Banking the Unbanked - As a team of managers in Gambia try to build a microfinance business, they learn that the loans may be small - but the stakes are very high.
Bitter Money - Documents China's rapid economic and social transformation by following the rural workers who leave their Yunnan hometown to move to the city of Huzhou to work in its textile factories.
A Bridge Over the River - Profiles Lency, a man who lives in Cuba's central mountains who has a creative solution to all of life's daily problems there.
Business Club - Join young Viscount Arthur de Soultrait in the run-up to his wildly elaborate birthday/brand relaunch party.
C
Can't Do It In Europe - Some people travel to Bolivia to go down the dangerous silver mines, to see the medieval work conditions. Are they crawling through the contaminated tunnels to learn about a foreign culture, or to escape boredom?
The Caste Struggle - A controversial affirmative action policy in India has brought about unprecedented social and political change.
Chain of Love - A film about the Philippines' second largest export product - maternal love - and how the international trade in love and care affects the women involved, their families, and families in the West.
Class of Struggle - Workers at the Yema Watch Factory in Besancon depict their own labor struggles in this collective production initiated by Chris Marker.
Cul de Sac - An allegory for a working class suburb in decline, this film investigates the story of Shawn Nelson, who stole a tank and went on a rampage through the residential streets of Clairemont, CA.
D
Downtown Dream - Five people in a Rust Belt town struggle to reinvent their lives and their dreams in contemporary America.
Dying for Gold - The history of gold mining and capitalism in South Africa; and of the disease and poverty which persists to this day.
E
Episode 1 - Capitalism is much more complex than the vision Adam Smith laid out in The Wealth of Nations. Indeed, it predates Smith by centuries and took root in the practices of colonialism and the slave trade.
Episode 2 - Adam Smith was both economist and moral philosopher. But his work on morality is largely forgotten, leading to tragic distortions that have shaped our global economic system.
Episode 3 - The roots of today's global trade agreements lie in the work of stockbroker David Ricardo and demographer Thomas Malthus. Together, they would restructure society in the image of the market.
Episode 4 - Have we gotten Marx wrong by focusing on the Communist Manifesto instead of on his critique of how capitalism works - a critique that is relevant and as penetrating as ever?
Episode 5 - The ideological divide between the philosophies of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek has dominated economics for nearly a century. Is it time for the pendulum to swing back to Keynes? Or do we need a whole new approach that goes beyond this dualism?
Episode 6 - An exploration of the life and work of Karl Polanyi, who sought to reintegrate society and economy. Could the commodification of labour and money ultimately be as disastrous as floods, drought and earthquakes?
Everything Must Fall - A galvanizing examination of the fight for free college education that burst onto the South African political landscape and quickly escalated into a violent national movement.
Everything's Fine - Seydou Konaté is a doctor in a remote area in Mali. But he is at the center of a global issue: bringing quality health care to rural people left behind by development.
F
Finally Got the News - A film about the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, which was, "in many respects the most significant expression of black radical thought and activism in the 1960s." - Manning Marable, Prof. of History, Columbia Univ.
For the Best and for the Onion! - A verite documentary that captures the rhythms of agricultural life in Niger, and how the vagaries of market price and harvest can affect the most intimate personal decisions.
The Forgotten Space - Allan Sekula and Noel Burch investigate maritime trade, the global supply chain and 21st-century capitalism.
Fortune Teller - The life of a countryside fortune teller provides a candid and deeply revelatory look at people living on the fringes of Chinese society.
From The Other Side - Using technology developed for the military, the flow of illegal immigration into San Diego has been stemmed. But for the desperate, there are still the dangerous deserts of Arizona, where Chantal Akerman shifts her focus.
G
The Great Flood - Artist Bill Morrison and musician Bill Frisell evoke the Mississippi River Flood of 1927 and ensuing transformation of American society.
H
Hamou-Beya, Sand Fishers - For generations the Bozo people of Mali lived along the banks of the Niger river, fishing for their livelihood. But now...
Housemaids - Seven Brazilian teenagers film their housemaids, exposing issues of class, race, and gender in their families, and in their country.
"Housemaids" book - A book companion to the film "Housemaids" by Gabriel Mascaro
I
I Am Somebody - Named to the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress and preserved by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, Madeline Anderson’s essential work brings viewers to the front lines of the fight for civil rights.
The Inheritors - At early age children begin to work in the Mexican countryside. This is a portrait of theirs lives and their daily struggle for survival.
L
Long Story Short - Over 100 people at homeless shelters, food banks, and job training centers discuss their experiences of poverty.
Lost Course - Examines an unprecedented experiment in local democracy in the southern Chinese village of Wukan.
M
A Maid for Each - Documentary portrait of a housemaid agency in Beirut, Lebanon.
Malls R Us - From impressive architectural projects to economic, environmental and social concerns, everything about shopping malls, and more.
Mambar Pierrette - Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Rosine Mbakam's narrative film debut about a seamstress facing a series of misfortunes.
Matter Out of Place - Nikolaus Geyrhalter follows waste to the shores, mountains, and ocean floor.
A Mayan Trilogy: Life, Death & Migration - Now on one DVD, Olivia Carrescia's three films on the Mayan Indians of Guatemala preserve a record, and provide an acute observation on how the indigenous culture has been affected by, yet survived, that country's tumultuous history.
Metal and Melancholy - Roving the city of Lima, Peru, Heddy Honigmann meets teachers, actors, professionals, civil servants and many others who have turned to taxi driving to earn enough to get by.
