Videos by Subject

Understanding American Culture

America's Godly Heritage

Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours.

Rated: NR
Starring: David Barton, et al.
Director:
Edition Details:
• NTSC format (US and Canada only)
• Color, NTSC
• ASIN: 6303891284
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Against the Odds: The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance (1994)

Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours.

Rated: NR

Edition Details:
• NTSC format (US and Canada only)
• Color, Closed-captioned, Black & White, NTSC
• ASIN: 0780619072
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

New York (PBS Box Set) (1999)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
If you're a fan of Ken Burns PBS documentaries such as The Civil War and Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, then you'll want to add New York, produced by Ken's brother Ric, to your collection. This exhaustively thorough five-part documentary chronicles the evolution of the city from its time as a Dutch settlement in the early 17th century to its current status as megalopolis extraordinaire. Famous New Yorkers including Martin Scorsese, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Fran Lebowitz, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and former mayor Ed Koch lend their colorful local perspective. In addition, there's commentary by numerous historians and writers, most notably Pulitzer Prize-winning Mike Wallace (not of 60 Minutes fame, but rather author of Gotham) and the late Brendan Gill, who notes the distinctly capitalist foundation of the city. As he succinctly states, "New York was based upon greed." There's no mistaking that this is a Burns documentary; the story is told through the now-familiar mosaic of images, interviews, music, and narrative chronicling past events. However, there are noticeable differences in the two brothers' style. While Ken Burns tends to linger over his subject matter and personalize it, Ric is more focused on the task of recounting the events in chronological order. New York is also more upbeat, as it thankfully does not employ the tiresome, whining violin dirges of which brother Ken is so fond. You don't have to be a fan of New York City to enjoy this 10-hour PBS production. You just have to enjoy the experience of discovering history through the popular Burns documentary style. --William Carl
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Reviews
Amazon.com
"Everything you thought you knew about slavery is about to be challenged." So says WGBH about its six-hour series Africans in America, and they are absolutely right. Interviews with historians and luminaries such as General Colin Powell, dramatic re-creations of important events, and beautiful photography create a vivid and compelling story of over 400 years of tragedy. Ten million Africans died on the journey to America alone; they and the countless numbers whose lives were wasted in servitude find a voice in Angela Bassett's outstanding narration. At once scholarly and moving, Africans in America should be required viewing for anyone interested in the American condition. --Rob Lightner
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Reviews
Amazon.com
Baby Boomers: The Generation That Changed the World is a set of five hour-long tapes from WGBH's 26-hour epic documentary People's Century. This portion of the series explores issues skirting the boomer generation's concerns and ideologies. Boomtime examines the era following World War II, when boomers were just being born, while Skin Deep and Half the People examine the struggles for racial and gender equality and Picture Power looks at the profound influence of television (only one American TV pop phenomenon is mentioned: Dallas). So, really, only Young Blood actually focuses on the generation in question. Sure, there's mild cynicism behind the packaging--the box's title is insincerely congratulatory, and boomers are a purely American concoction, although the series takes a global perspective. Yet there's plenty of solidly informative and entertaining material here (albeit with some overlap--civil rights are covered in four of the tapes).

Cheers to the research team, who must've gone through months of archival footage and unearthed some downright amazing footage. Some of the most jaw dropping: French propaganda depicting an American capitalist foisting Coca Cola on wine connoisseurs, a South African movie in which black musicians get white policemen tapping their toes to a peppy rendition of "Don't Fence Me In," and Chicago mayor Richard Daley's hilarious malapropism: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder--the policeman is there to preserve disorder." --David Kronke
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

6302653215_m.gif (12466 bytes)

Black Like Me

A white reporter takes drugs to darken his skin to find out what it is like to be a black man. He found out. Find out what it is like to walk in someone else's shoes who is considered biologically inferior by dominate groups at a particular timeline in America's history. Very thought provoking and bound for cult classicdom.

