AFRICAN STUDIES

B E S T S E L L E R S
A TALE OF
TWO TEENS
JUDGEMENT DAY NO EASY WALK

ABOUT THE UNITED NATIONS - AFRICA RECOVERY

Africa today is a continent beset by drought, famine, war and debt. In Zambia, a news reporter examines these problems and discusses potential solutions that might be applicable to the entire continent.


ABOUT THE UNITED NATIONS - APARTHEID

Examines apartheid as seen through the eyes of a young South African. It shows how the majority of South Africans, who are black, are denied basic human rights, and discusses UN initiatives against apartheid.


ABOUT THE UNITED NATIONS - DECOLONIZATION

Examines the process whereby former colonial territories have gained their independence and the right to govern themselves. Archival footage, interviews and maps trace the changes during the last three decades throughout Africa, Asia, the Carribean and the Pacific.


AFRICA BETWEEN MYTH AND REALITY

Showcases the view of African life featured in the paintings, drawings and etchings of Betty LaDuke, one of America's most accomplished multicultural artists.


AFTER THE BATTLE

Filmed on location in Angola, South Africa and Cuba, this documentary examines the politics of the war from both sides and features remarkable combat footage, archival material and interviews with Cuban and South African soldiers as well as grieving families of those who died in the war.


ANGOLA: Saudades From the One Who Loves You

A compelling portrait of Angola, one of Africa's largest producers of oil and diamonds, as it struggles to recover from a devastating civil war and take its first hesitant steps towards a fragile democracy.


ANY CHILD IS MY CHILD

This documentary reveals the repression of children by the apartheid regime in South Africa, where teenagers and children as young as seven years old are arrested on charges such as "intimidation" or "stone-throwing," jailed, tortured, and sometimes killed.


AWAKE ZION

Ever wonder why Jews and Rastafarians both use the Star of David and make references to Zion? This exuberant documentary explores the surprising connections between reggae culture and Judaism.


A CELEBRATION OF LIFE: DANCES OF THE AFRICAN-GUYANESE

Examines the cultural roots of traditional dance in Guyana and how numerous cultural influences have been blended in this multicultural society.


CHINUA ACHEBE: THE IMPORTANCE OF STORIES

This video portrait of Chinua Achebe, one of Africa's greatest living authors, examines how the Nigerian-born writer-and modern Africa itself-were shaped by a history of racism and colonialism.


CIA CASE OFFICER, THE

This video portrait of John "Bob" Stockwell, the son of Protestant missionaries, a former Marine Corps officer and corporate manager, reveals the planning and shaping of a CIA covert operation by focusing on his efforts to overthrow the newly-installed MPLA government in Angola in 1975.


CIMARRONES

This docudrama explores the little known situation of African slaves in Latin America in the 19th century, depicting life in runaway slave communities.


CITY OF DREAMS

In ‘City of Dreams’ Architect, Naigzy Gebremedhin takes the audience on a tour of his beloved city, Asmara, in Eritrea, showcasing the stunning rationalist architecture left by Italian colonizers from the 1930s, and the lifestyle of Asmarinos living in and around these buildings.


DIPLOMACY

Is the U.N. still relevant? This behind-the-scenes documentary follows the efforts of diplomats to pass an imperative Security Council resolution authorizing the deployment of a peacekeeping force to Darfur.


DOMESTIC DIFFERENCES

Examines the relationship between Francis Mcnam, a black domestic worker in Cape Town, and her white employers, the Silberman family, graphically illustrating the vast difference in the quality of life for blacks and whites in South Africa.


EDUCATION: A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT

Examines the educational crisis in South Africa, where the apartheid regime for decades maintained two separate and unequal educational systems, one white and one black, with the consequent miseducation of successive generations of black youth and the destruction of untold human potential.


ELEPHANT PEOPLE

This video examines a growing problem in Zimbabwe, where herds of elephants from national parks and wildlife preserves are invading farming villages, destroying crops and occasionally killing villagers.


ERITREA

This documentary examines Eritrean history and the relationship between the war and the famines which have ravaged Northern Ethiopia.


ERITREAN ARTISTS IN WAR AND PEACE

Portrays the aesthetic development of twelve artists in Eritrea, whose contemporary art movement was born during the Eritrean People's Liberation Front's thirty-year war against Ethiopian control.


GOSPEL OF AIDS

Examines the rapid spread of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, focusing on the small nation of Rwanda.


HARD EARTH

Against the current political backdrop of attacks on white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, this documentary investigates what life is like on one of these occupied farm estates. It features interviews with commercial farmers, farm workers, land occupiers, and independence war veterans, all of whom relates stories of a divided society.


IMAGES IN STRUGGLE

Examines the role played by South African photographers in the struggle to end apartheid, featuring interviews with these professionals who talk about their work and aspirations.


