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Subjects
Films by Subject
Africa
125 film(s) found
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One hundred years ago, the Herero people of Namibia were nearly exterminated by German colonial soldiers. The Nazis used their experiences the to formulate the Final Solution. more »
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Africa is a continent fraught with problems. This series spotlights five former Western colonies (Somalia, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe), putting in clear perspective the gravity of the situation that wars, refugees, famine and disease have brought on them. Globalization has forced some African nations into heavy debt. While industrial nations argue for human rights, the series shows that there are survival issues that may be even more pressing. more »
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Islam has influenced West Africa since the 11th century, but only in the last 100 years has the religion grown so rapidly in Senegal and Mali. more »
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Independent since 1960, Somalia has seen virtually constant political upheaval. Chaos still reigns in the capital, Mogadishu, and throughout Somalia. more »
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South Africa emerged from the evils of Apartheid more than a decade ago, but its problems are endemic. Zimbabwe, once under British rule, still reels from the aftereffects of independence. more »
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A black musician and composer bridges two cultures: West African music with roots in the 13th century and classical European music. more »
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In this eye-opening film, the award-winning African journalist Sorious Samura reveals how corruption has become normal and accepted in Africa -- it is one of the root causes of Africa's many problems. Sadly, most aid money given by the West never reaches those it is meant to help; it gets siphoned off by corrupt governments. more »
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Gay people in Africa are facing increased persecution in a continent where two=thirds of countries retain laws against homosexuals. more »
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This report on the AIDS crisis in Africa shows that the disease cuts across the entire population, not just drug abusers and homosexuals. Checking the spread of the disease is complicated by poverty and cultural mores. more »
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A Somalian woman uses all methods at her disposal to change the mindset of her people about circumcision. more »
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This powerful documentary chronicles a Ghanaian young woman’s desperate attempt to escape the ritual of female circumcision in her native land. more »
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This is an intimate portrait of a single mother in Burkina Faso who supports her six children through her street-side rice business. The film takes us through Awa's arduous 16 hour workday, interspliced with interviews of her children who are grateful for her hard work in their behalf. Here is a glimpse of some of the economic realities faced by women today in urban Africa. more »
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This visually stunning film documents an extraordinary coming of age ritual in a village in the Niger Delta in which the young women undergo the Iria rite to prepare themselves for womanhood. more »
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This riveting documentary reveals that inside our mobile phones are illegally mined minerals, minerals that fuel conflict, create child slavery, and support other severe human rights abuses in the Congo. more »
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Samburu warriors from Kenya, part of the U.N. peacekeeping force, try to understand the war in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. more »
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Examining the sub-Saharan countries, this documentary clarifies the complex issues of health, politics, culture and environment and suggests why development efforts have been so disappointing. more »
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The San people, more commonly known as Bushmen, are believed to be the earliest inhabitants of southern Africa. But these peaceful people have long faced pressures from dominant tribes and European settlers. more »
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Every September a group of nomad women in Niger travel by camel caravan across the stark desert, 660 miles each way, in order to sell their tribe's dates. The women organize and lead the caravan without men! more »
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Carbon for Water delivers an up-close look at the water filter distribution project that has revolutionized life for families in Kenya. more »
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Through patience and perseverance, a local woman persuades village elders to reconsider the tradition of female circumcision. more »
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This film gives audiences unprecedented access to a commonplace story that remains tightly hidden. Despite being illegal, child marriage remains part of the culture across Africa. more »
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Thousands of children have been kidnapped and used as soldiers by the Ugandan rebel army. These children have been traumatized by their experience. This film shows a program that tries to rehabilitate the ones who have been fortunate enough to escape. more »
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Filmmaker Marc Radomsky is third generation South African. His grandfather emigrated from Lithuania to escape pogroms. The family established their roots in Johannesburg and prospered. However Marc and his wife see that growing lawlessness and crime in post-Apartheid South Africa has driven the white community into gated communities where armed guards, attack dogs and barbed wire are the brutal signs of the need for increased security. more »
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For fifteen years, the life of a young Masai woman has been chronicled as she emerges from adolescence to wife and mother. more »
