between the theory of evolution and intelligent design by focusing on a specific, famous battle with the Kansas State Board of Education. In 2005, the school board considered requiring teaching intelligent design to be taught in schools alongside the theory of evolution. The measure eventually failed, but not before unleashing a political and cultural battle on the scale and madness of the Scopes monkey trial. Kansas vs Darwin examines this heady, frenetic clash from both sides, painting a full picture of a fight at the epicenter of debate over science in education.

Official description from the film's website:

Kansas vs. Darwin takes you inside the hearings to meet the characters who captured the world's attention: school board members who believe their literal interpretation of the Bible trumps modern scientific evidence, and members of the Intelligent Design Network who believe mainstream science is conspiring to suppress evidence that would overturn evolution. You'll also get face to face with an organization of Kansas scientists, educators, and citizens that organizes a worldwide response to put an end to what they see as a religiously-motivated kangaroo court.

Kansas vs. Darwin is a heady, absorbing swirl of politics, science, religion, education and emotion in which the filmmakers unflinchingly race from one, compelling point of view to its polar opposite in order to challenge the viewer's own opinions. Audiences may experience discomfort as they plunge to the heart of one of mankind's most central questions of existence - and to the epicenter of the American culture war.

Hot Docs: It's a Girl

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

It's a Girl (DVD 10633) exposes the expanding issue of "gendercide" in India and China. Because of cultural traditions and one-child policies in these countries, female children are often mistreated, killed, abused, or abandoned. It's a Girl reveals these injustices and who is committing them, documents the lives of girls whose lives have been destroyed by gendered culture, and asks how this can be stopped in the future.

Official description from the film's website:

In India, China and many other parts of the world today, girls are killed, aborted and abandoned simply because they are girls. The United Nations estimates as many as 200 million girls are missing in the world today because of this so-called “gendercide”. Girls who survive infancy are often subject to neglect, and many grow up to face extreme violence and even death at the hands of their own husbands or other family members. The war against girls is rooted in centuries-old tradition and sustained by deeply ingrained cultural dynamics which, in combination with government policies, accelerate the elimination of girls.

Shot on location in India and China, It’s a Girl reveals the issue. It asks why this is happening, and why so little is being done to save girls and women. The film tells the stories of abandoned and trafficked girls, of women who suffer extreme dowry-related violence, of brave mothers fighting to save their daughters’ lives, and of other mothers who would kill for a son. Global experts and grassroots activists put the stories in context and advocate different paths towards change, while collectively lamenting the lack of any truly effective action against this injustice.

Hot Docs: A Burning Question

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

A Burning Question (DVD 10638) is not simply about global warming. Though this documentary is, at its core, an updated look at the effects of climate change on the world and particularly in Ireland, the film also examines why such a large climate denialism movement exists. Despite overwhelming evidence and consensus, politicians and the media repeatedly rail against the science. This film incorporates evidence of our planet's continuing battle against climate change with the debate over its validity.

Official description from the publisher's website:

This fascinating and clarifying look at the debate surrounding global warming explores the striking disconnect between the relatively clear-cut concerns of the world's most prominent scientists and the maze of speculation, rhetorical posturing, and outright misinformation that attaches to this issue whenever it's taken up by politicians, PR specialists, and political pundits. Mixing a localized focus on Ireland with insights from scientists and leaders from around the world, the film serves as both a primer on climate science and a penetrating analysis of media framing and the science of perception management. An excellent resource for courses in science, environmental studies, global politics, and media.

Hot Docs: Schooling the World

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

Schooling the World (DVD 10940) questions whether Western-style educational systems are appropriate for the rest of the world. For all the philanthropic efforts to increase the quality of education in impoverished countries, our idea of a good education may not fit with the rest of the world's needs. This controversial film uses the microcosm of a Buddhist society to examine how modernized education interacts with local cultures.

