We’ve just added another film database to our collection of e-resources. Independent World Cinema: Classic and Contemporary Film by Alexander Street Press provides LMU students, faculty, and staff with access to 400 of the most important films produced from the early 20th century to today. Focusing on films from preeminent independent distributors, this multidisciplinary collection supports researchers in subject areas like cultural history, psychology, gender studies, anthropology, theatre, and African American studies. Users can stream these films online (MyLMU login required) and the transcripts are fully-searchable. Among the 400 films included in this collection, you can find:
Nowhere in Africa
A love story spanning two continents, Nowhere in Africa is the extraordinary true tale of a Jewish family who flees the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in Kenya. Abandoning their once-comfortable existence in Germany, Walter Redlich, his wife Jettel (Juliane Kohler, of Aimee & Jaguar) and their five-year-old daughter Regina each deal with the harsh realities of their new life in different ways. Attorney Walter is resigned to working the farm as a caretaker; pampered Jettel resists adjustment at every turn; while the shy yet curious Regina immediately embraces the country — learning the local language and customs, and finding a friend in Owuor, the farm’s cook. Watch this film. [On DVD. No longer available streaming.]
Examined Life
In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas. Peter Singer’s thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue’s posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek questions current beliefs about the environment while sifting through a garbage dump. Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution while surrounded by symbols of wealth and leisure. Judith Butler and a friend stroll through San Francisco’s Mission District questioning our culture’s fixation on individualism. And while driving through Manhattan, Cornel West — perhaps America’s best-known public intellectual — compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be. Watch this film. [On DVD. No longer available streaming.]
La Playa D.C.
Tomas,an Afro-Colombian teenager who fled the country’s Pacific coast pushed out by the war, faces the difficulties of growing up in a city of exclusion and racism. When Jairo, his younger brother and closest friend disappears, Tomas plunges in the streets of the city. His search becomes an initiatory journey that compels him to face his past and to leave aside the influence of his brothers in order to find his own identity. Watch this film. [MyLMU login]
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