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A spirited celebration of traditional African dance filmed in the villages and suburban compounds of Senegal and The Gambia. Chuck Davis performs with his company on a trip to West Africa. more »
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This film looks at the efforts to alleviate suffering and spread the message of HIV/AIDS prevention to the young more »
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A new generation of Africans addresses the appalling lack of progress in that continent, which is suffering from disease, corruption, tribal warfare, and exploitative dictatorships. more »
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In Namibia, in one of the most desolate regions of Africa, lives the Himba tribe, one of the last tribes trying to maintain a traditional way of life. With the modern world pressing in on them and the real menace of HIV/AIDS, the Himba find their situation threatened from all sides. more »
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After being raped, Hind was cast out of her home in Morocco and stripped of her official identity. Left with no choice but to work as a prostitute and traditional wedding dancer, she refuses, despite all odds, to give up her dignity and her love for her child. more »
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This beautifully photographed, revealing film about Egypt's women captures their separate and subordinate life under the Islamic code. Men and women speak about their traditions, expectations, and patterns of life. more »
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Ebola is one of the most contagious and frightening diseases that exists today. It can kill its victim in as little as 48 hours. When it broke out in Northern Uganda, there were scant resources and little knowledge about how to deal with it at Lacor Hospital, in Gulu, Uganda. more »
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Haile Selassie, the late Emperor of Ethiopia, was and still is considered the living God and King by Rastafarians in Jamaica, Britain, the USA and other parts of the world. The film looks back to the 1930s when Ras Tafari was crowned Emperor and also covers the current Rasta scene. more »
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Guinea has now become the third biggest oil producing nation in sub-Saharan Africa, with production at 300,000 barrels a day. Despite this, the country is in shambles and the oil revenues are being stolen by a corrupt government. Because of its location, away from the Arabian peninsula, Guinea is important to the U.S. since it helps the U.S. in its goal to diversify its sources of oil. more »
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The relationship between cocoa and slavery is explored in this history of Sao Tome and Principe, islands off the western coast of Africa. more »
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This film transforms the media images of starving masses into indentifiable individuals, humanizing them. more »
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A Somali woman filmmaker who was subject to circumcision explores the issue of female genital mutilation in her culture. more »
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This unique documentary traces the fantastic journey of Africa¹s most popular shoes: the flip-flop. Beginning life in the factories of Mombasa, they are a staple of dress all over Africa. Cobblers specialize in rejuvenating them, but when at last they are beyond repair, their colorful remains are recycled into fanciful toys and mobiles and sold in boutiques back in Mombasa. more »
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A riveting history of colonialism and its legacy after Patrice Lumumba and then General Mobutu took control more »
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The film explores the recent history of Libya, isolated since Colonel Gaddafi seized power thirty-five years ago. For decades an enemy of the West, Libya is now desperately trying to rejoin the rest of the world. It is using its vast oil reserves -- to woo back former foes especially the United States. Gaddafi's Gamble asks: why now? more »
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Good Fortune is a rare and intimate portrait of two vibrant Kenyan communities, one rural, one urban, battling to save their homes and businesses from large-scale development organizations more »
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This film describes the remarkable partnership between black South African grandmothers who are raising their grandchildren, orphaned by AIDS, and a group of grandmothers from North America who are being supportive of them. more »
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An African drummer in Burkina Faso maintains the musical tradition of his ancestors and passes it on to his son. more »
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Since 1992 a white ballet dancer has been teaching classes to African children in the township.The program Dance for All has made a difference in their lives more »
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From the renowned Under the Sun series of BBC, this trilogy focuses on the Hamar, an isolated people of southwestern Ethiopia whose traditional lifestyle has been barely touched by the war and the famine in the north. more »
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Duka, a young unmarried Hamar girl learns what awaits her in life from the older women of her tribe. more »
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Duka and her young friend Gardi excitedly prepare to marry men they have never met. more »
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Duka is now a mother with a two-year-old daughter and infant son. Her life is dominated by caring for them and her husband more »
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This unique film takes a journey down the Niger River in Mali, West Africa, past rarely seen traditional African architecture. The strikingly beautiful ancient mosques and palaces of legendary cities like Timbuktu and Djenne were built with mud and have stood for over a thousand years. more »
