Henry Carter Hull

While the rural polyphonic songs of Georgia (Caucasus) are internationally appreciated and have become a national symbol, the urban instrumental music of the eastern part of the country is less well known. The Georgian duduki, a double-reed wind instrument of the oboe family, is known by different names in neighboring countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey. In the 19th century Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, had a large multi-lingual...

Walden combines delicate and brilliant images filmed on location around Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts with readings by poet, John D. Ogden, bringing to life the heart and soul of Thoreau's writings. Stunningly filmed by Rick Cardin at the height of New England's fall foliage season, Walden is one of the first films to capture the magical sense of place that inspired Thoreau. Through the selection of quotes, images and a soulful score by legendary...

Shot around the Palmyra oasis, Syria. Despite its bad reputation in the international press, the Syrian government is very much involved in the effort of protecting its natural heritage. This is the story of a handful of visionary men who are fighting in the desert to protect what is left of the biodiversity of Al Badia. Their efforts will be rewarded by the discovery of the last Middle Eastern breeding colony of the Bald Ibis in the wild, one of...

Covers the high profile controversy over the south central farm in Los Angeles, the largest urban garden in the country. The story includes the benefits of urban farms, celebrity tree sitters, citizen supporters, dramatic evictions of farmers, rarely told developer's defense and updates on farmers efforts to continue to sustain themselves, physically and spiritually. Celebrity activists include Daryl Hannah, Joan Baez, Julia Butterfly Hill, Martin...

A film about our global water situation, water politics and the poor people's struggle for enough drinking water. In India farmers, joined by the famous environmentalist Vandana Shiva, are prostesting against Coca-Cola. They mean that their ground water is going down and is being polluted because of the soft drink production in many places all over India. It's a film about the strong, Indian women who dare to protest, and the Coke factory that had...

The Balinese cremation ceremony, or ngaben, has primarily been known in the West as either a major tourist attraction that dazzles visitors with the splendor, intricacy, and drama of its performance, or as fodder for long-standing anthropological arguments about personhood and emotion on the island that debated whether or not Balinese people expressed, or even experienced, grief. According to Balinese Hindu beliefs, cremation is one of the most important...

"Days Of Waiting is a poignant documentary about an extraordinary woman, artist Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians to be interned with 110,000 Japanese Americans in 1942. When internment came, she refused to be separated from her Japanese American husband and lived with him for four years behind barbed wire in the desolate Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming. During her internment, the artist recorded the rigors and deprivations of camp life with...

This whimsical journey into original bush toy creations in the central desert of Australia puts a new slant on the craft of toy making. From the early pastoralist days of colonisation to current international art exhibitions as far afield as New York, we see the inventive adaptation of traditional European-style toys now accepted into modern Aboriginal culture. Made from salvaged materials stripped from car bodies and found amongst discarded refuse...

A unique collaboration between two indigenous filmmakers and an anthropologist, Owners of the water is a compelling documentary with groundbreaking ethnographic imagery. A central Brazilian Xavante, a Wayuu from Venezuela, and a US anthropologist explore an indigenous campaign to protect a river from devastating effects of uncontrolled Amazonian soy cultivation. Xavante and Wayuu are nationally and internationally prominent political actors and both...

Franki Sibberson's fourth and fifth grade students use binders to organize their weekly news magazines in a compilation for use throughout the year. In this classroom vignette, the students use these magazines collected and organized over many weeks as part of their social studies curriculum considering the legal system. After the classroom sequence, Franki and Karen Szymusiak, an elementary principal, discuss the many natural curriculum extensions...