LAVA's Featured Titles for September
A Panorama
September 1999
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Garifuna Journey, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Andrea E. Leland & Kathy L. Berger
Documentary 46 minutes
With English subtitles
Genocide, exile, diaspora and persecution did not break the spirit of the Garifuna People. Descendants of African and Carib-Indians, the Garifuna, also known as the Black Caribs, fought to maintain their homeland on St. Vincent in the Caribbean. For this love of freedom, they were exiled by the British to Central America at the end of the 18th century. The untold story of their ancestors' resistance to slavery is described by the descendants. With vivid and engaging footage, and shot entirely in Belize, this documentary celebrates the continuity of Garifuna culture.
Purchase Price: $ 250.00
Capoeira: In Tribute to the Past Get Details
Liz Andersen
Documentary 25 minutes 1993
With English subtitles
Looks at the Afro-Brazilian dance/martial art form of Capoeira. Students interview masters of this form and experts in the field. The music, dance and history is explored using archival material, poetry, song and performance footage.
Daughters of Zumbi Get Details and Purchasing Info
Anna Penido
Documentary 10 minutes 1996
With English subtitles
"Daughters of Zumbi" is a message to street girls that their bodies can be used for survival through song, dance, and poetry. Elisa Lucinda's poem "Too Young a Moon" cries out over the streets of Rio about the pain of frightened, abandoned, pregnant girls, while the soothing lullaby voice of opera singer Uyara accompanies the energetic Afro dance of Luiza Gomes on the beaches, forests and mountains that surround Rio de Janeiro. Contrasting images reveal how both pain and beauty exist in the same city. Emotional interviews are given by the three artists who have triumphed over poverty and discrimination, and today work to educate these children, serving as living examples of how the kids can find meaning in life through art.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Slave Ship Get Details and Purchasing Info
Anna Penido/David Sonnenschein
Documentary 28 minutes 1994
Dubbed into English
Celio, an ex-street kid from Rio de Janeiro who has mastered Afro dance and the Brazilian martial art of capoeira, trains a group of slum children in the musical theater "Slave Ship". Based on the epic poem of Castro Alves ("Navio Negreiro"), the suffering of the slaves taken from their home in Africa to row on a ship toward a gruesome destiny reflects the suffering of these children who struggle to survive on streets without a future. From the humble beginnings of a school play, the kids are projected for the first time in front of the public at a municipal theater, and finally are spotlighted on national TV for their powerfully beautiful performance. Visiting their neighborhood and relatives, we discover how Celio has helped to save these kids from crime, drugs and extermination, while nurturing their self-confidence and linking them to their ancestral roots.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Business of Hunger, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 28 minutes
With English subtitles
In many Third World countries, cash crops are exported while the poor go hungry. This phenomenon, one of the major causes of world hunger, is examined in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the U.S.A. Winner of American Film Festival.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Hurricane Mitch: Uncovering the Costs of External Debt Get Details and Purchasing Info
Victoria Maldonado
Documentary 30 minutes 1999
With English subtitles
In October 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept through Central America causing unprecedented damage in Honduras and Nicargua. The severity of the destruction and the amount of time needed to re-stabalize uncovered a deeper crisis: an economic crisis, caused in great part by years of heavy external debt burdens which prioritize debt payments and international markets over people. This video enables viewers to hear from the people of Nicaragua and Honduras who know they are paying off this debt with their lives. They tell of their struggle to expose the global imbalance of wealth and the need to break the crippling cycle of indebtedness. They challenge their government and the citizens of wealthy nations to work for change.
