Filmes (Firm)

There can be no society without work. Yet as civilizations prosper and grow, labor historically is shifted onto the less privileged, while the elite either scorn work or only participate in certain types, creating hierarchies and inequalities. This program examines work from the early egalitarian hunter/gatherer and agrarian societies to the modern world-a world of multinationals and child slavery, of leisure and hard labor. Noted anthropologists,...

We may not recognize the plants and animals our children eat. But the real issue is whether the power of the gene will be wisely used, or will it be diverted to the personal ends of those seeking financial profit or political power? Biotechnology is all that stands between a burgeoning world population and starvation. Already, ordinary milking cows are a disappearing species, plants are genetically matched to growing conditions, and plants are being...

Wherever political, religious, racial, or ideological interests collide, diplomacy and tolerance historically yield to the barbarity of war. In this program, political scientist Charles-Philippe David; Jean-Louis Dufour, editor-in-chief of the magazine Defense; and historians Robert O'Connell, Andre Corviser, and Laurent Henninger trace the history of warfare from its remote origins to the present day and discuss if it is avoidable or if it is an...

The more digital technology becomes inseparable from our daily lives, the more chances corporate and political media have to manipulate young people-unless students are taught how to dissect and defend against that manipulation. This program helps educators instill media literacy through an exploration of its basic concepts as well as examples drawn from film and television. Defining media literacy in terms of access, analysis, evaluation, and creation,...

This program traces the evolution of writing from its pictograph and hieroglyph antecedents. Recent discoveries have revealed that the earliest alphabet was corrupted shorthand for Egyptian hieroglyphs, developed by Semitic mercenaries. As the Roman alphabet became dominant in the Western world, indigenous languages were lost as Roman law and the Latin alphabet became a tool by which minority peoples were subjugated. By the Middle Ages, the majority...

All communities embrace organizing principles that are indispensable to their cohesion, imposing order on chaos and allowing individuals to function in groups. Many of these principles are related through myths. In this program, the transformation of the earlier "savior" myth into the modern myth of the "hero" is examined. How social myths such as "progress" facilitate modern industrial societies, and the myth of the "star" as a social construct that...

A far cry from his origins in advertising, the feature films of Adrian Lyne are designed to impact viewers on a primal level. This program spotlights the director in an earnest discussion of his work, revealing what it was like to make Fatal Attraction, 9 1/2 weeks, Unfaithful, and other visually innovative, sexually charged movies. Lyne emphasizes his need for a solid story premise, highlighting the narrative potential he saw in Jacob's Ladder and...

This program focuses on the Loyalists of Northern Ireland: Protestant, anti-Catholic, anti-European, anti-Irish, monarchist, they clearly belong to a nation-state-the United Kingdom-but feel abandoned by the British people, who no longer share their devotion to traditional values. They are, of course, at home in the northern part of Ireland; but they seem most at home when invoking the past to justify their present opinions and singing the kind of...

The 1940s are often portrayed as a glorious era of swing dancing and volunteering for the war effort, but along with a sense of unity these years also brought the internment of Japanese Americans, the first clashes of the civil rights movement, and a profound disruption of family structure. Populations shifted from rural to urban to suburban; some citizens gained more opportunities while others remained marginalized. For better or worse, it was an...

A neo-Nazi skinhead thinks democracy is unnatural; a typical liberal prefers to be a citizen of the world; a far-right office holder fantasizes about his hard-working, disciplined, Aryan fatherland. This program looks at Germany reunified: while there was an East/West, communist/capitalist split, Germans could forget about nationalism, which is now back with a vengeance. The liberals, we discover, don't like the Germany they have, while the neo-Nazis...