VHS VIDEO FORMAT, 1964

ASIN: 6302653215

Other Formats: DVD

Click here to learn more or purchase from Amazon.com

Reviews
Amazon.com
Covering the entire 20th century in one video series is an ambitious project, but one that Peter Jennings and ABC News are up to. In The Century: America's Time, a 12-part documentary on six videotapes that is a companion to the book of the same name, Jennings guides us through a century of technology and advancement like no other. As he says in his introduction to episode 1, "Seeds of Change," "Unlike previous centuries where leadership was defined by royalty and other rulers, the 20th century more than any other was shaped by the will and actions of the common man." The series is a sweeping presentation of the United States of the 1900s and tries to encompass a mind-boggling amount of history. And while at moments the videos may leave you longing for more, Jennings does an excellent job of creating smooth segues between disparate pieces.

The first episode, for instance, begins with the influx of immigrants at the turn of the century and touches on Jim Crow laws, moving pictures, planes, Henry Ford, the sinking of the USS Maine, child labor, suffragettes, the Panama Canal, imperialism, and more, right up to the beginning of World War I. The archival footage is stunning and interviews with historians, veterans, journalists, POWs, politicians, authors, celebrities, and common people help bring the past to life again. Mickey Spillane discusses the speakeasies of the 1920s; Dennis Hopper talks about Easy Rider in the '60s; Tom Wolfe reads from The Bonfire of the Vanities for the episode on the '80s. Eudora Welty, E.L. Doctorow, Martin Scorsese, John Updike, Pat Buchanan, Oliver Stone, Stephen E. Ambrose, among many others, lend their voices to this documentary. Yet, despite the great names, at times the pictures and people are allowed to speak for themselves, without intrusive narration--the stark images of the Challenger explosion or the sad words of a political activist mourning the death of his partner to AIDS are more powerful because of it. This chronological tale (with the exception of the last episode, "Then and Now," which is arranged thematically) is an insightful and poignant reminder of all the marvels--and tragedies--of America in the 20th century. --Jenny Brown
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Editorial Reviews
Description
"What can we say about Americans from the things they've made? When we look at them through the lens of their art, what do we see?," host and acclaimed TIME magazine art critic Robert Hughes asks. This extraordinary series presents a panoramic view of American history as reflected by artists in every medium and genre, from "primitive" portraits of the Colonial era to the complex visions of the present day. Explore the luminous, almost sacred work of early-American landscape artists. The varied experiences of 19th century America appear in the paintings of John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt and Winslow Homer. Discover how a uniquely American modernism was forged at the 1913 Armory Show, and ponder the creative genius that blossomed during the '20s, the Depression years and the exciting, innovative periods following World War II.

Titles are: "The Republic of Virtue," "The Promised Land," "The Wilderness and the West," "The Gilded Age," "A Wave from the Atlantic," "Streamlines and Breadlines," "The Empire of Signs," and "The Age of Anxiety."

Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

4 Little Girls (1997)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
There are many remarkable things about the documentary 4 Little Girls. Spike Lee's striking, beautifully realized film is a cinematic lesson of what kind of material is better suited to the documentary format. In his first documentary, Lee shares an attribute of Ken Burns: the major event in his documentary is not seen on camera. Except for four quick glimpses of black-and-white autopsy photos, the picture stays clear from the bombing. Lee remains with the faces, the girls' friends, families, and the historic figures of the era. They've all grown up since the bombing but their memories haven't faded. The vital facts of the case are certainly here: the troubled history of Birmingham, the court proceedings, friends' last run-ins with the girls. What touches us deeper though are those witnesses telling us of living through the core era of segregation and bigotry: a father explaining to his child why she can't have a sandwich in a cafeteria and a woman offering up tears of past events. There's even an interview with George Wallace, the prince of segregation, that belongs in a David Lynch feature. Lee's film asserts the bombing energized the civil rights movement and when the voice of America, Walter Cronkite, echoes those sentiments, you believe he may have it right. --Doug Thomas
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Eyes on the Prize I & II - Boxed Set (1986)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
One of the essential documentary series from 20th-century television, Eyes on the Prize is an extraordinary, grassroots history of the civil rights movement in 1950s and '60s America. Leaving punditry and debate to others, this six-hour program concerns itself with the individuals who were there, who participated on the front lines, who witnessed and survived to tell about the crusade's tragedies and victories. Starting with a pair of mid-'50s heroic actions in the South that helped galvanize black and white activism against institutional racism (actions that included Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama), the series winds its way through the exponential growth of the movement to the passage of the Voting Rights Act and beyond. The epochal battle between states-rights advocates and federal authorities is well-covered, as are the many sacrifices made and enormous risks taken by Mississippi Freedom Riders and advocates of black voter registration. Also in this boxed set is the series' sequel, Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965-mid 1980s. An equally stirring, eight-hour history of the post-civil-rights years, in which hard-won political power manifested itself both inside and outside elected government offices, this follow-up traces the fracturing of a unified civil rights community into numerous missions and agendas. Driven by interviews and archival footage, the series takes a clear look at such historical chapters as the rise of black separatism, the election of Carl Stokes to Cleveland's Office of the Mayor, and the turmoil of school desegregation. Both the original series and sequel are an absolute must for a contemporary understanding of racism in America. --Tom Keogh
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Reviews
Amazon.com
In a broad overview, Italians in America highlights the tragically ironic 100-year struggle for assimilation of the immigrants whose forefathers not only discovered this country, but gave it its name. In this 100-minute documentary, the history of the Italian-American story begins with the migration from southern Italy after unification. The masses of these non-English-speaking immigrants survived and ultimately overcame language barriers, negative stereotypes, and prejudice that first put them at the bottom of the urban pecking order. What is most revealing about this documentary is not necessarily the superficial story of Italian immigrants, in which the basic plot of homeland desertion, poverty, discrimination, and triumph are common elements in other immigrant communities. What it adeptly points out, though, is that the Italians were often the community to do things first, best, and biggest, thus integrating Italian culture inextricably into American culture. It divides Italian-American history into several sociological events including the largest mass exodus into the United States in history, the first successful labor unions, the rise of the largest organized crime families (which is refreshingly downplayed), the importance of the tight Italian family, the rise of Italian movie stars, singers, and athletes, and of course the food. Although too brief to go in depth about any of these phenomena, the film does a lovely job of emphasizing the undeniably profound influence Italian Americans have had in defining American culture. --Elizabeth Massa
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

The West (Box Set) (1996)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Since its premiere on PBS in September 1996, The West has rightfully assumed its place as a milestone event in television history, and remains the single most ambitious and authoritative audio-visual history of the American West. Spanning centuries but focusing primarily on the period of 1800 to 1915, when America was virtually redefined by westward expansion, this outstanding 12.5-hour film is itself a triumphant effort to redefine Americans' collective understanding of the West and its impact on national identity. Directed by Stephen Ives and executive produced by Ken Burns (The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz), the film follows the theory adopted by previous Ken Burns productions--namely, that "history is biography"--and unfolds through a wealth of personal anecdote and intimate documentation.

The film's lasting achievement is its interweaving of the two distinct threads of western history--the triumph of westward expansion from the urban areas of the East, and the tragic dispossession of the Native Americans who had populated North America for thousands of years. Where previous historical perspectives tended to emphasize one direction or the other, The West (written by Geoffrey C. Ward and Dayton Duncan) achieves a delicate balance, illustrating how nearly every story of pioneering idealism was countered by incidents of tragic loss and suffering.

