Psy 303. Person in Society:

Constructing a Multicultural Society in the United States

Fall 2004

FILMOGRAPHY

The Wedding Banquet [VHS videorecording]
The Samuel Goldwyn Company presents a Central Motion Pictures Corporation Production.

FoxVideo, 1994, c1993. (108 minutes)

SSU Call No.: VHS 1987 

Credits: Producers, Ted Hope, James Schamus and Ang Lee ; director, Ang Lee; writers, Ang Lee, Neil Peng and James Schamus.

Cast: Ah-Leh Gua, Sihung Lung, May Chin, Winston Chao, Mitchell Lichtenstein. (Click here for a complete Cast List)

Summary: Successful New Yorker Wai Tung and his partner Simon are blissfully happy except for on thing: Wai Tung’s conservative parents are determined to find a nice girl for him to marry. To please them—and to get a tax break—he arranges a sham marriage to Wei Wei, an attractive artist from mainland China in need of a green card. When his family swoops into town for the wedding, the event turns into a traditional Chinese extravaganza that highlights the encounter of Chinese and American, gay and straight, and older and younger generations. (Adapted from the DVD case.)

Other films by Ang Lee include Eat, Drink, Man Women; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; and Sense and Sensibility.

ISBN 0793981700

Monsoon Wedding [DVD videorecording]

Universal Studios, 2001, c2003. (111 minutes)

SSU Call No.  MRES 663

Credits: Directed by Mira Nair.

Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Lillete Dubey, Shefali Shetty, Vijay Raaz, Tilotama Shome, Vasundhara Das, Parvin Dabas, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Kamini Khanna. (Click here for a complete Cast List.)

Summary: Ria Verma (Shefali Shetty) is about to marry and move to America in a traditional arranged marriage. Her parents are staging a ceremony which brings the extended family together for four days of festivities. There are many relationships and subplots involving members of this group. One of the more touching is the upwardly mobile wedding planner, Dubey (Vijay Raaz), whose interest in the possibility of marriage for himself offers many glimpses into the life of the servant class. The father (Naseeruddin Shah) struggles to manage the arrangements for the affair while attending to the needs of his children, nieces, and other friends and relatives; this is the thread that ties this whole domestic comedy-drama together.

Other films by Mira Nair include Mississippi Masala and Vanity Fair.

My Family/Mi Familia [VHS videorecording]

A New Line Cinema release in association with Majestic Films and American Playhouse Theatrical Film; an American Zoetrope-Anna Thomas-Newcomm production.

New Line Home Video ; Turner Home Entertainment, 1995. (121 minutes)

SSU Call No.: VHS 2790    

Credits: Written by Gregory Nava & Anna Thomas ; produced by Anna Thomas ; directed by Gregory Nava. Director of photography, Edward Lachman; editor, Nancy Richardson ; production designer, Barry Robison; folkloric music score, Pepe Avila; orchestral music score, Mark McKenzie; executive producers, Francis Ford Coppola, Guy East, Tom Luddy, Lindsay Law.

Cast: Jimmy Smits, Esai Morales, Eduardo Lopez Rojas, Jenny Gago, Elpidia Carrillo, Enrique Castillo, Constance Marie, Edward James Olmos. (Click here for a complete Cast List.)

Summary: The three-generation saga of the Sanchez family is told by the eldest son (Edward James Olmos). From the beginnings of his father's journey from Mexico to California in the 1920s, to his brother Chucho's (Esai Morales) tragic rebellion of the 1950s, to the stark realities of modern day life, the struggle to live the American dream is sometimes darkened but never diminished for Paco Sanchez and his family. The film illuminates many varied strands in the drama of Mexican-American family life. (Adapted from the cassette case.)

ISBN 0780607678 :

ISBN/ISSN 9404341523

The Color Purple [VHS videorecording]

Warner Brothers.

Warner Home Video, 1985, c1991. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker. (154 minutes)

SSU Call No.: VHS 2575 

Credits: Executive producers, Jon Peters, Peter Guber ; producer-director, Steven Spielberg ; screenplay, Menno Meyjes.

Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Adolph Caesar, Margaret Avery, Rae Dawn Chong. (Click here for a complete Cast List.)

Summary: The film transforms Alice Walker’s character study of transformation and redemption presented as a diary written in authentic dialect into a complex but illuminating saga of an African-American family’s challenges and triumphs. An uneducated woman living in the rural American south was raped by her father, deprived of the children she bore him, and forced to marry a brutal man she calls "Mister." Her tragedy is transformed by the friendship of two remarkable women, with whose help she acquires self-worth and the strength to forgive. (Adapted from the SSU Library description.)

ISBN 0790703270

Lives in Hazard [DVD videorecording].

An Olmos Production of an Archipelago Film.

(Documentary on the making of Edward James Olmos’ American Me, available on the DVD version of the film.)

Universal Studios, c1993. (60 minutes)

Credits: Directed and Produced by Susan Todd & Andrew Young; Editor, Jonathan Oppenheim; Co-Producers, Nicholas Athas & Daniel A. Haro; Camera, Adnrew Young; Sound, Susan Todd; Executive Producer, Edward James Olmos.

Summary: American Me was the directing debut of Zoot Suit star Edward James Olmos. It traces the career of Santana, a youth from the streets of East Los Angeles, where much of the movie was filmed. Santana becomes a leader of the Mexican Mafia while incarcerated in Folsom Prison. When he returns to those streets, he finds himself trapped by his past and the imperatives of life in the barrio. However, Olmos has suggested that this documentary is more useful than the original film because it documents the world of the real life gang members who assisted in the making of American Me.

