Documentary Educational Resources - Subject / Business & Economics / Trade & Commerce / All Films

Children of the Land

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

Children of the Land
Buy Now: $295.00

Nature gives us everything for free, says a Yanomami chief - "all that nature asks in return is that we protect it." In Children of the Land, Brazilian Indian leaders discuss their careful and sustainable use of the land. The forest provides indigenous people with food, medicine and supplies, and they know that they have to preserve these for future generations. This is reflected in their sustainable lifestyle; the Ashaninka calendar, for example, measures seasons by the reproductive cycles of plants and animals so as to keep these populations healthy. The Baniwa make woven baskets for sale in department stores, and the Ashaninka harvest Mumuru, a plant product used in the cosmetics industry, for sale. However, both groups make sure not to abuse their resources for these ventures, and use them as a vehicle for promoting their culture.

Films in the Indians in Brazil series:
A Different Story
The First Contacts
From the Other Side of the Sky
Our Languages
Our Rights
Our Territory
Who Are They?

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Coding Culture

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

Coding Culture
Buy Now: $320.00

The Indian software outsourcing industry has emerged as a key node of the global economy. The series of ethnographic films, Coding Culture, explores the cultures of outsourced work and the moulding of a new workforce to cater to this global high-tech services industry.

Each of the three films focuses on a single company, representing one of the major types of software company found in Bangalore: a medium-sized Indian-owned company software services company (Mphasis: The 'M' Way); the offshore software development centre of a U.S.-based IT company (Sun Microsystems: Fun@Sun); and a small 'cross-border' startup company that produces its own software products and markets them to global customers (July Systems: July Boys). All three companies are engaged in the production of software products or services for markets outside of India, but the nature of their work and their position in the global economy differ, producing significant variations in their cultures of work.

Each film revolves around a distinct theme that is central to the outsourcing industry as a whole, but that also has wider sociological significance: the systems of time and people management that are typical of these new global workplaces; the functioning of multicultural 'virtual teams' and the absorption of Indian software engineers into a global corporate culture; and the new identities that are emerging in this highly transnational sector of the Indian economy.

Fun@Sun: Making of a Global Workplace (29 min)

An inside look at work and work culture in the software development centre of a large American multinational company, Sun Microsystems, located in Bangalore (Indian Engineering Centre, or IEC). The film highlights the multiple ways in which 'culture' operates as a management tool in the new global economy. In offshore centres such as IEC, work is organised through 'virtual teams' comprised of software engineers and managers located in Bangalore and Santa Clara, U.S.A. To integrate their employees and sites across cultural and geographical space, Sun attempts to initiate the Indian software engineers into Sun's corporate culture. The film depicts the techniques through which this American-style work culture is transplanted into the Indian subsidiary, such as induction programmes and 'soft skills' training programmes. The film also points to the contradictory ways in which 'culture' is invoked in the global corporate workplace: while cultural sensitivity training programmes validate cultural difference, Indian software engineers are expected to conform to the dominant model of global corporate culture by learning appropriate communication and behaviourial styles.

The 'M' Way: Time + People = Money (30 min)

The 'M' Way was shot inside MphasiS-BFL Limited, a medium-sized Indian IT services company that typifies this highly competitive business, in which the provision of high quality and low-cost service is key to attracting and retaining customers. The film focuses on two teams - a software development team and a quality control (testing) team - that work on a project for a U.S.-based customer. The candid footage and interviews convey the high-pressure work atmosphere that prevails in this industry, especially due to the need for tight control over the work process and for coordination of activities within and between teams and with the customer site. Two main themes are foregrounded in the film: the complex systems of time and quality control through which software projects are managed, and the techniques of people ('resource') management that are employed - especially how software engineers are motivated to identify with the company's goals and to work longer hours.

July Boys: New Global Players (26 min)

July Boys focuses on a small 'startup' company in Bangalore that designs and produces software products for cellular service providers in Europe and the U.S. Turning the tables on the usual outsourcing story, July Systems has leveraged U.S.-based venture capital and Indian technical expertise to break into the latest high-tech markets. The film explores the creation of a Silicon Valley-style work culture within this 'cross-border' company that has one leg in Bangalore and the other in Santa Clara, California. It also highlights the emergence of new kinds of identities (global, transnational, cosmopolitan) that incorporate and transcend pre-existing identities such as the national and the regional. But the narratives of the film's characters reveal a tension between their assumed global subjectivity and their nationalist pride in July's achievements as a company founded and run by Indians that makes 'cutting edge products' for the global market.