Brilliantly narrated by Peter Coyote, the series gains further depth and authority through interviews with more than 75 historians and experts. Foremost among them is N. Scott Momaday, scholar, historian, and Kiowa Indian, whose contribution to the series is deeply affecting. Other experts include historians Richard White, Patricia Nelson Limerick, and Stephen Ambrose; writers Michael Dorris and Maxine Hong Kingston; Lakota descendant Charlotte Black Elk; former Texas governor Ann Richards; and many others. When viewed in its entirety, this outstanding, truly epic documentary combines all of its separate episodes to form an emotionally involving narrative of astonishing depth and unprecedented accuracy. To say that The West is essential viewing would be an understatement; this film should be considered mandatory to any balanced awareness of America's turbulent and glorious westward movement. --Jeff Shannon
Click here to learn more or purchase from Amazon.com

Ken Burns' America
America Giftset (1996)

Availability: This title usually ships within 2-3 days.

Read more

Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours.

Rated: NR
Director: Ken Burns
Edition Details:
• NTSC format (for use in US and Canada only)
• Color, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Box set, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 7
• ASIN: 6304048785
Click here to learn more or purchase from Amazon.com

Great Depression, The: Series (1998)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Necessity, as the saying goes, is the mother of invention, and at no point has a cliché been so prescient as in the 1930s. During that era, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal took documentation to new heights in U.S. history, turning artists and artisans into government-sponsored vehicles for reportage and representation of both American ideals and the harsher set of realities citizens were dealing with. And this four-volume set, narrated by the instantly recognizable Mario Cuomo, leverages many of the Great Depression's own media-savvy documentary advances to tell the period's varied stories. Volume 1 covers the pre-New Deal era, as desperation hit farm hands and businesses and bank patrons, bringing the U.S. economy to its knees. Latter-day celebs chime in on the period, with James Michener's tales of his own rail-riding striking powerful bolts through the episode. Volume 2 spotlights the spotlight, the way mass media developed around themes of escape and promised lands--some rising from earlier historical eras--that somehow managed to both cornerstone pop culture and elude the vast majority of radio listeners and filmgoers. Here is the place where the era's media is so integral to this set, offering that great historical lifeblood: primary documents. Of course, not everyone bought the media meal, and the theme for Volume 3 is popular resistance. From the riots that infamously bookended the Harlem Renaissance to bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd, discontent was grounds for wide upheaval. Of great interest here is the worker-led organizing that so clearly lies in the vanguard of contemporary labor history. Finally, Volume 4, "Desperate Measures" centers on a trio of events: the "Battle of Washington," where President Herbert Hoover ordered the vaunted Douglas MacArthur to forcibly remove World War I veterans who had marched on the capital; the rise of Louisiana's firebrand populist Huey Long into the state governor's mansion; and the onset of World War II. By far the most comprehensive treatment of the period, this set is also exhaustively long, making it a delight for patient viewers--and educators. It's also painstakingly organized and produced and warrants repeated viewings. --Andrew Bartlett
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Thomas Jefferson: A Film by Ken Burns (1996)

Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours.

Rated: NR
Starring: Sam Waterston, et al.
Director: Ken Burns

Edition Details:
• NTSC format (for use in US and Canada only)
• Color, Closed-captioned, Black & White, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 2
• ASIN: 630428957X
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

American Dream (1992)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential video
Director Barbara Kopple's Oscar-winning rendering of a crippling strike at a Minnesota meat-packing plant may look dated, but the underlying theme of individuals crushed by big business remains all too timely. Using a briskly engrossing combination of first-person interviews, news broadcasts, and fly-on-the-wall encounters, Kopple creates an indelible document of a community's dissolution at the hands of larger forces. (The film is clearly on the side of the workers, but at the same time it refuses to ignore the petty infighting that eventually helped contribute to their ruin.) An alternately depressing, uplifting, and often profanely funny film that, at times, echoes Michael Moore's Roger and Me , but without that movie's distancing smarm. A movie's title has never seemed quite so bitterly apt. The director, who had previously won an Oscar for the equally arresting Harlan County USA, would later go on to document yet another traumatic event with Woody Allen's Wild Man Blues. --Andrew Wright
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Breadline-Great Depression at Home (1998)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The roller coaster ride of the Jazz Age jumped the tracks with the stock market crash of October 24, 1929. Panic ensued and millions around the world lost their jobs. In this often-wrenching episode of the Emmy Award-winning People's Century series, eyewitnesses recall the desperation of the Great Depression.
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Beautopia

