As the summer sun begins to set, the anticipation of a new academic year dawns upon us. At Video Librarian, we are thrilled to welcome you back with open arms and an exciting array of educational documentary recommendations that will invigorate your classrooms and libraries!
Our commitment to promoting the power of film in education remains unwavering, and we take immense pride in curating a collection of captivating movies that cater specifically to the academic community.
Explore the Magic of Educational Cinema
The Back to School season presents a golden opportunity to introduce your students to the transformative world of film. To aid you in creating an inspiring and immersive learning environment, we have handpicked a selection of enriching documentary recommendations that cover a wide range of subjects and themes.
Lights, Camera, Education!
At Video Librarian, we firmly believe in the transformative power of film as a medium for education and enlightenment. Our curated movie recommendations offer valuable educational experiences that go beyond the traditional classroom setting, inspiring students to think critically, feel deeply, and explore the world with curiosity and wonder.
This Back to School season, let Video Librarian be your trusted guide in incorporating the magic of cinematic storytelling into your lesson plans and library programs. Our films are carefully selected to stimulate minds, spark discussions, and ignite a lifelong love of learning.
Welcome to Back to School 2023-2024 with Video Librarian!
Art and Pep
Mercedes Kane | United States | 2022 | 88 min.
Their iconic gay bar, Sidetrack, has helped fuel movements and create a community for decades in Chicago's queer enclave. But, behind the business and their historic activism exists a love unlike any other. The documentary film Art and Pep tells the inspiring story of the long struggle for equality and their fight to love freely.
Art and Pep are Chicago's Art Johnston and Pepe Peña. They are civil rights leaders whose life and love is a force behind LGBTQ+ equality in the heart of the country.
Purchase from Green Planet Films
Atomic Hope: Inside the Pro-Nuclear Movement
Frankie Fenton | Ireland | 2022 | 82 min.
Atomic Hope follows a tiny global movement of unpopular pro-nuclear activists who strongly believe we need nuclear power in order to decarbonize our energy systems before catastrophic climate change occurs.
Intimately filmed over a ten-year period, these advocates for nuclear energy come from all over the world; from Japan to Switzerland, America to Australia. But these individual activists face clashes and opposition at every juncture. However, in the face of this pushback and conflict, they argue that “science and data are all we have”. It’s the science they base their environmental movement on, which directly challenges popular beliefs and myths around nuclear energy and these prevailing issues.
Purchase from Green Planet Films
The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama in His Own Words
Rosemary Rawcliffe | United States | 2022 | 82 min.
Through intimate conversations and previously unreleased archival footage and images, the Dalai Lama reveals his story and his experience of the personal, political, spiritual, and historical events that shaped his life.
The Great 14th is a groundbreaking new film about the life of the Dalai Lama. The Great 14th offers an extraordinary, unprecedented insight into the complexities of his life—from the past lives of the 5th and 13th Dalai Lamas to his current life as the spiritual and former political leader of Tibet and as a tireless Nobel Peace Laureate. This is a story—and a film—for the ages, revealing the soul of the simple monk who aspires every day to walk the enlightened path of the Bodhisattva.
Purchase from Green Planet Films
The Story of Oil
Yves Billion, Jean Pierrre Beaurenaut | United States | 2020 | 179 min.
A new geopolitical, economic history of oil covering its discovery, the rise of OPEC, its current impact, and the economic challenges created for the 21st century thanks primarily to Vladimir Putin, his war on Ukraine, and BIG oil.
Oil is not a ‘technology’. It is a limited resource that has long been undervalued, fueling a careless and growing world. Will truly green alternatives to oil like solar, wind, tidal, biomass and hydro ever become a viable option for us? Or must we drastically change our ways? The Story of Oil reflects on the past and the learn the lessons we've learned to contemplate how we might move forward.
Purchase from Planet Group Entertainment
100 Ways to Cross the Border
Amber Bay Bemak | United States + Mexico | 2023 | 84 min.
An ideal film to screen during Hispanic Heritage Month, 100 Ways to Cross the Border celebrates Gómez-Peña and the contributions his radical, queer, anti-colonial art has made to conversations around border thinking, gender politics, and Latinx identity.
At a time when there is more and more news in the mainstream media about the U.S.-Mexico border, 100 Ways to Cross the Border (2022) presents the work and philosophical frameworks of an artist who has had a sustained dedication to radical, highly impactful, and innovative artistic interventions on the border.
This vibrant documentary explores the 40-year career of prolific Latinx performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña as he enacts his interventions by “queering the border-” claiming all borders as queer and liminal spaces.