Middletown - This classic series, created by Emmy and Academy Award winner Peter Davis, explores both the continuity and the change embodied in the people and institutions of one Midwestern community: Muncie, Indiana.
The Miners' Hymns - The ill-fated coal mining communities in North East England are the subject of this inspired documentary by multi-media artist Bill Morrison. Music by Johann Johannsson.
N
No Loans Today - Fringe banking in redlined, post-riot South Central Los Angeles.
North-South.com - In West Africa many young women, who dream of escaping a life of misery by marrying a rich, white foreigner, surf the Internet for marriage proposals.
Northern Light - A beautiful and candid portrait of the American working class experience set against the backdrop of a town's snowmobile race.
O
Oblivion - Heddy Honigmann's latest film focuses on Peru's capital city of Lima, revealing the contrasts of wealth and poverty, and how its poorest citizens have survived decades of economic crisis and corruption.
Our Daily Bread - A spectacular visual essay composed of epic tableaus, a haunting vision of our modern food industry, and the methods and technology utilized for mass production.
Our Newspaper - A couple starts their own newspaper in rural Russia... which lands them in danger.
Outcry and Whisper - A political manifesto for the resistance of women in Chinese and Hong Kong society, be they workers, artists, intellectuals or militants.
P
Portraits of America - Natalie Bookchin is an artist and filmmaker who, through virtuosic editing and innovative sonic and visual montage, interrogates the American crisis and its increased inequality and polarization.
The Price of Aid - An investigation of America's food aid programs for famine-stricken nations, a multi-million dollar business, which asks both U.S. and African government officials whether such aid creates more problems than it solves.
Profits of Punishment - A critical look at America's booming private prison industry.
Selling Sickness - Explores the unhealthy relationships between society, medical science and the pharmaceutical industry as it promotes not just drugs but also the latest diseases that go with them.
Seventeen - A group of high school seniors hurtles toward maturity with a combination of joy, despair, and an aggravated sense of urgency.
Sociology is a Martial Art - An introduction to the work of Influential sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, whose 40 books and countless articles represent a renovation and application of social science.
Stolen Land - Illustrates the decades-long often violent resistance movement of the indigenous Nasa people of Colombia over rights to their native land.
Suspension - Deep in the misty jungle of southern Colombia, between treacherously steep mountain slopes, stands an unfinished concrete bridge as an absurd symbol of human folly.
System Error - SYSTEM ERROR examines the fundamentals of capitalism and the continuing impact of Karl Marx as an analyst of it.
T
To Be Seen - A lively study of visual culture, and an exploration of an age-old urban cultural phenomenon, street art. What is art's role in the context of public space and urban culture?
Todos Santos: The Survivors - Demonstrates how the political turmoil of the 1980s affected this once quiet Guatemalan village.
U
Umbrella... (San...) - Conceptual and observational but fundamentally a telling look at changes in China today, particularly between rural and urban society.
W
We All Fall Down - The rise and fall of America's mortgage system and the damage in the wake of its collapse. With Nouriel Roubini, Richard Sylla and Chris Mayer.
When Banana Ruled - The story of a simple fruit... upon which a global empire was built.
Working Women of the World - Focusing on Levi Strauss & Co., examines the relocation of factories from Western countries to nations like Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, where low wages are the rule and employee rights are nonexistent.
More Films & DVDs on Economic Sociology
Arab Diaries - A five-part documentary series that presents a fresh, insightful picture of contemporary life across the Arab world.
Celso and Cora - A young couple and their two children living in a squatter settlement in the Philippines' capital, Manila.
Choropampa - When a devastating mercury spill by the world's richest gold mining corporation hits a quiet peasant village in the Peruvian Andes, a courageous young mayor emerges to lead his people on a quest for healthcare and justice.
The Color of Gold - In South Africa's President Steyn Gold Mine, 8000 men live in a compound next to the mine shaft in which they dig, far from their families.
Dreamland - Takes a sharp but disarming approach in examining the romance of gambling, and reveals the decidedly unromantic reality.
Knock Off - Juxtaposes the deified position logos occupy in our consumer-culture, with the lives of sweatshop workers who cannot afford the items they create.
The La$t Market - Documents the efforts of the multinational corporation Philips to reach five billion potential consumers among the world's poor. Can profitability fight poverty?
Ladies in Waiting - A maternity clinic in the Democratic Republic of Congo copes with its patients' lack of money while trying to provide the best-intentioned care.
Losers and Winners - Two worlds collide when 400 Chinese workers move to Germany for a year and a half to take apart an entire gigantic modern coke factory—and ship it back to China.
Magnitogorsk - The fortunes of three generations living in the shadow of Russia's most breathtaking industrial project of the 1930s. The film was inspired by Joris Ivens'Song of the Heroes. (from the January, 1998 Catalog Supplement)
Mayan Voices: American Lives - Contrasts the experiences of Mayan families who came to Indiantown, Florida as refugees fleeing the violence in Guatemala in the early 1980s, with the struggles of those continuing to arrive in search of better lives.
Sotsgorod: Cities For Utopia - Uncovers the secret history of Western architects who moved to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s, to design the huge new industrial cities being built across Siberia and the steppes.
Tambogrande - Follows the efforts of a small Peruvian town over five years as they fight government efforts to sell the mineral rights under their homes to a multi-national mining company.
Taxi to Timbuktu - Men from Mali seek work in New York, Paris, and Tokyo.
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