Editorial Reviews
Video Description
Aspiring to be a supermodel has replaced the age-old dream of becoming an actress as the most coveted career among teenage girls around the world. Supermodels today enjoy revered celebrity status; Cindy, Naomi, and Kate are known by first name alone. Intrigued by this fascination, filmmaker Katharina Otto traverses the globe, following four young models on the verge of capturing their dreams and becoming superstars.

These four hopefuls are plucked from their homes and families and thrust into an adult world with little guidance. They are sent to various international markets to establish themselves, where they are expected to navigate strange cities completely on their own. Agencies make it painstakingly clear the girls must take full responsibility for their potential success. Balanced with interviews with established models such as Lauren Hutton, Elle MacPherson, and Claudi Schiffer, BEAUTOPIA contrasts the sobering reality of the business of beauty with its false promises, competition and rejection to the fairy tales images in the young models' heads.

Otto examines the modeling world from the inside, gaining entry to the most private situations: from agents discussing models traits on a go-see to a fitting for a Paris runway show. The glamour the public sees on the printed page is a far cry from life behind the scenes. Otto has crafted a suspenseful journey of lost innocence, filled with hope and anguish. Where Unzipped led us behind the curtain of the fashion industry, BEAUTOPIA gets beneath the perfect skin of the modeling world.

From the Director
Official Selection of the Sundance Film Festival, Documentary Competition. Winner of the Silver Hugo Award from the Chicago Film Festival. Screened at the Tel Aviv Documentary Film Festival and the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. It premiered theatrically in January 1999, and was chosen by the Sundance Channel as one of their favorite documentaries.
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Century of Women, A - Image and Popular Culture (1994)

Classic Television-Your Favorites from the 1950s

Click here to purchase from amazon.com

VITAL SIGNS: Crip Culture Talks Back

The Civil War: Collector's Set (1991)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The most successful public-television miniseries in American history, the 11-hour Civil War didn't just captivate a nation, reteaching to us our history in narrative terms; it actually also invented a new film language taken from its creator. When people describe documentaries using the "Ken Burns approach," its style is understood: voice-over narrators reading letters and documents dramatically and stating the writer's name at their conclusion, fresh live footage of places juxtaposed with still images (photographs, paintings, maps, prints), anecdotal interviews, and romantic musical scores taken from the era he depicts. The Civil War uses all of these devices to evoke atmosphere and resurrect an event that many knew only from stale history books. While Burns is a historian, a researcher, and a documentarian, he's above all a gifted storyteller, and it's his narrative powers that give this chronicle its beauty, overwhelming emotion, and devastating horror. Using the words of old letters, eloquently read by a variety of celebrities, the stories of historians like Shelby Foote and rare, stained photos, Burns allows us not only to relearn and finally understand our history, but also to feel and experience it. --Dave McCoy
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Out of the Past: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian. Rights In America (1998)

Availability: On Order; usually ships within 1-2 weeks.

Rated:
Not for sale to persons under age 18.
Starring: et al.
Director: Jeffrey Dupre
Edition Details:
• NTSC format (US and Canada only)
• Color, Black & White, NTSC
• ASIN: 1578482003
CLick here to purchase from Amazon.com

The Matinee Idol (1928) / Frank Capra's American Dream (1997) (1928)

Rated: NR
Director: Frank Capr

Edition Details:
• Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
• Color, Closed-captioned
• Production notes
• Theatrical trailer(s)
• Contains The Matinee Idol (1928, 56 min., Silent Comedy) & Frank Capra's American Dream (1997, 109 min., Documentary)
• Restoration liner notes
• ASIN: B00000J11G Click here for more technical details about this edition...