ISITWALANDWE: THE SOUTH AFRICAN FREEDOM CHARTER

Tells the story of the adoption of the South African Freedom Charter on June 26, 1955, when over 3,000 delegates from every corner of South Africa gathered at Kliptown, near Johannesburg, at the Congress of the People where the Charter, a blueprint for a future non-racial and democratic South Africa, was unanimously adopted.


JUDGEMENT DAY

This video, by comparing the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict with the previous struggle for liberation and democracy in South Africa, makes a universal statement about war and the effects of war on young people on both sides of the conflicts.


THE LIBERIA TRAGEDY

Examines the recent political history of Liberia, from the 1980 military coup led by Samuel Doe to the 1989 rebellion which ousted him from power and led to the Liberian civil war.


LIFE STORY OF AN AFRICAN INYANGA

A docu-drama portraying the selection and lifelong education of an Inyanga, an African healer who dispenses traditional herbal remedies. The film examines the preparation and use of traditional medicines, the diagnosis and treatment of patients, and the metaphysics and cosmology of African beliefs regarding the powers of the Inyanga.


THE MAGIC OF NIGERIA

This video explores the vitality of ancient African traditions regarding the links between life and death.


MAKHALAPILE: THE DAUNTLESS ONE

Archbishop Trevor Huddleston's name has become synonymous with the battle against racial tyranny in South Africa. This film intersperses interviews and rare archival footage to chronicle Archbishop Huddleston's life and work and his continuing commitment to the destruction of apartheid.


MAKING DO

Faced with widespread conditions of mass unemployment, poverty, urban crowding, and governmental crisis, more than a billion people in some 100 underdeveloped nations throughout the Third World have developed their own 'informal economy,' a parallel lifestyle operating on the margins of the society's formal economy and legal system, which provides them with a means of survival.


THE MAN WHO DROVE WITH MANDELA (56 min.)

This video is an unusually revealing portrait of one of the historic figures behind Nelson Mandela’s long struggle for freedom in South Africa.


THE MAN WHO DROVE WITH MANDELA (81 min.)

This video is an unusually revealing portrait of one of the historic figures behind Nelson Mandela’s long struggle for freedom in South Africa.


MOZAMBIQUE: THE STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

Examines the human tragedy unfolding in Mozambique, Africa's poorest nation, where the civilian populace is not only threatened with full-scale famine but is also under siege from RENAMO, a bloody terrorist army supported by South Africa.


NAMIBIA: NO EASY ROAD TO FREEDOM

Examines Namibia's long history of colonial occupation by South Africa, including the armed conflict between South African troops and the Namibian resistance organization SWAPO, negotiations of a peace plan in 1978, and discussions of the nation's independence that was finally declared in 1990.


NAMIBIA: REBIRTH OF A NATION

After twenty-three years of armed struggle against South African occupation forces, Namibia gained its independence in 1990. This video documents the challenges facing Namibians in rebuilding a nation dispossessed by a lifetime of colonial domination and devastated by decades of occupation.


NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE

This video chronicles the recent political history of Sierra Leone, a small West African nation, rich in natural resources, which has been plagued by successive politically corrupt governments since its establishment as a republic in 1971.


NO EASY WALK (Series)

This series chronicles the history of colonialism and the struggle for independence in three African countries - Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.


NO EASY WALK: ETHIOPIA

This video begins with the Ethiopian victory over the Italians in 1896 at the Battle of Andowa, which confirmed Ethiopian independence to the European powers and paved the way for Emperor Menelik's modernization program


NO EASY WALK: KENYA

This video traces the history of Kenya's opposition to white rule, from the arrival of the first settlers in the 19th century to the Mau-Mau rebellion in 1952, in which the struggle for land rights was central.


NO EASY WALK: ZIMBABWE

This video begins in March 1896 when the Ndebele people of what was then known as Rhodesia rose in armed rebellion against European settlers such as Cecil Rhodes, who had taken over much of their land in the search for gold and other minerals.


OCHBERG'S ORPHANS

From the Academy Award winning director of Anne Frank Remembered, comes the amazing story of Isaac Ochberg, a South African businessman who rescued hundreds of Jewish orphans across Eastern Europe in the brutal aftermath of the Russian revolution.


OF COURAGE AND CONSEQUENCE

Features interviews with young people in South Africa, both white and black, who fought on opposing sides during the country's era of apartheid rule, from youthful cadres engaged in the liberation struggle and members of black township self-defense units engaged in guerrilla war, to the white conscripts in the South African Army's border war and young Afrikaners fearful of social change.


ON THE BORDER

The human tragedy caused by the widespread use of land mines in warfare is a growing problem throughout the world today.


THE PEACEMAKER

Chronicles the efforts of international mediator Dr. Dudley Weeks to negotiate a peace process between warring factions of Indian (Sikh) and Pakistani (Muslim) youths in West London, showing how peacemaking skills utilized in South Africa and Bosnia can be applied at a community level.