Purchase Price: $ 150.00
Debt Game: Who Owes Whom, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Eduardo Coutinho
Documentary 27 minutes 1991
With English subtitles
The Debt Game takes on the monumental and important task of explaining the causes and disastrous repercussions of the $400 billion debt Latin American nations owe to the First World. Structured largely as a historical account, The Debt Game shows how the roots of the current debt crisis lie as far back as the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the Americas, even as they extend into the modern lending practices of organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, and private multinational financial institutions. Using statistical and historical information, this film explains how Latin America’s debt has skyrocketed due to causes outside the control of the nations themselves, and argues that Latin American nations are trapped in a vicious cycle of indebtedness, leaving a legacy of unemployment, malnutrition, poor health, illiteracy, and poverty; and making governments unable to provide for the basic needs of their citizens. The film’s use of a combination of media – news footage, interviews with experts, animation, and theater – make its message comprehensible to a variety of viewers. In doing so, it not only discusses the deep historical roots and dire socioeconomic repercussions of First World financial policies in Brazil and the rest of Latin America, but also puts forward alternatives for the future. The Debt Game ultimately advocates a profound reform in the international financial system and the internal structure of Latin American nations, in order to promote an ethical and democratic resolution to the crushing problem of debt in Latin America.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
El Salvador Not for Sale Get Details and Purchasing Info
Victoria Maldonado
Documentary 30 minutes 1998
With English subtitles
A portrait of a country under assault from
Washington and the World Bank. This documentary
shows the impact of structural adjustment,
privatization and the global sweatshop economy on
the people of El Salvador. It also explores the
posible alternatives through interviews with
activists in the women's movement, labor leaders
and the FMLN. Historical footage take you from
the start of the
civil war in 1980 to the economic war of
the '90s,
including new and inspiring images of strikers
inside a Free Trade Zone.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Evolution of Chile: Prosperity for Some, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 30 minutes 1998
With English subtitles
In just 25 years, Chile has gone from a Marxist state to a dictatorship to a democracy. Thetransition has strengthened Chile's economy, but not all Chilean citizens have shared in theprosperity. In fact, the divisions between rich and poor have widened, causing critics to question whether democratic capitalism is the right solution. As the scenario unfolds, so do the moral issues surrounding the economic path Chile has chosen. Using Chile as a case study, this program examines these issues, and the difficulties experienced by other Third World nations also riding the tidal wave of post-Cold War economic reforms.
Purchase Price: $ 125.00
Chile: From Drama to Hope Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 59 minutes
With English subtitles
This program examines Chile under martyred socialist President Salvador Allende, and the subsequent Pinochet regime that followed. Allende's niece and novelist, Isabel Allende, exile Hortensia Bussi, Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriela Mistral, and others discuss women's role in the eventual toppling of Pinochet, and the formation of the Latin American Federation of Associations of Families of Prisoners Missing Since 1981ùa tracking organization that helps families discover the fate of relatives kidnapped during the Pinochet reign of terror. Also available in Spanish.
Purchase Price: $ 135.00
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MEXICO - The War in Chiapas
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Chiapas: The Inside Story Get Details and Purchasing Info
Irma Avila Pietrasanta
Documentary 61 minutes 1994
With English subtitles
This documentary examines the 30-year rebellion and conflict between the Mexican government and the indigenous population in Chiapas through interviews with village residents, journalists,politicians, and rebel Zapatista leaders. The area's tumultuous history is traced from the Mexican Revolution to the present, as allegations of massacres by government troops continue to dominate the headlines. Zapatista leaders and members of various local organizations discuss the source of the struggle---their demand for agricultural autonomy over lands currently owned by wealthy Mexicans and foreigners.
Purchase Price: $ 150.00
Chiapas 1998: The Bad Harvest Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 17 minutes 1998
With English subtitles
"The Bad Harvest" documents severe food shortages in indigenous communities in Chiapas. This video is a coproduction by indigenous youth who are learning video skills through the Chiapas Media Project and professional video producers from Mexico and the US. "The Bad Harvest" tells a poignant story of crushing poverty using first hand testimony from several indigenous communities. An old farmer says, "If we take chickens or eggs to town, the army takes them and eats them."
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Chiapas, Neighbors in the Struggle Get Details
Alex Halkin
Documentary 18 minutes 1995
With English subtitles
Background to the Chiapas conflict with vivid scenes from the first Pastors for Peace Caravan to Chiapas. After joining with the large Mexican contingent, the caravan travels deep into the Lacandon jungle to deliver aid to the indigenous communities.
Indigenous Family, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 16 minutes 1998
With English subtitles
This tape contains two programs:"The Chiapas Media Project" is an eight minute video describing the work of the project, including the participation of youth from the US as video instructors. Indigenous youth who are learning video skills through the project discuss their hopes and dreams in the context of a low intensity war waged against them by the Mexican government. 2) La Familia Indigena" is a seven-minute video that takes a very personal look at the roles of various famliy members in inidigenous communities in Chiapas. This is the first video produced by indigenous youth who are learning video skills through the Chiapas Media Project. Shot and edited completely by indigenous youth, many of the scenes show life in an indigenous community that are not normally accesable to outsiders.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
War in Chiapas, The Get Details
Carlos Mendoza
Documentary 40 minutes 1994
With English subtitles
A critical look at Mexican government leadership as a contributing factor to the Chiapas conflict, with footage of the original uprising in January 1994. The tape also explores the background of the Chiapas region and the problems which led to the uprising.
