Month: December 2012

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we’ve recently added to our collection.

Default: The Student Loan Documentary (DVD 10634) needs little introduction for American University students. Massive student loans, paralyzing debt, and the risk of defaulting or sliding into bankruptcy are real fears. Default tells the stories of students saddled with this financial burden and how they are trying to change the system.

Official description from the film’s website:

The film chronicles the stories of borrowers from different backgrounds affected by the student lending industry and their struggles to change the system. No matter when their loans were taken, many borrowers find themselves in a paralyzing predicament of repaying two, three or multiple times the original amount borrowed, with no bankruptcy protection, no cap on fees and penalties and no recourse to the law. The consequences are dire, with stories of borrowers in financial and emotional ruin.

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we’ve recently added to our collection.

Where Soldiers Come From (DVD 10604) examines the lives of two high school graduates who enroll in the National Guard with the promise of college tuition. After four years, they return home as soldiers, battered by the war and unsure of their place at home. Rather than discussing war as a political phenomenon, Where Soldiers Come From tells the personal story of two young adults whose worlds and lives are changed by a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Official description from the film’s website:

From a snowy small town in Northern Michigan to the mountains of Afghanistan and back, Where Soldiers Come From follows the four-year journey of childhood friends, forever changed by a faraway war. […] Where Soldiers Come From looks beyond the guns and policies of an ongoing war to tell a human story about family, friendship, and community and how they all change when young people go off to fight

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we’ve recently added to our collection.

A Sentence Apart (DVD 8956) is one of the shorter documentaries in our collection, but by all accounts, it packs a punch. The film examines the often tense, fractious relationships between inmates and their families by following the three stories of children whose parents are incarcerated. The focus is not on why these people are in jail but on how prison has shaped their families.

Official description from the film’s website:

A Sentence Apart follows three stories of people coping with a family member in prison, attempting to bridge broken relationships, and diligently working to break the generational cycle of incarceration.

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we’ve recently added to our collection.

Terra Blight (DVD 10630) shines a light on the hazardous environmental impact made by discarded personal electronics. Terra Blight challenges the myth that computers are making the world “greener.” In fact, our constant consumption of new tech may be filling our planet with toxic wastelands. Events like the computer game convention QuakeCon are shown in a dour perspective given the negative environmental impact its attendees will have once they eventually dispose their computers.

Official description from the film’s website:

Terra Blight traces the life cycle of computers from creation to disposal and juxtaposes the disparate worlds that have computers as their center. From a 13-year-old Ghanaian who smashes obsolete monitors to salvage copper to a 3,000-person video game party in Texas, Terra Blight examines the unseen realities of one of the most ubiquitous toxic wastes on our planet.

By the film’s end, the audience will never look at their computer the same way again.

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we’ve recently added to our collection.

Facebook Follies (DVD 10640) tells the other side of the social media story. Whereas others focus on how social media rose to dominance, this documentary focuses on the consequences of our addiction to instantaneous sharing. The effects are felt everywhere, from the downfall of politicians to people reconnecting with lost relatives.

Official description from promotional material:

An engaging journey — and cautionary tale — through one of today’s most pervasive forces of social communication. Facebook Follies looks at some of the unexpected results and impact, negative and positive, of people sharing their personal information on social media sites.

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we’ve recently added to our collection.

Mr. Cao Goes to Washington (DVD 10616) challenges the political status quo with a look at Joseph Cao, a representative with an unconventional life story. Congressman Cao was Congress’s first Vietnamese-American, a non-white Republican elected by an African-American majority in New Orleans, and the only member of his party to support the Affordable Care Act. This documentary about Cao’s brief career on Capitol Hill is a compelling story that exposes the infighting and partisan bickery that characterizes current-day Congress.

Official description from the film’s website:

What happens when the naiveté of a political rookie clashes with the realities of racial and partisan politics of the South?

Mr. Cao Goes to Washington is a fascinating character study of Congressman Joseph Cao, a Vietnamese American Republican elected by surprise in an African American Democratic district in New Orleans. Will Cao make it through his term with his idealism intact?

Hot Docs highlights interesting new documentaries we’ve recently added to our collection.

Julian Bond: Reflections from the Frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement (DVD 10618) follows the story of Julian Bond, a civil right activist whose life story spans from the first marches on Washington and the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to the classrooms at American University. In this documentary, Bond shares stories from his experience at the forefront of the most tumultuous decades in modern American history.

Official description from Filmakers Library:

This enlightening portrait joins African American social activist Julian Bond as he traces his roots back to slavery. A leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Julian Bond was among the founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a leader of the 1963 March on Washington, and a Georgia legislator for twenty years. Now in his seventies, Bond recalls the experience of growing up in the segregated south, where his parents’ belief in hard work and education lifted the family out of what he describes as an apartheid system. An erudite, well-spoken man, audiences visit his classroom at the University of Virginia where he shares with a new generation the turbulent years of the Civil Rights Movement.

Julian Bond’s recollections chronicle several turbulent decades of American history, as society was evolving to allow more opportunity to African Americans. An essential documentary for African American Studies, American History, and Sociology courses.

Julian Bond. Filmakers Library Trailer from Heritage Film Project on Vimeo.