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Cotton Road

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:16:00 GMT

Cotton Road
Buy Now: $320.00

What does a rural town in South Carolina have to do with China?

Americans consume nearly twenty billion new items of clothing each year, and at least one billion of them are made in China. Cotton Road uncovers the transnational movement of cotton and tells the stories of workers lives in a conventional cotton supply chain. From rural farms in South Carolina to factory cities in China, we span the globe to encounter the industrial processes behind our rapacious consumption of cheap clothing and textile products.

Are we connected to one another through the things we consume? Cotton Road explores a contemporary landscape of globalized labor through human stories and provides an opportunity to reflect on the ways our consumption impacts others and drives a global economy.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Honorable Mention, Feature Length Film, Society for Visual Anthropology, 2015

Top Grit, Jury Prize (Best of Festival), Indie Grits Film Festival, 2015

Fork in the Road Award, Jury Prize (Best of Festival), Greentopia Film Festival, 2015

Best Documentary, Documentary Category, Beaufort International Film Festival, 2015

Jury's Choice Award, First Place, Black Maria Film Festival, various locations, 2015

Best Documentary Feature, Documentary Category, Santa Monica Int'l Film Festival, 2014

Honorable Mention, Rural Route Film Festival, locations various, 2014

Honorable Mention, University Film and Video Association, 2014

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El Field

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

El Field
Buy Now: $320.00

International border crossing as a daily constant is an unusual life habit. Especially when Mexican urban dwellers do so to work as agricultural field laborers in the United States. In a time when immigration has taken the political center stage across the globe, El Field contributes to the discussion by providing a compelling portrait in motion of the life, work and industry of a forgotten section of the largest, busiest land transit border in the world. Shot in the Imperial Valley, California, and the Mexicali Valley, Mexico; El Field presents visual historic information that induces the audience to form their own impressions on migrant labor and the industry that employs them.

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Fish Is Our Life

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Fish Is Our Life
Buy Now: $295.00

This unusual documentary provides a fascinating profile of an important segment of the Japanese population rarely seen or studied in the West. It focuses on the small businessmen-proprietors who work the 1,100 family-owned businesses at Tsukiji Market, Tokyo's largest wholesale fish market. With its many small wholesalers and its seven large auction houses, Tsukiji is a small city in itself, with its own unique culture, work hours, and traditions. The video captures the vitality and earthy humor of a variety of people who work in the market, and examines how they, like all Japanese, are increasingly affected by the global market economy and by changes in the larger Japanese culture.

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Fishers of Dar

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Fishers of Dar
Buy Now: $295.00

Samaki wa Dar es Salaam/Fishers of Dar is an ethnographic film about the fishermen and women of downtown Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It explores the continuity and integrity of traditional fishing practices in new, contemporary settings. Dar es Salaam is a metropolis of 3 million people yet the city's demand for fish is entirely met by equipment, methods and tools that have been used here for hundreds of years.

This film takes the viewer to the central fish market and pier in the city harbor, and to a small fishing community away from the market. It is structured between two sunrises and two sunsets: the story begins before dawn, with small lanteen sailed boats (ngawaalas) and bigger mashua boats (a diesel engine replacing the sail) leaving for fishing grounds close by or further out to sea, and continues with fishing at sea; coming back to unload and sell fish at the market; auctions and retail sales; fast food preparation and sale at the market; home-based work and leisure activities in the fishing community.

Eschewing commentary and voice-over explanation — similar to Forest of Bliss — the film shows the many hands the fish pass through before reaching customers. Hundreds of people make a living in the process. We see fishermen and women, boat builders, boat crews, auctioneers, laborers, vendors and market people of all kinds. Not the least are women who come with buckets, buy and clean small fish and then go back home by bus to sell fried fish in the hundreds of smaller markets of the city.

The film reveals how traditional methods articulate with modern demands. There are problems: a brief text at the end of the film points out that the market was recently demolished to make way for expansion of the harbor. The age old process continues but under difficult new conditions.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Best Documentary, Athens Ohio Film Festival, 2003