Lacandona: The Zapatistas and the Rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico Get Details and Purchasing Info
Action for Community and Ecology in the Region of Central America (ACERCA)
Documentary 26 minutes 1998
With English subtitles
This is the first documentary to explore the
political ecology that has shaped the struggles
of the indigenous peoples of the Selva Lacandona
region of Chiapas, Mexico. The indigenous
Zapatista communities are situated on land
believed to contain part of the second largest
oil reserve in the Western Hemisphere, as well as
rich deposits of natural gas, precious timber and
other valuable resources, containing at least 20%
of Mexico's biodiversity. As a consequence of
these resources being put on the global market,
the indigenous peoples are trying to protect
their homeland and culture from wealthy
landowners, the Mexican government and
international financial interests. These
interests are so intricately connected to the
Mexican government's low intensity war against
the indigenous peoples of Chiapas.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas Get Details and Purchasing Info
Saul Landau
Documentary 56 minutes 1996
With English subtitles
Chronicles the January 1994 uprising led by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Visually interweaving the Mayan past and the Mexican Revolution with contemporary reality, this documentary portrays an epic confrontationpitting impoverished Indian peasants against large landowners and government officials in Mexico's poorest state. The video features in-depth interviews with Subcomandante Marcos, the ski-masked 'poet-warrior' amidts the mountains and junglesfrom which the rebellion sprang, as well as other leaders and soldiers from the Zapatista movement. Other protagonists include Bishop Ruiz, Mexico's outspoken practitioner of liberation theology and defender of indigenous rights; ranchers forced from their land,; activists layminsters,; government officials and army officers; the notorious guardias blancas, the landowners' private armies.
Purchase Price: $ 350.00
Zapatista Women Get Details and Purchasing Info
Guadalupe Miranda and Maria Ines Roque
Documentary 30 minutes 1995
With English subtitles
Women drawn from the traditional Mayan towns of southern Mexico are an important part of the revolutionary Zapatista army. In their towns, they are bound to their husbands, parents, and children as wives and mothers. The women interviewed in this film chose to leave the comfort and familiarity of home and family to take up arms for the cause of human rights. Unlike the village women, the Zapatistas women hold ranks, have important responsibilities, and distinguish themselves on the battlefield. They are taught to read and write, and to speak Spanish. They are free to love and even marry as they wish, but they may not have children. Filmed deep in the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas, Mexico, the protagonists of Zapatista Women describe the reasons why they made the decision to risk their lives, leave their families, and hold rifles instead of babies in order to live the military life. Their stories of combat, of family, and of their hope for a better future for their people are witness to the bravery of these young women and the strength of their commitment to the cause of social justice and civil rights.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Women in the Zapatista War Get Details
Carlos Martinez Suarez
Documentary 45 minutes 1997
No English subtitles
The Zapatista uprising of 1994 in protested unfair land tenure practices, the exploitation of indigenous peoples, and the effects of Mexico's neo-liberal economic policies. Yet it also spawned a self-reflective critique about gender roles in indigenous communities. This documentary discusses the role of women involved in the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.
Arming Dictators Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 28 minutes
With English subtitles
Throughout the 1980's, while the U.S. government opposed dictatorships in the Soviet Bloc, it also supplied over $80 million to ruthless dictators elsewhere. Indonesia, Zaire, Saudi Arabia and El Salvador are just some of the places examined in this documentary, where U.S. tax dollars were used to brutally repress innocent people.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Crossing Borders: The Journey of Carlos Fuentes Get Details and Purchasing Info
Joan Saffra
Documentary 60 minutes
With English subtitles
This sly, irreverent, affectionate portrait of Mexico's foremost novelist probes beneath the surreal surface of his work to expose the roots of his fiction and its place in the world of literature. The camera follows Fuentes' career from Washington, D.C., to Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City--cities which have left a mark on his personality and writing. It also follows Fuentes on his travels to Aztex ruins, movie sets and war zones. Along the way this writer/diplomat holds forth on art, sex, and politics. Included are interviews with William Styron and other writer-friends and scenes from Fuentes' Old Gringo with Jane Fonda and Gregory Peck.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Eduardo Galeano Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 60 minutes
With English subtitles
Eduardo Galeano, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, is a journalist, historian, caricaturist and political activist best-known for his Memory of Fire, a poetic historical trilogy of the Americas from the native creation myths to modern time. The trilogy is a brilliant collage that strives to restore the cultural heritage of Latin America. Mr. Galeano read from Walking Words, The Book of Embraces, and spoke with Michael Silverblatt, the host of the radio interview program Bookworm. From the Lannan Literary Videos series.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Hemingway in Cuba Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 30 minutes
With English subtitles
The American author Ernest Hemingway is revealed in all his complexity in this detailed portrait. For over 30 years he inhabited an island paradise, eschewing both the public life that often dominates literary figures and his native land. As Hemingway himself wrote, "The country that a novelist writes about is the country he knows, and the country he knows is in his heart."