Official description from the film container:

If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it? You would change the way it educates its children. The U.S. Government knew this in the 19th century when it forced Native American children into government boarding schools. Today, volunteers build schools in traditional societies around the world, convinced that school is the only way to a 'better' life for indigenous children. But is this true? What really happens when we replace a traditional culture's way of learning and understanding the world with our own? Beautifully shot on location in the Buddhist culture of Ladakh in the northern Indian Himalayas, Schooling the World takes a challenging, sometimes funny, ultimately deeply disturbing look at the effects of modern education on the world's last sustainable indigenous cultures.

Hot Docs: The Witches of Gambaga

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

The Witches of Gambaga (DVD 10635) exposes the town of Gambaga in northern Ghana where women are branded as witches and forced to live in exile. Hundreds of "witches" now live in this town. Their stories are harrowing. This documentary hopes to show this social atrocity to the world at large and drive this practice to an end.

Official description from the film's website:

The Witches of Gambaga is the extraordinary story of a community of women condemned to live as witches in Northern Ghana. Made over the course of 5 years, this disturbing expose is the product of a collaboration between members of the 100 strong community of ‘witches’ and women’s movement activists determined to end abusive practises and improve women’s lives in Africa. Painful experience and insight come together to create an intimate portrait of the lives of women ostracised by their communities. Told largely by the women themselves, their incredible stories and struggles are conveyed to a wide range of audiences by the director’s narration.

Hot Docs: abUSed: The Postville Raid

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

abUSed: The Postville Raid (DVD 10615) examines what happens to immigrants after a wave of mass deportations. The city of Postville, Iowa heavily relied on undocumented workers for its well-being; when the federal government arrested those workers, the town's economy dropped into a freefall. This documentary reveals the government's perceived overreach of power and the aftershocks felt throughout the disintegrating Postville community.

Official description from the film's website:

Presents the devastating effects of US Enforcement Immigration policies on communities, families and children. The film tells the gripping personal stories of the individuals, the families and the town that survived the most brutal, most expensive and largest immigration raid in the history of the United States and serves as a cautionary tale of government abuses.

Hot Docs: Syria: The Assads' Twilight

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

Syria: The Assads' Twilight (DVD 10636) tells the story behind the ongoing crisis and Syria and the end of the legitimacy of the Assad presidency. The situation in Syria is only now becoming a major story in American news media, but the current conditions did not start spontaneously. This documentary recaps four decades of oppression and social unrest that is now exploding into a dangerous, destabilizing war.

Official description from the publisher's website:

During the 1970s, Bashar's father, Hafez al-Assad, turned Syria into one of the world's most secretive and repressive dictatorships. But Bashar was supposed to be different. A doctor who had lived in London, he vowed to fight corruption and embrace globalization in his inaugural address as president. He was supposed to be a modern, liberal leader.

Just over a decade later, the Assad regime is reeling. It has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of its citizens—protesters no longer willing to accept repression and insisting on the same freedoms that other nations have gained through the revolutions of the 2011 Arab spring.

What happened?

SYRIA: THE ASSADS' TWILIGHT is a history of the Assad regime, from its origins to its teetering, possibly final days in 2011.

Hot Docs: The Light Bulb Conspiracy

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

The Light Bulb Conspiracy (DVD 10648) is less about conspiracy than a shrewd, deceptive business model. For decades, companies have been manufacturing products with planned obsolescence. That is, they are designed to fail after a time and need replacement. This documentary discusses light bulbs, which can last for hundreds of years of properly designed, but also newer technologies that are designed to be repurchased and that contribute to our growing electronic waste problem.

Official description from the publisher's website:

The Light Bulb Conspiracy uncovers how planned obsolescence has shaped our lives and economy since the 1920’s, when manufacturers deliberately started shortening the life of consumer products to increase demand. The film also profiles a new generation of consumers, designers and business people who have started challenging planned obsolescence as an unsustainable economic driver.

Hot Docs: The Hungry Tide

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

The Hungry Tide (DVD 10632) makes us think about global climate change from the perspective of those who might be the most affected. We may still be estimating the realistic chances of those coastline projections from An Inconvenient Truth happening, but for the people of Kiribati, the threat of rising coastlines is immediate and frightening. The film uses a personal approach, telling the stories of a few specific people affected by climate change rather than pure science.