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Lesley Bilinda, the Scottish widow of a Rwandan black pastor, returns ten years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide to search for his murderers only to find the truth illusive and forgiveness impossible. Lesley had met Charles when she was working as a nurse in Rwanda but their life together was shattered as genocide swept the country. more »
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By getting a bit of start up money, these women in Ghana have been able to start small businesses. more »
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As a young surgeon, Dr. Lucille Teasdale founded a hospital in Uganda where she dedicated her life to providing quality health care and staff training. more »
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Takes us to a hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where circumcised women are given medical care. more »
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Karoo Kitaar Blues follows South African songwriter David Kramer and slide guitarist Hannes Coetzee into remote regions of South Africa on their quest to find musicians who play an almost forgotten folk music. This music has probably evolved in much the same way as the Afrikaans language that the musicians speak a blend of indigenous and colonial influences. more »
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In Samburu culture the women do all the work. In 1990 a small group of women decided to band together and create their own village. They prospered without men! more »
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For forty-five years the Congo waited for free elections. But before the election, several important items had to be in place, namely, an electoral register and voters’ cards. And these things presented huge problems in a country with limited infrastructure and security. more »
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Filmed in the deserts of Namibia, one of the hottest and driest places on earth, we meet indigenous people who survive in this harsh environment. more »
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To establish a utopian homeland in Liberia was the dream of Black Americans in the 19th Century. Instead, the country has been racked with civil war and violence. more »
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This lively film adds a new dimension to the appreciation of African music, focusing as it does on the space between sounds - the richness of silence. more »
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A five-part series showing how Africans themselves are grappling with domestic issues. Filmed in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia Zimbabwe and Mozambique more »
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A five-part series showing how Africans themselves are grappling with domestic issues. Filmed in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia Zimbabwe and Mozambique more »
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A five-part series showing how Africans themselves are grappling with domestic issues. Filmed in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia Zimbabwe and Mozambique more »
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A five-part series showing how Africans themselves are grappling with domestic issues. Filmed in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia Zimbabwe and Mozambique more »
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A five-part series showing how Africans themselves are grappling with domestic issues. Filmed in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia Zimbabwe and Mozambique more »
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A five-part series showing how Africans themselves are grappling with domestic issues. Filmed in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia Zimbabwe and Mozambique more »
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A Black European journalist in Zambia exposes the untold story of AIDS in Africa; how poverty and the complex nature of African culture and sexuality are hampering efforts to eradicate this horrifying disease. more »
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Through the eyes of one family, the film traces the history of the Ndebele people and their art and rituals. more »
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This warm, intimate documentary follows a young Tuareg girl in Niger who is about is about to marry a man she has never met and documents a quickly vanishing tradition. more »
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A unique look at the culture, filmed by a Maasai warrior who studied in America. more »
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Documents the dependencies and abuses that existed during apartheid between the white mistress of the house and her black servant. more »
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Making the Crooked Straight shares the story of one doctor's journey to save the world one child at a time. more »
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Timbuktu has been the center of the salt trade since ancient times. Nomads and miners still carry on the trade despite civil war and poverty more »
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This film focuses on an African woman who presides over the cloth market in Lome, Togo. She is a powerful woman treated with deference who owns a prized possesion, a chauffeured Mercedes Benz. more »
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This film details the interplay between a young ambitious European and an equally ambitious African market woman as they jockey for advantage in marketing cloth, which will make them rich. more »
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Three women from three African countries—Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso—tell of their struggle to feed their families. Their stories give a human context to Africa's relentless slide into perpetual famine. more »
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Faith in Pentecostal Christianity, a blend of deep-rooted African traditions and imported values of Christianity, helped South African blacks survive appalling hardships and helped stabilize the new South Africa. more »
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Astonishingly intimate, this festival film is a record of four years in the life of a charming and precocious teenager growing into womanhood in a township outside Cape Town. She faces not only life in a “colored” community beset by gangsterism and drug abuse, but also the toughness and anger within her own family. more »