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Anacleto Morones Get Details and Purchasing Info
Esther Duran
fiction 30 minutes 1994
With English subtitles
A religious congregation of women confront the former assistant of Anacleto Morones, a local faith healer. The women, who want to proclaim him a saint, recount his miraculous deeds as the assistant remembers his view of these deeds. An adaptation of a short story by Juan Carlos Rulfo.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Galeano: Memory, Myth, God, Message Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ataulfo Tobar
Documentary 24 minutes 1990
No English subtitles
Eduardo Galeano gives a beautiful lecture about the reinterpretation of Latin American history. He reflects on the five hundred years since Columbus, offering his perspectives on memories and history, myth and reality, and God. Galeano criticizes the official history, the machos, ricos, blancos and militares of the European conquering culture. He touches on themes of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Bringing out the hidden history of the indigenous people and Africans in Latin America, Galeano emphasizes the value of pre-Columbian civilizations, and the beauty of African practices in America. He makes the point that what must be commemorated in 1992 is the resistance of the oppressed. Intercut with Galeano's speech are images from Latin America to help provide context.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Isabel Allende: An Extraordinary Life Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 52 minutes 1995
With English subtitles
When her daughter became ill and fell into a coma,Isabel Allende began to write the story of her family. This program tells of the extraordinary family and the events of which they were often the central element: her grandmother, who spoke with the spirits; her mother, abandoned by her father, and her mother's lover; her father's cousin, Salvador Allende, who was elected president of Chile and was murdered during a coup that brought military dictatorship to Chile; and her own immigration to California and success as a writer.
Purchase Price: $ 169.90
Cuban Excludables, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Estela Bravo
Documentary 57 minutes 1994
With English subtitles
This is a documentary about the plight of thousands of Cuban detainees who have been held indefinitely in U.S. prisons years after having completed their sentences, often for minor offenses. Their detention has been called a violation of human rights by former president Jimmy Carter and others. A federal judge ruled that they have been denied the fundamental right of due process, but his ruling was overturned. The Excludables are caught in the middle of the 35-year long US-Cuba dispute where normal relations do not exist. This powerful documentary is a combination of political conflict, human drama and exclusive footage of the detainees, shot and edited in Estela Bravo's unique and humane investigative style.
Purchase Price: $ 295.00
Dominican Women Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 60 minutes 1992
With English subtitles
The program examines the Dominican Republic that tourists rarely seeùa nation of sex markets, prostitution, poverty, and lack of educational opportunities. The current economic crisis and its effect on middle-class life are discussed, along with efforts currently under way to alleviate the social and economic problems. We hear from women on all levels of society, from prostitutes to the Vice President of the Dominican Revolutionary Party, who discuss rarely seen facets of Dominican life. Also available in Spanish.
Purchase Price: $ 135.00
Nueba Yol Get Details and Purchasing Info
Angel Muniz
feature 105 minutes 1996
With English subtitles
Balbuena is a country bumpkin who mortages his home in Santo Domingo to buy a visa and go to New York. He expects a promised land where the streets are lined with dollar bills, but finds an upside down world where immigrant parents are held in contempt by their Americanized children, where drug dealers are feared but respected as self-made men, and where honest work for someone without papers is almost impossible to find.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Nueba Yol (Under the New Law) Get Details and Purchasing Info
Angel Muniz
Feature 105 minutes 1997
With English subtitles
Balbuena, the central character, returns to the giant screen in a new adventure full of surprising situations, this time, under the new U.S. immigration laws. This hilarious comedy is set in New York City just weeks before April 1-the fateful date when the strictest immigration laws ever proposed in the U.S. are to take effect. Balbuena shows us his home, friends, and life in lower Manhattan. We experience with him, his struggle to gain legal residency in the United States. Although Balbuena is Dominican, the nature of the topic speaks to many people who have left their homeland, their children and their life for the dream of a better future on the other side of the ocean.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Ernesto Che Guevara: The Bolivian Diary Get Details and Purchasing Info
Richard Dindo
Documentary 92 minutes 1994
With English subtitles
An intriguing look inside Cuba's incredible revolutionary leader Che Guevara, who, at age 39, was executed in 1967 by the Bolivian army, aided by the CIA. Guevara's diary, a detailed personal account of his futile 11-month attempt to foment revolution in Bolivia, is the basis of this moving portrait. Che's relationship with the mysterious Tania, his betrayal by local peasants, his constant battle with asthma, and his distress at the death of his comrades are recounted. Interviews with Bolivians who met Che during these final days testify to a man who embraced sacrifice for his ideals.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Everyday Art Get Details and Purchasing Info
Maria Luisa Mendonca
Documentary 50 minutes 1994
With English subtitles
A portrayal of Cuba's folkloric traditions, and contemporary art scene, featuring Cuba's finest musicians and dancers. Shot in homes, on the streets and stages of Cuba, the video captures the rich connections between African and Latino culture, religion, daily life and art.