‘I’ve been fighting to control my image for only 40 years and the fight never ends!’, notes Gómez-Peña ironically, turning the camera for a moment on the film’s director Amber Bay Bemak, reversing the gaze. The moment encapsulates their life as a Mexican/Chicanx performance artist, activist, and founder of the trans-disciplinary arts organization La Pocha Nostra (LPN), as well as Bemak’s approach as a documentary filmmaker.
Gómez-Peña and Bemak attempt to queer all sorts of borders – not only territorial but also those relating to race, gender, sexuality, and even filmmaking. With intimacy and honesty, this film shares Gómez-Peña and LPN’s ethos and practice, creating an open space for collaboration both behind and in front of the camera, resulting in a work that embodies LPN’s multi-centric and fluid approach to narrative.
Dreams of Chonta
Monica Cohen | United States | 2019 | 92 min.
An ideal film to screen during This easy-to-watch documentary would be an excellent choice for Hispanic Heritage Month programming and film collections focusing on Latin America, Afro-Latin, Music, and Migration studies.
New York is the promised land for musicians, welcoming outstanding and virtuoso performers from every corner of the world hoping to find success. Diego Obregón, an Afro-Colombian musician, leaves his family behind on the Pacific Coast of Colombia, with this in mind. In New York, Obregón endures a solitary life as an undocumented immigrant and a minimum-wage job at a cemetery all to become an ambassador of his music and culture. His journey reflects both the challenges immigrants face in the United States and how vital they are to it, taking viewers beyond the headlines and the stereotypes into the dynamic and diverse experiences of Latinx people.
With unprecedented access to New York’s underground Latinx music scene, Dreams of Chonta (2020) takes us to where the greatest musicians from around the world blend to create, perform, live, and breathe music. Through his legacy and impressive performances, Obregón honors the richness and waves of change that immigration produces.
Dreams of Chonta will not only inform students about Afro-descendent music, culture, and immigrants in the US, but it will also encourage conversations on where we need to stand in this battle for immigration rights and what immigrants really represent in society.
Match & Marry
SUZANNAH WARLICK / UNITED STATES / 2007 / 48 MIN / DOCUMENTARY
A fresh look into the tradition of matchmaking that dates back thousands of years. The arduous task of matchmaking is explored and integrated into modern times.
Filmed mainly in Brooklyn and Manhattan, the documentary features tales, anecdotes, and surprises of matchmaking, dating, and marriage in the Orthodox Jewish community. The philosophy of marriage and the roles of men and women within Orthodox Jewish marriage is also explored. Although it focuses on the Jewish culture, the messages are universal. Sure to be an enjoyable, entertaining, and educational experience.
Purchase from Bubble Soup Productions
Rescue & Escape – Passage To Sweden
Suzannah Warlick | United States | 2021 | 58 min.
Passage to Sweden examines the unique experience of Jews in Scandinavia and Budapest during WWII where spontaneous and dramatic rescue operations were conducted to save thousands of lives.
It captures the courage, compassion, and protection that Scandinavian countries and their citizens offered refugees facing persecution and is a reminder that anyone can make a difference. The film is divided into chapters covering the Norwegian resistance, the Danish rescue, Raoul Wallenberg, and the Swedish White Bus rescue.
This is beneficial for classroom viewing and discussion of each or any particular subject. Most importantly, of the choices people make in desperate situations.
The film is appropriate for History regarding WWII in addition to Scandinavian, Hungarian, Russian, German, Holocaust, and Jewish studies. The film is also available for public screenings and a director's Q&A.
Purchase from Bubble Soup Productions
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Zest for Life: Afro-Peruvian Rhythms, a Source of Latin Jazz
Eve A. Ma | United States + Peru | 57 min.
Afro-Peruvians are the inventors of the cajón drum now popular in Latin jazz, flamenco, and other musical forms but this is not all they have contributed. Focused on the ever-charismatic Lalo Izquierdo - dancer, musician, folklorist and more - the hour-long documentary is a pleasure to watch and uniquely informative.
Available for purchase through the producer LINK, it is also carried by Midwest Tape, Alexander Street Press, Films for the Humanities & Sciences, and other major distributors.
"...satisfying...[a] good educational tool...."
- Troy Bedford, Anthropology Review
"...a must have for educational libraries...."
- J. Zimmerman, Video Librarian
"Lalo Izquierdo...is so compelling, you might just jump up and join in."
- Deidre Towers, Former Curator, Dance on Camera Film Festival
Purchase from Palomino Productions