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"My Father the Luo" is about a young woman with a similar multicultural heritage to President Barack Obama. Roma Ndolo’s mother is European and her father from Kenya. Like Obama, she journeys to Kenya to find her “African side.” Each of their fathers was from the Luo tribe. There is historic footage of Obama’s initial journey in 2006. Roma Ndolo is an example of a person successfully integrating her multicultural identity. more »
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This unique film explores Ndebele rituals and their art forms as well as their political empowerment. more »
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The white expatriate playwright Tug Yourgrau ("The Song of Jacob Zulu") returns to South Africa to find an enormous gulf between black and white still exists, but there are signs of change. more »
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The vast Niger Delta holds an estimated three percent of the world's oil, and to the U.S. it's a vital alternative to the oilfields of the Middle East - worth $30 billion per year. Yet a well organized crime gang in Nigeria has the power to disrupt the oil flow, threatening economies worldwide. more »
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Noise of Cairo delivers an expressive, intelligent showcase of the vibrant, fluid Egyptian art scene in the emergence that followed the 2011 revolution. more »
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A midwife in Zimbabwe tries to reconcile traditional birth practices with modern methods. more »
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The people of Ova Himba in the desert of Namibia lived a harsh life as cattle herders, migrating between their encampments. The drought and the war in Angola forced them into shanty towns and took away their dignity. more »
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A beauty pageant in Nigeria was the flashpoint for a cultural, political, and religious war in this impoverished country with its crumbling infrastructure. more »
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This amazingly up-close documentary brings us into the lives of an Ethiopian couple, Yezina and Mesagnow. Yezina suffers from a fistula which causes her urine to constantly leak.Two million African women share her fate because tradition forces young girls into early marriages when their bodies are too immature to bear children safely. more »
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In 1969, a young Black Panther named Pete O'Neal was arrested for transporting a gun across state lines. O'Neal fled the country, and has lived in Tanzania since. But while he works hard to serve the local community, his longings for home are undeniable. Can an aging former revolutionary make peace with exile? more »
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This documentary tells the story of the eviction of the indigenous people from their lands in Tanzania, to make way for the creation of the world's most famous nature reserves. more »
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Was the man who murdered the Prime Minister of South Africa a madman or a person seeking vengeance for the minister¹s apartheid policy? more »
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The AIDS crisis in Africa is an epidemic of staggering proportions. Thirty-six million people are infected with the HIV virus worldwide, with over 25 million of them in Africa, and a staggering number of Africans -- 17 million -- have died. This film is about the inspiring work of Canadian Stephen Lewis, the United Nations Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa as he searches for solutions to the pandemic ravaging the continent. more »
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Joshua Milton Blahyi was a ruthless and feared warlord during Liberia's civil war. Today, he has renounced his violent past and reinvented himself as a Christian evangelist, traveling, preaching, and seeking out those he once victimized in search of an uncertain forgiveness. But are some crimes beyond pardon? more »
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Filmmaker/anthropologist Hugo D'Aybaury gained access to the Nuba Mountains and filmed the hidden civil war in Sudan that decimated the Nuba people, who are caught between the warring north and south. more »
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Without resorting to sensationalism, the film explores the long-practiced custom of female circumcision and its ongoing practice in many cultures, particularly across Africa more »
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Compelling historical footage and firsthand accounts give the background of the genocide that occurred in Rwanda. more »
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This starkly beautiful film exemplifies the burden borne by African women to survive and support their families. The Ghanaian women who live on a lagoon in Ada, mine for salt with their bare hands during the three month-long dry season. more »
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A grassroots movement, spearheaded by newly educated women, has successfully halted female circumcision in Senegal. more »
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Battling against hunger in Third World countries, Borlaug developed new techniques to increase productivity of subsistence farmers. more »
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This beautifully photgraphed film documents an unusual healing ceremony in Senegal, where a young women is cured of post-partum depression. more »
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This is an inspirational documentary about a young Muslim woman, trained as an anthropologist, who suffered hardship and professional censure to save a desert tribe from becoming extinct in the harsh Sahara. more »
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South Africa is hard hit by the AIDS epidemic, which reflects the social, racial , and economic divisions that still continue. more »
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The epidemic of AIDS in South Africa is huge and the government has been lax in addressing the problem.This film shows how an HIV- positive mother, Busi Maqungo, living in a shanty town in South Africa, has become an AIDS activist. more »