Purchase Price: $ 59.95
Axe Get Details and Purchasing Info
Marcia Meireles y Maria A. Lemos
Documentary 30 minutes 1988
With English subtitles
This eye-opening documentary concentrates on the struggle of Blacks in Brazil who face racism and discrimination in their everyday lives. The film interviews black and white men, women, and children to emphasize the magnitude of the discrimination that still exists in the 20th century; whites label blacks as lazy and criminal, and children are already aware of the injustices made only on the basis of skin color. While many Brazilians are fighting for political action, others are discouraged and believe nothing will ever change, yet see their culture as a refuge. The word "Axe", is one that has taken on many different meanings in the Black culture of Brazil. Where the word was once known to identify a type of dance, it is now associated with peace, light, and magic -- a positive energy that exists in their souls and guides them in their difficult struggle for equality.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Messenger of the Gods, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Rigoberto Lopez
Documentary 24 minutes 1989
No English subtitles
In Afro-Cuban religions the drum is the messenger of the Gods, known as Orishás. This video documents a ceremony held in Havana using two drums as an offering to the African Yoruba Gods, Yemayá and Changó.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Nganga Kiyangala, Congo Religion in Cuba Get Details and Purchasing Info
Tato Quinones and Luis Soto
Documentary 33 minutes 1991
With English subtitles
This film describes the history, rites, and practices of Nganga, the Bantu-based belief system of the slaves brought to Cuba from the Congo region of Africa, and attempts to distinguish it from the better-known Yoruba-based Santería. The film focuses on the actions performed by a palero (priest), during his morning prayer. Includes a long interview with Miguel Barnet, author of Biography of a Runaway Slave.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Green Medicines Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 52 minutes
With English subtitles
The rainforests of the world are our most prominent pharmacy and drugstore. More than a third of all prescription medicines in the western world are derived from rainforest plants. Yet, at the present rate of destruction of these forests worldwide, we are likely to lose important medicines before we have even found them. This documentary follows various scientists in various disciplines in their work: the ethnobotanist working with herbal healers to learn about the traditional use of green medicines, the pharmacologist bringing plants into the laboratory to find the chemical structure of active molecules, doctors trying to incorporate traditional medicines into western medical practice. Shot in Western Samoa, Thailand, Borneo, Papua New Guinea, and Brazil, the program is also a strong plea for rainforest conservation in cooperation with the indigenous peoples inhabiting these areas. (
Purchase Price: $ 179.00
Grenada Revisited Get Details
Dan Sagalyn
Documentary 28 minutes 1991
With English subtitles
This video looks back at what precipitated the deployment of over 5,000 U.S. troops to the small Caribbean island and examines the consequences today. Was the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada necessary?
Grenada: The Future Coming Towrds Us Get Details and Purchasing Info
John Douglas, Carmen Ashurt & Samor
Documentary 57 minutes 1983
With English subtitles
The history of Grenada since the arrival of the
Europeans to the government of Eric Gairy (1975-
1979) and the resistence of the people to the
dictatorship.
Purchase Price: $ 250.00
Gringo in Mananaland, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Dee Dee Halleck
Documentary 61 minutes 1995
With English subtitles
This film is a look at U.S. media representations of Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America. Since the turn of the century, popular media in the U.S. have promoted stereotyped images of Latin America in order to justify the concept of U.S. dominance in the hemisphere.