Official description from the film's website:

The central Pacific nation of Kiribati is one of the countries in the world most vulnerable to climate change.  Sea level rise and increasing salinity are threatening the lives of  105,000 people spread over 33 atolls in this remote corner of the Pacific.  It’s the same ocean, which for generations has sustained the country that is now the source of its destruction.

[...]

The latest prognosis for climate change appears grim.  Pledges made by industrialized countries at the Copenhagen and Cancun Climate Change Conferences to cut carbon emissions have fallen far short of their targets.  Scientists currently predict temperature increases of between 3 and 6 degrees, and sea level rises of well over a metre, by the turn of the century. Only decisive global action will save Kiribati and its culture from disappearing.

Hot Docs: The Greenhorns

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

The Greenhorns (DVD 8957) challenges conventional wisdom about agriculture during a time when few are considering careers on farms. The documentary, which was produced as part of an awareness program for agricultural reform, follows the lives of new, young farmers becoming acquainted with their chosen... fields. (Sorry, the pun was far too easy to make.)

Official description from the film's website:

The Greenhorns documentary film, completed after almost 3 years in production, explores the lives of America’s young farming community – its spirit, practices, and needs. It is the filmmaker’s hope that by broadcasting the stories and voices of these young farmers, we can build the case for those considering a career in agriculture – to embolden them, to entice them, and to recruit them into farming.

Hot Docs: Cape Spin!

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

Cape Spin! (DVD 10647) covers the ongoing battle over the installation of wind turbines off the coast of Cape Cod. The issue resulted in one of the oddest political battles in recent memory, dividing political coalitions and forming alliances between unlikely partners. Cape Spin has no qualms about its roots as an environmental film but does justice to this most unusual situation.

Official description from the film's website:

Cape Spin! An American Power Struggle tells the surreal, fascinating, tragicomic story of the battle over America’s most controversial clean energy project. Cape Wind would be the U.S.’s first offshore windfarm…But strange alliances formed for and against: Kennedys, Kochs, and everyday folks do battle with the developer and green groups over the future of American power.

With full access to both sides, a commitment to impartial storytelling and fueled by a satiric ‘revolutionary’ soundtrack, Cape Spin!  is “a gripping and entertaining study of eco-capitalism and grassroots democracy”. “It proves that environmental films can be crowd pleasers, and not at all just about the environment.”

Hot Docs: Call of Life

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

Call of Life (DVD 10345) tackles the hot subject of declining biodiversity. Across the world, thousands of species are going extinct as a result of human global development. This documentary examines not only why so many creatures are disappearing but the effect they may are having on physical, cultural, and psychological levels.

Official description from the film's website:

All over the world species are becoming extinct at an astonishing rate, from 1000 to 10,000 times faster than normal. The loss of biodiversity has become so severe that scientists are calling it a mass extinction event.

Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction is the first feature documentary to investigate the growing threat to Earth’s life support systems from this unprecedented loss of biodiversity. Through interviews with leading scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and indigenous and religious leaders, the film explores the causes, the scope, and the potential effects of the mass extinction, but also looks beyond the immediate causes of the crisis to consider how our cultural and economic systems, along with deep-seated psychological and behavioral patterns, have allowed this situation to develop, continue to reinforce it, and even determine our response to it.

Call of Life tells the story of a crisis not only in nature, but also in human nature, a crisis more threatening than anything human beings have ever faced before.

Hot Docs: Default: The Student Loan Documentary

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we've recently added to our collection.

Default: The Student Loan Documentary (DVD 10634) needs little introduction for American University students. Massive student loans, paralyzing debt, and the risk of defaulting or sliding into bankruptcy are real fears. Default tells the stories of students saddled with this financial burden and how they are trying to change the system.

Official description from the film's website:

The film chronicles the stories of borrowers from different backgrounds affected by the student lending industry and their struggles to change the system. No matter when their loans were taken, many borrowers find themselves in a paralyzing predicament of repaying two, three or multiple times the original amount borrowed, with no bankruptcy protection, no cap on fees and penalties and no recourse to the law. The consequences are dire, with stories of borrowers in financial and emotional ruin.