American History X [VHS videorecording]

New Line Cinema presents a Turman-Morrissey Company production.

New Line Home Video, [1999], c1998. (119 minutes)

SSU Call No.: VHS 4716 

Credits: Written by David McKenna ; produced by John Morrissey ; directed by Tony Kaye. Film editors, Jerry Greenberg, Alan Heim; music, Anne Dudley.

Cast: Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Stacy Keach. (Click here for a complete Cast List.)

Summary: This is a dramatization of the anger and violence of interracial conflict that is fomented by elements of society, especially in the prison system. The story focuses on a young man who falls in with a group of white supremacists after his father is murdered. The film sometimes strains the limits of credibility in documenting the brutal consequences of racism, but it offers some important insights into the distorted logic of white supremacist thought. (Adapted from the SSU Library description)

ISBN 0780625129

ISBN/ISSN 794043471537

The Color of Fear [VHS videorecording]

Stir-Fry Productions, c1994. (90 minutes)

SSU Call No.: VHS 2209/MRES 825 

Credits: Producer and director, Lee Mun Wah; co-producer, Monty Hunter.

Summary: Eight North American men of different races talk together about how racism affects them. This film offers some deep, empathic insights into the causes and consequences of racism, including the extent to which the wounds of racism are often inflicted unconsciously. (Adapted from SSU Library description)

Not For Ourselves Alone [VHS videorecording]:

the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony / a Florentine Films production ; [producer] WETA ; a film by Ken Burns and Paul Barnes ; written by Geoffrey C. Ward ; produced by Paul Barnes, Ken Burns.

American Lives Film Project, Inc. ; [Alexandria, Va.] : PBS Video [distributor] , c1999. (2 parts, 90 minutes each)

SSU Call No.: VHS 3457

Credits: Cinematography, Buddy Squires, Allen Moore, Ken Burns ; editor, Sarah E. Hill.

Performers: Sally Kellerman, narrator; Ronnie Gilbert, Julie Harris, voices.

Editorial Review (Amazon.com)

Feminism is a problematic word: to some it means the ongoing struggle for the equal rights of women; for others the connotations are derogatory, the word conjuring images of emasculating woman. And for still others, mostly the younger generation who grew up with mothers in the workforce, the term is outdated, referring to a movement whose relevance is diminishing. Postfeminism, antifeminism, the feminist backlash--these terms are wielded with little understanding of the context in which the feminist movement was born. Luckily, Ken Burns and Paul Barnes have created this superb documentary, Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, to remind us of the roots of the women's movement and to show just how far we have come in such a short period of time.

In the 19th century, Susan B. Anthony had few choices for her life: to live with a husband as "a doll or a drudge" (marry a poor man, she explains, and you spend your life doing housework as a drudge; marry a rich man, and you spend your life prettying yourself up and looking like a doll), to work as a schoolteacher, or to live with her family as an "old maid." And while she chose the life of the spinster to retain her independence, she didn't resign herself to a life of leisure. Born into a Quaker family devoted to abolition, Anthony championed the reform movement and dedicated herself to the suffragette life. In contrast, Elizabeth Cady Stanton married and had many children, yet this did not stop her from seeking the vote for women. A friendship with Lucretia Mott sparked a desire in this abolitionist to work for the cause of women, and Stanton and Anthony eventually teamed up to fire up the revolution of women in the United States.

This documentary, in the now-well-known Burns style--actors reading the works of Stanton and Anthony, archival footage and photos, commentary from historians--highlights not just the work of these women, but their friendship and their lives. Stanton and Anthony didn't live long enough to cast votes themselves, but their legacies and their struggles live today. Not for Ourselves Alone is a stunning testimonial to what's been accomplished and brings to life the two women to whom every female in the U.S. owes a tremendous debt. --Jenny Brown

Signs Out Of Time: the story of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas [VHS videorecording]

A documentary by Donna Read & Starhawk; narrated by Olivia Dukakis.

Belili Productions (2003)

(60 minutes)

Summary: The dramatic story of renowned archaeologist Dr. Marija Gimbutas has never been more timely. Her work on the Neolithic cultures of Old Europe, (6500-3500 BCE), reveals evidence of peaceful, woman-honouring, Goddess-worshipping, and egalitarian civilizations that existed thousands of years without war.

“This was a long-lasting period of remarkable creativity and stability, an age free of strife. Their culture was a culture of art.” – Marija Gimbutas

Determined and courageous, Marija Gimbutas stayed true to what she saw—amidst ridicule, criticism and controversy. If her theories are correct, their reverence for the earth, peace and cooperation are the very underpinnings of European civilization itself. (From the cassette cover.)

Mindwalk [VHS videorecording]

Atlas Production Company ; in association with Mindwalk Productions ; director, Bernt Capra ; producer, Adrianna AJ Cohen ; writers, Bernt Capra, Fritjof Capra, Floyd Byars.

[Hollywood, Calif.]: Paramount Pictures, [c1991]

(110 minutes.)

Note Originally produced as motion picture in 1990.

Based on the book by Fritjof Capra entitled The Turning Point.

SSU Call No: VHS 4295

Cast: Liv Ullman, Sam Waterston, John Heard

Summary: On the impressive island-abbey of Mont St. Michel, some very dissimilar vacationers are caught up in the spontaneous and life-affirming sweep of self-expression and new ideas. (SSU Library description.)