Purchase Price: $ 295.00
Making Waves Get Details and Purchasing Info
Karen Ranucci
Documentary 27 minutes 1989
With English subtitles
A documentary about the popular video movement in Bolivia. It features a group of shoeshine boys who make documentaries about their lives; an organization that makes the only Quechua language news and cultural program shown on Bolivian TV; and a group of videomakers who have created an association of independent video makers. Despite this wealth of local material, most of Bolivia's broadcast TV programming is purchased from the United States. "Making Waves" addresses the social consequences of this reality.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Si o No? Puerto Rico And The Statehood Question Get Details and Purchasing Info
Sally Dubrowsky
Documentary 28 minutes 1992
With English subtitles
Puerto Rico's quest for statehood and its impact on the US are the topic of this title. This video explores the history of the past century with respect to Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, both on the island and on the Mainland.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
My Puerto Rico Get Details and Purchasing Info
Sharon Simon & Raquel Ortiz
Documentary 90 minutes 1996
With English subtitles
A personal journey through Puerto Rico's rich cultural traditions, revealing the remarkable stories of its revolutionaries and abolitionists, poets, and politicians, whose struggle for national identity unfolds within the dramatic history of relations between the US and Puerto Rico.
Purchase Price: $ 225.00
El Legado: A Puerto Rican Legacy Get Details and Purchasing Info
Diego Echeverria
Documentary 30 minutes 1981
With English subtitles
Traces the growth of the Puerto Rican community in NYC in the first half of this century by blending together historical film footage of the era and personal interviews with pioneer migrants.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Nationalists, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Jose Garcia Torres
Documentary 28 minutes 1973
With English subtitles
THE NATIONALISTS surveys the activities of the
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in the 1950's
including the background to the shooting incident
in the U.S. Congress by four Puerto Rican
nationalists in March 1954, and the contributions
of the movement's leading figure, Don PedroAlbizu
Campos.
Purchase Price: $ 250.00
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Jewish Culture and History
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Sosua Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary 30 minutes
With English subtitles
In 1938, 32 nations met at the Evian Conference to find new homes for endangered European Jews. Only the Dominican Republic offered sanctuary. In 1940, a group of Jews escaping Nazi persecution found a haven on this beautiful Caribbean island of Sosua. This is their courageous story.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Yidishe Gauchos, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Mark Freeman
Documentary 30 minutes 1989
With English subtitles
This intriguing documentary tells the nearly forgotten tale of how Jewish immigrants to Argentina became a part of that country's ranching culture. These immigrants built schools, libraries, theaters and agricultural co-ops in the wilderness. Narrated by Eli Wallach.
Purchase Price: $ 69.95
Spirit of Samba Get Details and Purchasing Info
Documentary
With English subtitles
Nationally-aired PBS documentary gives a street-level perspective of the black music of Brazil, with a behind-the-scenes tour of the provocative culture. From Beats of the Heart series.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Where Land Is Life Get Details
Documentary 28 minutes 1989
With English subtitles
For the Quechua and Aymara people of the Peruvian high plains, the land they inhabit is more than a commercial commodity to be bought and sold. As collective owners and decision makers, the native people maintain a democratic social structure. The concept "Pachamama" or "Mother Earth" is integral to the identity and culture of the people. Today, through land reform laws, the Quechuas and Aymaras are reclaiming the land of their ancestors as their birthright. They are also rediscovering the traditional farming methods which have sustained their people for centuries.
Central Station Get Details and Purchasing Info
Walter Salles
Feature 115 minutes 1998
With English subtitles
In this breakthrough triumph of form and emotion, Walter Salles has freed himself from the constraints of Cinema Novo and the neorealism and in one bravura step rises to the ranks of Latin America's most distinguished auteurs. A film of acute tenderness and eloquence, Central Station grounds its critique of Brazil's sociopolitical mores in an achingly eloquent mediation of the renewal of identity and family in a society ruptured by cynism and self interest. In the stifling halls of Rio's Central Station, a former school teacher supports herself by writing and mailing letters for illiterate passerby. Hardened by loneliness, adversity, and the station's daily stream of desperate faces, Dora has become stoically indifferent to the weight of her charge, choosing arbitrarily to send some letters and discard others. When one of Dora's clients is killed outside the station, she resolves to take in the woman's orphaned son, Josue. Swayed by a curiously maternal compassion, Dora resists her initial impulse to make a quick profit off the child and commits to returning Josue to his father in Brazill's remote northeast. As buses and trucks carry the motley pair through increasingly unfamiliar terrain, they defy their initial aversions, journeying closer together and deeper inside themselves.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Chico Mendes Get Details and Purchasing Info
Raquel Couto/Edilson Martins
Documentary 48 minutes 1994
With English subtitles
A chilling documentary about the life and work of Chico Mendes, the president of the Brazilian Rubber Tappers' Union. Chico became a target of the local landowners and was eventually murdered by the son of a landowner. Intimate footage of Chico and his family tell the harrowing tale of workers who dare to organize in the Brazilian Amazon.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