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This stunningly photographed film focuses on Sebim Odjo, of the Ivory Coast, who draws upon Muslim, Christian, and traditional African beliefs in his healing ceremonies. more »
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The civil war has resulted to women and children being abducted into slavery. more »
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A little kingdom in northern Cameroon looks like a throwback to the Arabian Nights, but 20th-century political currents intrude. more »
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This program examines the long journeys of the garments Westerners donate to charity, often ending in African markets where they're sold in competition with local clothing. more »
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In the impoverished black townships outside Cape Town, South Africa, everyone knows that the only way to improve one's life is to go to university and get a good job. And the only way to do that is to pass the challenging series of examinations known as Matric. more »
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Only 20% of girls ever enter a schoolhouse in Africa as cultural attitudes, more than economics undermine their future‹and the future of Africa. more »
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This beautifully filmed video reveals how hard life is for the women of Mauritania, who do all the farming and housework while the men take their ease. Tradition and Islamic religion are intertwined to reinforce strict gender roles. more »
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In Ethiopia, a center of prostitution in Africa, girls as young as 9 years old are forced into the life by economic circumstances. Many become HIV infected, for condoms are seldom used. more »
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In Ghana, children as young as three and as old as sixteen are often sent away from home to work in bondage for small payments, desperately needed by impoverished families. more »
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This is a unique story of a leap across cultural boundaries as a Masai warrior from southern Kenya adapts to life on the fast track in suburban Massachusetts. more »
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Chronicles a successful development program in Togo, West Africa where villagers, especially women, undertook the drilling of a well to get clean, accessible water. more »
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Some women in Senegal emerged from their domestic roles into breadwinner roles after the economic crisis in the 1980's. They formed collectives, called Roscas, which are cooperatives very much in keeping with the African sense of community. more »
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A look at the "Culture clubs" that sprang up in the townships of South Africa, providing an outlet for dance, music, and theatrical arts. more »
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The filmmaker, an educated African-American journalist, celebrates her 35th birthday and acknowledges to her dismay that she is STILL unmarried. The fact is, there is a shortage of available professional men for women like her. more »
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In today’s age of globalization, this film provides a portrait of how the local population of a “developing” African nation responds to influx of foreigners who strive to bring economic growth, but often stir up cultural conflict in the process. more »
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Mamoun, a quirky thirty-five year old Muslim man living in Skoura, Morocco, has never been married, although his culture demands it . Considering the separation of the sexes in Muslim society, the obsession with virginity, and the custom of arranged marriages, the film asks, how can love blossom? more »
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From the Disappearing World series, the film shows how a priest must share his influence with the witch doctor. more »
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An exploration of how women farmers could play a key role in alleviating famine in Africa, if they got the necessary support from men in their villages. more »
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This video focuses on Soraya Altorki, originally from Saudi Arabia, who is now a professor of anthropology at the American University in Cairo. more »
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In the Central African Republic, one of the poorest countries in the world, witchcraft is an enshrined element of their legal system—formally treated as a crime. Each year thousands are tried, imprisoned, and even killed in accordance with the law. more »
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This is a haunting film that focuses on one survivor of the genocide and her experience of trauma, displacement, and hope as she makes a new life in Canada. more »
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South of the Sahara, the threat of food shortage is severe. Political leaders and agricultural scientists offer solutions to the impending catastrophe. more »
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In the Muslim country of Zanzibar, where women’s activities are severely curtailed, a feisty group of women has defied the cultural constraints by playing a man’s game—soccer—and giving reign to their competitive spirit. more »
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This documentary provides a personal insight into the plight of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) under the brutal regime of Mugabe. What was to be a liberation movement turned into despair, with rage, riots, killing and starvation rampant. more »
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This is an intimate and spontaneous depiction of the lives of Zulu women left behind while their husbands, migrant laborers, work in the mines far away. By turns sad, touching or amusing, this film bears eloquent testimony to the ravages of an economic system which tears families apart to feed South Africa¹s insatiable mines. more »
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