Other Formats: VHS

Click here to learn more or purchase from Amazon.com

Native Americans, The - Collector's Boxed Set (1994)

Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours.

Rated: NR
Edition Details:
• NTSC format (for use in US and Canada only)
• Color, Closed-captioned, HiFi Sound, Box set, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 6
• ASIN: 6303359981
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Latino Art & Culture

Once Upon a Time... When We Were Colored (1996)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Tim Reid's wonderful film about life in the black neighborhood of Glen Allan, Mississippi, from the mid-'40s to the dawn of the civil rights movement, is thick with terrific, inspired actors and possessed of a mature, limpid visual style. The story is told from the point of view of a young boy raised by his stalwart grandfather and his kind aunt. But the collective tale of a community coming to terms with the risks it must take to fight racism and achieve political rights is equally important and compelling. Beautifully written (based on the autobiographical novel by Clifton Taubert), Reid's vision is rich in scenes of ritual and community that have rarely, if ever, been revealed on film. This is more than just a good movie; it's a watershed event in this nation's cultural history. --Tom Keogh
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
It may look like a grab bag at first--50 preserved films from 18 American archives spanning the years 1893 to 1985 and encompassing everything from documentaries and home movies to experimental films and animation--but this unprecedented collection has a clear focus. It celebrates the scope and wealth of cinema history's "orphans," the films abandoned by the marketplace and left to nonprofit organizations to rescue. This is the proof of their efforts, and only a tiny, tantalizing example of what has been preserved. The "stars" of the set are the features: the startlingly savage 1916 William S. Hart Western Hell's Hinges and the luscious 1922 two-strip Technicolor feature The Toll of the Sea (the first color feature ever made) with Anna May Wong. Also included are The Chechahcos from 1924 (the first film ever shot in Alaska) and the extravagant (if stagy) original 1916 Snow White. John Huston's stunning documentary The Battle of San Pietro and Joseph Cornell's obscure but entrancing 1936 surrealist classic Rose Hobart are further highlights.

But there are wonders to be found throughout the collection, from a trip through Interior New York Subway circa 1905, to the gorgeous avant-garde 1928 The Fall of the House of Usher, to the only film of Orson Welles's legendary 1936 Haiti-set stage production of Macbeth in the 1937 documentary We Work Again. The breadth of work is astounding and all of it is fascinating, whether it's a revealing glimpse of a forgotten social landscape in a home movie; the preservation of theater, dance, and concert recitals in one-of-a-kind records; or an ancient work of pioneering cinema.

The four-disc set is handsomely designed, with easy-to-navigate menus featuring extensive notes and short documentaries about each archive (narrated by Laurence Fishburne), and a detailed, informative 150-page booklet accompanies the set. It's a one-of-a-kind project and a true film treasure. --Sean Axmaker

Click here to learn more or purchase from Amazon.com

Reviews
Amazon.com
No records were kept, but historians believe more than 100,000 slaves tried to escape their bondage before the Emancipation Proclamation. Most of those who made it to the relative safety of the north--or the wilderness, when slavery still reigned in the north--had help in the form of the Underground Railroad. Whites, free blacks, and Native Americans offered aid and shelter, though the notion of the Railroad as a kind of conspiracy of freedom, organized from north to south, is deeply flawed. Alfre Woodard links together interviews with historians, contemporary photographs, drawings, and dramatic reenactments to show the terrors of slavery and the travails of escape, exploding many of our myths along the way. The economic and political motivations behind many white abolitionists' feelings are explored, and while ultimately it didn't matter to a slave reaching out for liberty why it was offered, we are forced to reevaluate the selfless image of many "conductors." Still, freedom is freedom, and the History Channel's Underground Railroad tells its story well, inspiring respect for the generations of men and women who fought silently for it. --Rob Lightner
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com

Want to make a video suggestion to Mr. Spriggs? Click here