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The Work of Ximena Cuevas
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Devil in the Flesh Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ximena Cuevas
Experimental
5 minutes 1998
With English subtitles
In Devil in the Flesh we see the camera's tricks, and even so the action seems dramatic. This piece once again exemplifies my fascination with the artificial; the fabricated emotions, the Christian looking for pain in order to live out Passion, the discomfort of the everyday melodrama, the emptiness that defeats everything. So, as in all my work, I am obsessed with lying's various disguises. It doesn't interest me to watch that which is not hidden. Formally, my camera documents; looking directly without shame. The possibility of the narrative levels intrigue me in the montage. My camera work is cinema verite and my montage work , cinema "mentira". My intent is an emotionally borderless language. In Devil in the Flesh, I look at myself in the mirror, but through the desolate hole of a mask, the circle is broken by the sharp biting angle of a telephone that keeps ringing. I take up the spoon again. There is no form of escape from everyday boredom. Every grammatical punctuation constitutes a search for a break in reality or an intensified state." -Ximena
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Paper Bodies Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ximena Cuevas
Art 4 minutes 1997
With English subtitles
In her alluring video, Ximena Cuevas playfully draws from Mexican popular culture as well as from her own life to tell a sensual story of love, jealousy and breakup, against a backdrop of a popular romantic ballad.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Bleeding Heart Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ximena Cuevas
Music Video 3 minutes 1993
With English subtitles
A wonderfully colorful music video from Astrid Hadad, a singer of the independent music scene.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Three Deaths of Lupe Velez, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ximena Cuevas
Art 5 minutes 1997
With English subtitles
A contemplation on the flirtion with death.
Purchase Price: $ 49.95
Elvia: The Fight for Land and Liberty Get Details and Purchasing Info
Rick Tejada Flores and Laura Rodriguez
Documentary 27 minutes 1988
Dubbed into English
This powerful and personal documentary tells the story of Elvia Alvarado, a peasant woman who has been struggling for years to enforce an agrarian reform law that's been on the books since 1972. A single mother of six who has been arrested and tortured, Elvia is a leader with incredible perseverance and energy. The tape provides some historical background on the need for agrarian reform in Honduras, explaining the dependence on export crops, the powerful military, and controls by U.S. aid. It also gives a perspective on social issues in the country: the lack of education, medicine, and technical knowledge, as well as women's need to stand up to macho attitudes and/or physical abuse. The tape provides a variety of perspectives, discussed in interviews with landowners and government officials.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Woman of Courage Get Details and Purchasing Info
Jose Miranda
Fiction 42 minutes 1993
With English subtitles
Filmed in the majestic landscapes of the Bolivian high plateaus, this fiction is based on the true story of Gregoria Apaza, an indigenous woman hero linked to Tupac Amaru's circle of relatives who participated in the uprising against the Spanish conquerors in 1781.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Between Marx and a Naked Woman Get Details and Purchasing Info
Camilo Luzuriaga
feature 90 minutes 1996
With English subtitles
The center of the film is the "author" who narrates a book he is writing about himself, his friends, and their activism in the Communist party. There is Galo Galvez, a charismatic party activist who is eager to live life to the fullest, but is driven to despair by his party's bureaucracy and narrow-mindedness. His passionate relationship with Margamaria doesn't help things either. Galvez is confined to a wheelchair, which sometimes makes his night job of putting up campaign posters a bit difficult. Of course, he can count on the assistance of his life-long servant and friend, Falcon. The film intertwines realist sequences, such as military night raid, with sensuous dreams and bizarre episodes. During a confidential chat with Karl Marx, the "author" finally admits he is unable to tell fact from fiction.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Frontier, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ricardo Larrain
Feature 113 minutes 1991
With English subtitles
During Chile's military dictatorship, Ramiro Orellana is sentenced to internal exile in Chile's desolate south. The urban schoolteacher finds himself in a lonely, isolated village that nevertheless resonates with him as he befriends the quirky inhabitants and explores the majestic landscape. This outstanding first feature by director Ricardo Larrain won best script at the Havana Film Festival and the Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1990. "Despite the serious theme, the film is often quietly hilarious and it delights in the absurd." -- Timothy Barnard, South American Cinema: A Critical Biography
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Julio and His Angel Get Details
Jorge Cervera, Jr.
feature 98 minutes 1995
With English subtitles
The heartwarming story about an 8 year old boy who is waiting for the guardian angel his mother promised she would send once she reached paradise. Tired of living in an orphanage and working in a tortilla factory, Julio decides to set out in search of his angel. While hiding out in a church, he is awakened by a terrible storm to discover his angel, who appears in the form of a grumpy old man. From this moment the two begin an adventure that takes them through misty forests and tropical paradises. Along the way, Julio's angel teaches him the values of life, work, family and friendship.