Juror's Choice, Black Maria Film Festival, 2003

Golden Dhow, Director's Choice, Zanzibar Int'l Film Festival, 2002

Best Cinematography, Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2002

Northwest Folk Life Film Festival, Seattle, 2003

Rakumi Arts Film Festival, Seattle Museum of Art, 2003

Rhode Island Int'l Film Festival, Providence, 2003

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Floating Market

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:53:00 GMT

Floating Market
Buy Now: $320.00

For many decades, hundreds of Venezuelan men in search of economic opportunity have sailed forty miles across the Caribbean from Venezuela to the island of Curaçao in small wooden boats to sell tropical fruits and vegetables in Curaçao's floating market, leaving behind their families in the coastal fishing villages of Venezuela for months at a time. Continuing a tradition passed down from father to son for generations, they form a Venezuelan community along the quays of downtown Willemstad, capital of Curaçao. They have created a vibrant and enduring market culture in Curaçao that helps support the Venezuelan villages, while providing fresh produce to this arid island. Floating Market follows the stories of several sailors and their families, from the perilous nighttime crossing, through the months the men spend living on their boats and selling produce to locals and tourists, to their joyful homecomings. It gradually delves beneath the bright surface of colorful boats floating in a picturesque tropical setting to explore the subculture of men, isolated on their boats, yet always on display. The men come as itinerant workers to this Dutch island. They are a part of Curaçao, yet set apart by language, customs, and culture. They form a brotherhood in Curaçao that gives them a sense of home and community, while they maintain ties with their families in Venezuela via supply boats that arrive daily to restock the boats with fresh produce, and to bring news, letters, and packages from home. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, the men's wives run their households and raise their children alone without the support of their husbands during the eight months of the year that the men are away. Curaçaoans are divided between their love for the market's tradition and tourist appeal and their resentment of its problems - harbor pollution, smuggling, and frequent shipwrecks. Because of stiff competition from the recent proliferation of chain supermarkets, the future of the market itself is uncertain.

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Himalayan Herders

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:27:00 GMT

Himalayan Herders
Buy Now: $320.00

Himalayan Herders is an intimate portrait of a temple-village in the Yolmo valley of Central Nepal where Tibetan Buddhists consult shamans, married life begins by kidnapping the bride, and the nearest road is a two-day walk away. The community drama of marriage, death, and rituals is juxtaposed with the rich texture of daily life, both in the village and the surrounding mountains and forest where these pastoralists herd zomo, a cross between a cow and a yak, which thrives in middle altitude pastures between 8,000 and 14,000 feet. Cultural change, in the form of a government primary school, incorporation into a national park, and circular migration for wage labor outside Nepal, is discussed by residents in interviews.

A twenty-five-year-long collaboration between an ethnographer and a documentary filmmaker, the film provides rich material for examining gender, cultural change, religion, pastoralism, South Asia, and the cultural ecology and economics of mountain populations. An ethnography, Himalayan Herders, published by Harcourt Brace in fall 1997 as part of the Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology Series, provides a companion volume to the film.

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It's a Young Country

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:44:00 GMT

It's a Young Country
Buy Now: $295.00

Commissioned to make a film for a teaching case at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, filmmaker Charles Mann drew upon seven years as a working economist in Turkey to produce a film that captures the spirit of the country's cultural and economic transformation.

Top management of Akbank, arguably Turkey's most successful bank, provide a window into contemporary Turkey and its prospects as they weigh alternative paths for the bank's future growth. Explaining Akbank's emphasis on innovation and youth, Chairman and Managing Director Suzan Sabancı Dinçer sums up Turkey's demographic transformation: "It's a young country!".

Economic historian Professor Yahya Sezai Tezel provides contextual narrative about the country's economic and cultural restructuring. Director Franco Sacchi's inspired cinematography provides images that support and illustrate the film's narrative arc of transformation. This film provides a real sense of engagement with contemporary Turkey by allowing viewers to see the country through the eyes of people both propelling and reacting to change in coastal and Anatolian towns, in universities, in metropolitan centers.

Films in the Development Communications Workshop series

If It Doesn't Rain

If It Doesn't Rain: First Return

It's A Young Country: Turkey and Akbank

Lifecycles

Malawi's Green Revolution

Paths of Hope

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Java Jive

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 11:12:00 GMT

Java Jive
Buy Now: $295.00

"Hot as hell, strong as sin, and black as the devil". However you take it - or even if you don't - coffee has a special status in society. Fast-paced and lively, Java Jive explores the vitality of cafe culture, the conditions of coffee production and the links between the two.

Traveling through Latin American coffee plantations, the NY Coffee Exchange, espresso-making and the old-fashioned coffee house now being taken over by corporate chains and franchises, the film mixes the serious with the silly, the entertaining with the informative. Java Jive is a caffeinated journey into a surprisingly complex world that is part stimulant, part ritual, part fun and all business.

Recommended for Cultural Studies, Communication, Western/American Culture/ Latin American Studies, Economics/World Economy/US Economy.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Honorable Mention, 47th Columbus International Film & Video Festival

Latin American Studies Association, selection September 2001

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