RAPE FOR WHO I AM

A fascinating and moving insight into the lives of South Africa's black lesbians who, raped because of their sexuality, refuse to become victims. It shatters all preconceptions of homosexuality in Africa.


RECONCILIATION IN ZIMBABWE

In 1980, following a fifteen-year-long guerilla struggle against the white-ruled government of Rhodesia and a negotiated cease fire, ZANU leader Robert Mugabe was elected Prime Minister of the newly independent nation of Zimbabwe.


THE RETURN: THE N'DEUP HEALING CEREMONY

This video documents an African approach to treating mental-health issues by showing the communal healing process used by the Wolof in Senegal.


RIVER NIGER, BLACK MOTHER

This video traces the undulating route of the River Niger throughout West Africa, from its source in the Republic of Guinea to Nigeria, and discusses how this majestic waterway, as an essential communications and transport link, has molded the history and culture of the region.


SCIENCE WAGES WAR ON HUNGER

Millions of people in Africa do not have enough food to eat. This video follows Dr. Florence Wambugu as she reveals the immediate needs of the African people to fight crop disease and pests, essential in saving their population from hunger and famine.


A SENSE OF FREEDOM

Examines Africa's smallest country, the Gambia, as one of only a few successful multi- party democracies on the continent.


SINGING IN COLOR

This video follows the world-famous Chicago Children's Choir on their 1996 tour of South Africa and shows how music can convey a message of peace.


SOMEBODY'S CHILDREN

Examines the plight of tens of thousands of children in South Africa who, driven by poverty and dysfunctional family lives, struggle to live on city streets.


SONG OF THE SPEAR

Examines the role of culture in the struggle for national liberation in South Africa by interspersing performances by the Amandla Cultural Ensemble with footage of the mass singing of resistance songs on the streets of South Africa and interviews with leading cultural workers of the African National Congress.


SONGOLOLO: VOICES OF CHANGE

Examines the role of black resistance to apartheid in South Africa through a look at two of the nation's leading cultural activists and popular performers--poet Mzwakhe Mbuli and writer/ performer Gcina Mhlophe.


SOUTH AFRICA: BEYOND A MIRACLE

This video, part of a series of documentaries on conflict resolution in the world’s trouble spots, chronicles the evolution of South Africa from the tragic years of apartheid to the release of Nelson Mandela and the country’s first free elections in 1994, and, finally, to the cautious hopes and efforts today to build a strong democracy.


SOWETO TO BERKELEY

Examines the Anti-Apartheid Movement at the University of California at Berkeley during 1985-86, which led to similar student protests nationwide.


A TALE OF TWO TEENS

The AIDS pandemic in Africa as seen through the eyes of two young girls, an American and South African teenager, featuring the music of the Dave Matthews Band and U2.


TANGIER TREEHOUSE

When a group of Moroccan street children faced with the choice of emigrating illegally to Europe take part in a treehouse building workshop, they find themselves unexpectedly transformed. This wonderful documentary offers a timely and intimate window into the world of Arab youth.


TROKOSI: WIFE OF THE GODS

Examines the West African religious institution of trokosi, where young women are chosen to serve an indefinite period of servitude for crimes committed long ago by their grandparents and even great-grandparents.


TWENTY YEARS OF TELEVISION: SABC TV

Chronicles the controversial history of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which almost from its inception was characterized by management's political censorship of the Documentary Department and the TV News Department's complicity with the National Party and government security forces.


VOODOO KINGDOM

In Haiti and many African countries today, voodoo is an integral part of daily life. Filmed in the Republic of Benin, this video examines the reality of voodoo as a polytheistic religion, including more than 260 gods, the beliefs of which include ancestral worship and direct dealing with supernatural forces.


WELCOME TO NOLLYWOOD

After the U.S. and India, the world's third largest producer of feature films is Nigeria. Barely a decade old and already generating over $286 million for the Nigerian economy, Welcome to Nollywood explores this burgeoning film industry, from its unique challenges to its diverse array of films that both mirror and comment upon the social ills of the continent.


WHO'S GONNA TAKE THE WEIGHT?: AFRICAN AMERICAN AND SOUTH AFRICAN YOUTH

This provocative documentary blends interviews with young black people in New York City and in Soweto, South Africa, focusing on the similarities and the contrasts between the lives of black teenagers in both countries.


WORKINGMAN'S DEATH

Is manual labor disappearing in the 21st century or is it just becoming invisible? Michael Glawogger's stunningly photographed Workingman's Death showcases five of the most dangerous and grueling professions in the world, offering a ground-level lesson on globalization, humanity, and the environment.


ZANDILE: IN THE LIGHT OF UBUNTU

Examines the social and political struggle of South Africa's black community today, when they must deal with the after-effects of decades of apartheid rule.