Carla's Song Get Details and Purchasing Info
Ken Loach
feature 120 minutes 1996
With English subtitles
A love story with a political backdrop. Carla, a refugee living in Scotland meets George, a free-spirited bus driver in Glasgow. It is 1987 and in Carla's homeland the Contra rebels are mounting their final, lethal assault against the Sandinista government. Carla is traumatized by her experiences but with the help of her new friend, she finds the strength to go home. This is difficult for her but she knows that she must accept her past.George leaves Glasgow and, fascinated by her beauty and mystery, goes with her to Nicaragua. Once there, however, he is caught up in the crossfire of the fight and finds that Carla herself has outgrown him. Carla's Song reflects the burden that the past imposes on the present and celebrates the unquenchable human spirit.
Purchase Price: $ 29.99
Moon in the Mirror, The Get Details and Purchasing Info
Silvio Caiozzi
feature 75 minutes 1990
With English subtitles
Set in contemporary Valparaíso, this film centers on the relationship between an elderly invalid, Don Arnaldo, and his subservient middle-aged son, known only as Gordo. Manipulative, demanding, and embittered by his own physical infirmity, the old man uses a system of carefully placed mirrors to maintain surveillance over his son's movements in the small apartment the two share. Gordo is a general disappointment to his father, who misses few opportunities to insult him. The only sources of pleasure in Gordo's tedious life are cooking and his developing romantic attachment to Lucrecia, a widow living in the apartment beneath them. Screenplay by Jose Donoso.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
Huichols & Pesticides Get Details and Purchasing Info
Patricia Diaz-Romo
Documentary 27 minutes 1994
With English subtitles
The indigenous Huichol people of Mexico consider themselves responsible for keeping the flames of life burning, and maintaining the forces of nature in balance. Paradoxically, as this documentary describes, they are also the primary victims of a disastrous environmental health crisis: their exposure to dangerous chemical pesticides, which are responsible for more than 1,500 deaths per year. In this film, doctors, anthropologists, and the Huichol people themselves describe this tragedy. The practitioners of subsistence agriculture for centuries, the Huichols’ insertion into a market economy has led them to work as fieldworkers for multinational agribusiness concerns based in Mexico. The film explains the pervasive use of pesticides there as an example of the exportation of environmentally and medically dangerous industries to the Third World, where low wages and lax enforcement of labor and environmental laws allow for the maximization of profits at catastrophic costs to the local population, especially for the marginalized indigenous populations, already suffering from the effects of poverty and malnutrition. In the fields, entire families labor for piecework rates exposing themselves and their children to deadly chemical pesticides without protective equipment, sufficient medical care, or sufficient education about the chemicals’ deadly effects. Not only are these fieldworkers not provided with the gloves or goggles necessary to protect themselves from these deadly poisons, they are not aware of their danger – even reusing pesticide containers to store their drinking water in and bathing their children in pesticides as a kind of mosquito repellent. These same pesticides have now supplanted traditional farming in the Huichol villages themselves, where they contaminate local water supplies. Huichols & Insecticides is a clamor for a solution to this situation. The immediate needs are for education for the Huichol themselves, better medical treatment, and more stringent regulation of pesticides and their use. But the film also offers as alternatives the growing consumer demand for pesticide-free produce, and suggests that the traditional agricultural practices of indigenous people themselves could contribute new models for sustainable agriculture to the world.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Wichan: The Trial Get Details and Purchasing Info
Magali Meneses
Docudrama 27 minutes 1995
With English subtitles
A short drama set in the past tells a story of how the Mapuche dealt with wrongdoing in the community.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Yakwa: Banquet of the Spirits Get Details and Purchasing Info
Virginia Valadao
Documentary 54 minutes 1995
With English subtitles
THE BANQUET OF THE SPIRITS, an astoundingly beautiful documentary of the Enauwene Naue Indians of Northern Brazil, who decided that their first images on video should be of a months long harvest ritual, performed for Virginia's and Vincent's cameras. For 7 months every year, the spirits of the dead are venerated with offerings of food, song and dance so they will protect the community and bless it with an abundant harvest and great quantities of fish. It includes; The Sacred Flutes, Dataware's Revenge, Harikare: The Spirit's Host and The Little Cassava Girl.
Purchase Price: $ 99.95
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