Global Health Filmography
Film is a very effective teaching tool. This collection of films helps educators and students understand the challenges and opportunities faced by global health advocates. We welcome suggested additions (email them to jak4g@virginia.edu). Please check back frequently for new additions. If selections are not available at the library, please check Netflix.
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Title: On Our Watch, 2007 / website
Description: The world vowed "never again" after the genocide in Rwanda and the atrocities in Srebrenica, Bosnia. Then came Darfur. Over the past four years, at least 200,000 people have been killed, 2.5 million driven from their homes, and mass rape has been used as a weapon in a brutal campaign supported by the Sudanese government. In On Our Watch, FRONTLINE asks why the United Nations and its members once again failed to stop the slaughter.
This film can be viewed entirely online at the website, where purchase information can be found.
Title: Sari's Mother, 2006
Description: Set against the backdrop of the Iraq War, a desperate mother attempts to find medical care for her 10-year-old son, Sari, who has contracted AIDS during a blood transfusion.
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Title: Darwin's Nightmare, 2004 / website
Description: HOw a booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world's biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots. Academy Award nominee, Best Documentary Feature.
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Title: RXfor Health: A Global Health Challenge, 2005
Description: This ground-breaking project examines what makes us sick, what keeps us healthy, and what it would take to give good health the upper hand.
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Title: A Closer Walk, 2006
Description: A Closer Walk depicts humankind's confrontation with the global AIDS epidemic. Interviewees from Uganda, South Africa, Haiti, Switzerland, India, Nepal, Ukraine, Cambodia, and various locations in the United States including New York City, Kansas City, San Francisco, and Cambridge.
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Title: The Blood of Yingzhou District, 2006
Description: The story of a young Chinese boy orphaned by AIDS. The boy's search for a home to call his own forms the dramatic center of this stunning documentary set in rural China. 2007 Academy Award winner for documentary short film.
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Title: Pandemic: Facing AIDS, 2003
Description: Personal stories of people living with AIDS in Uganda, India, Brazil, Thailand and Russia and what is being done to battle a disease that kills 8,000 people a day.
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Title: ¡Salud!, 2006 / website
Description: This award-winning film, a feature documentary, directed by Academy Award nominee Connie Field, spans three continents to look at the philosophy of health professionals, placing Cuba on the map in the worldwide movement to make health care a global birthright.
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Title: Tumaini Letu (Our Hope), Kenya, 2006
Description: In the villages of western Kenya, AIDS has robbed hundreds of thousands of children of their parents. Tumaini Letu is a film about the lives, struggles and indomitable spirit of three women left to care for AIDS orphans. This film features the lives of Anna Khautu, a single mother of five who lost her husband to AIDS, Rasoa Kivairu who is raising 10 grandchildren, and Anna Aredo, who has taken in four nephews. These women participate in the Speak for the Child Project, which is supported with funding from the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, USAID and donations from individuals.
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Title: Vaccine Hunters, 2004
Description: A four-part BBC World documentary series, Vaccine Hunters looks at the scientific advances and real-world challenges of delivering life-saving vaccines to children in the developing world. From the hunt for new technologies within research labs to the clinics in remote villages where the vaccines are given to children, the series looks at the promise of, and the progress on, making vaccines affordable and accessible to the countries where they are needed most.
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Title: Fighting Malaria, 2006
Description: This stunning documentary explores the state of malaria today through the stories of the people who know it best, those suffering with the illness, and those working for a cure. Now a new hope is emerging from an unexpected time and place. This film follows the emotional journey of two African families in their quest to acquire effective medication.
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Title: Global Walk to Fight Youth HIV/AIDS Session
Description: From late 1998 through 2006, Dr. John Chittick personally tested his Harvard research on peer-led prevention efforts on the streets of 75 countries. This is a video report of his unique walk.
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Title: Dead Mums Don't Cry / 2005 / website
Description: DEAD MUMS DON'T CRY documents one woman's remarkable struggle to stop mothers in her country from dying. She's Grace Kodindo - an obstetrician in the poverty-stricken central African country of Chad. Women in Chad have a 1 in 11 chance of dying during pregnancy or in childbirth. The risk for women in the UK is 1 in 5100.
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Title: The Devil Came on Horseback / 2006 / website
Description: Unwilling to accept a desk job but desirous of "serving his country," Marine Captain Brian Steidle quits his job with the US Marine Corps and accepts a six-month post with the African Union as an unarmed military observer in the western Darfur region of Sudan. Once in Darfur, Steidle realizes things are going terribly wrong. Unable to intervene, Steidle uses his camera to document what some, including the US Government, have called a genocide. Filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern's astonishing film allows us to witness Steidle's transformation from soldier to observer to witness and, finally, to activist.
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Title: Enimies of Happiness / 2006 / website
Description: This film is about Malalai Joya, who became one of Afghanistan's most famous and infamous women in 2003 when she challenged the power of warlords in the country's new government. Two years later, the 28-year-old ran in her country's first democratic parliamentary election in over 30 years. A survivor of repeated assassination attempts, she campaigned surrounded by armed guards. How do you introduce democracy in a country where a majority of the people are illiterate, votes are for sale, and warlords use threats and bribes to control the ballots, and many women cannot leave their children to vote? As the film eloquently illustrates, it takes more than Western soldiers and diplomats. * Winner of the 2007 HRWIFF Nestor Almendros Prize and the Sundance Film Festival, World Cinema Prize: Documentary
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Other Sources for Global-Health-Related Films:
Silverdocs, an international documentary film festival celebrating the creative vision of independent filmmakers and the power of documentary to expand the public's world-view and enhance its understanding of the world.
FilmAid International: "Edutainment" film in refugee camp / website
FilmAid International is a nonprofit organization that uses the power of film and video to change lives. By screening films to hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced people each year, FilmAid promotes health, strengthens communities, and enriches the lives of the world's vulnerable and uprooted. FilmAid has developed innovative programs providing psychosocial stimulation, critical health education, and community-building messages on topics such as HIV/AIDS, human rights, peace and reconciliation and gender-based violence. Activities include mobile screenings of educational and entertaining films, local media production, facilitated discussions on issues critical to the refugee community and youth media projects.