Films borrowed from the Office can be taken out for a max of three (3) business days, however, if extensions are needed, they will be evaluated by purpose and availability. By using the films provided by the Office of Diversity and Affirmative Action you agree to return them in a timely manner. If not returned, or lost you guarantee that your office will replace the film in behalf of our office.

Films available:

1. The Color of Fear is a film about the pain and anguish that racism has caused in the lives of eight North American men of Asian, European, Latino, and African descent. Out of their confrontations and struggles to understand and trust each other emerges an emotional and insightful portrayal into the type of dialogue most of us fear, but hope will happen sometimes in our lifetime.

2. The Color of Fear 2: walking each other home, winner of the Cindy international Silver Medal for best Social Science Film, is the continuation of the previous film. The new sequel explores more in depth the intimate relationships amongst the men as well as answering the question, “What can whites do to end racism?” The answer to that question, and many others, are explored in this fascinating conclusion to one of the most explosive films on issues in the United States.

3. Nuyorican Dream follows five years in the life of a New York Puerto Rican family. Eldest of five children, Robert Torres is the only family member to finish high school and graduate from college. He does meaningful harried work as a teacher and administrator at a bilingual alternative school he co-founded. Throughout the documentary, he offers blunt observations and statistics about the legacy of colonialism, inadequate inner-city educational systems and discrimination.

His siblings’ stories are less the American Dream than nightmare. Aborted educations, crack use, heroin, prison stints and offspring haplessly left behind the Grandma to raise constitute traps they can’t seem to escape.

4. Seniors: Four Years in Retrospect prepares undergraduates to take full advantage of these invaluable years of questioning and growth. The filmmakers of Frosh, widely acclaimed film makers, chronicle one year in a racially diverse, freshman residence hall. Returned to Stanford three years later to see how college life has changed five of these students

a. Monique, daughter of a crack-addicted mother, gets help from several black women mentors, graduates with honors and plans to go on for her PH.D.
b. Cheng, an academically driven, politically conservative Chinese American, drops pre-law for high risk career as a Singapore venture capitalist.
c. Sam, a white, male, heterosexual “jock”, accepts increasing campus diversity but still seeks his own cultural enclave in the world of sports and fraternities.
d. Brandi, an upper middle class African American student, drops out for two years’ experience in the “real world.”
e. Debbie, a white pre-med major, switches to Women’s Studies where she develops the self-confidence to go on to med school.

5. Shattering the Silences: The case for minority faculty. Across America campus diversity is under attack; affirmative action programs are banned, Ethnic Studies departments defunded, multicultural scholarship impugned. Even so, faculty of color remain less than 9.2% of all full time professors and minority student enrollment is dropping for the first time in 30 years. This movie offers everyone in higher education an unprecedented opportunity to see America campuses through the eyes of minority faculty themselves. The movie cuts through the rhetoric of the current Cultural Wars by telling the stories of eight pioneering scholars – Black, Latino, Native American and Asian American. As we watch them teach, mentor and conduct research, we realize in concrete terms how a diverse faculty enriches traditional disciplines and helps creates a more inclusive campus environment.

6. Skin Deep takes us on a journey into the hearts and minds of young people today as they struggle with their country’s racial legacy. With remarkable openness and candor, a diverse group of college students from across the country come together to share their anger, pain, confusion, and hope with each other and with us. This gutsy film encourages self examination and dialogue as it takes us beneath the surface of America’s racial divide.

7. Race: the power of illusion 1: The Differences Between Us is a program devoted to understanding why. Looking at skin color differences, disease, human evolution, even genetic traits, we learn there’s mot one characteristics, one trait, or even a single gene that distinguishes all members of one “race” from another. One by one, our myths about race – including ‘natural” superiority and inferiority – are taken apart.

8. Race: the power of illusion 2: The story we tell, questions the belief that race has always been with us. Ancient peoples stigmatized “others” based on language, custom, and especially religion, but they did not sort people into “races”.

9. Race: the power of illusion 3: The houses we live in asks, if race is not biology, what is it? This episode uncovers how race resides not in nature but in politics, economics and culture. It reveals how our social institutions “make” race by disproportionately channeling resources, power, status and wealth to white people.

10. Free Indeed: A video drama about racism is a video drama about racism that challenges white viewers to think about the privileges that come with being white in North America. In the drama four white, middle-class young adults play a card game as a pre-requisite for doing service project for a black Baptist church. The game leads to a discussion about the privileges white people have.

11. And the Band Played On is based on the first major outbreak of AIDS in the United States. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts examines the making of an epidemic. Shilts researched and reported on the beginning of the epidemic, chronicling almost day-by-day the first five years of AIDS. His work is critical of the medical and scientific communities’ initial response and particularly harsh on the Reagan Administration, who he claims cut funding, ignored calls for action and deliberately misled Congress. Shilts doesn’t stop there, wondering why more people in the gay community, the mass media and the country at large didn’t stand up in anger more quickly. The AIDS pandemic is one of the most striking developments of the late 20th century and this is the definitive story of its beginnings.

12. A Question of Color: Color Consciousness in Black America is the first documentary to confront “color consciousness” in the black community. It explores the devastating effect of a caste system based on how closely skin color, hair texture and facial features conform to a European ideal. It provides a unique window for examining cross-cultural issues of identity and self-image for anyone who has experienced prejudice.

13. Farmingville is a documentary on the shocking hate-based attempted murders of two Mexican day laborers catapult a small Long Island town into national headlines, unmasking a new frontline in the border wars: suburbia. For nearly a year, Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini lived and worked in Farmingville, New York, so they could capture first-hand the stories of residents, day laborers and activists on all sides of the debate.

14. Women of Islam: Veiling and Seclusion. During times of conflict with Islamic regimes, such as the recent war in Afghanistan, Western journalists and politicians tend to use the burqua (or veil) worn by some Muslim women as a symbol of oppression. They seem to suggest that, once these women have been freed from oppressive Islamic rule, they will immediately cast off their veils and rejoice in wearing the latest fashions of the West. In reality, however, this has not been the case. Director Farheen Umar travels throughout Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and the USA to talk to Muslim women and challenge the assumptions about the practice of wearing veils. This landmark documentary explores the origins of these stereotypes and confronts misconceptions about the tradition of covering in Muslim Society.

15. The Brooke Ellison Story. Paralyzed from the neck down by a devastating car accident, eleven-year-old Brooke Ellison and her family fight against all odds to help her live her dreams-including graduating with honors from Harvard University. A testament to the courage and determination of an unforgettable young girl and the family that stood by her, The Brooke Ellison Story is a deeply inspiring, often astonishing account of the triumph of the human spirit

16. No Dumb Questions. This documentary profiles three sisters, aged 6, 9 and 11, struggling to understand why and how their Uncle Bill is becoming a woman. These girls love their Uncle Bill. But will they feel the same way when he becomes their new Aunt Barbara? With just weeks until Bill's first visit as Barbara, the sisters navigate the complex territories of anatomy, sexuality, personality, gender and fashion. Their reactions are funny, touching, and distinctly different.

17. The Lunch Date. In a cafe, a white woman walks away from her table to get silverware. When she returns, she sees a black man eating her lunch. She shares her dinner with the stranger, and he gets coffee for the two of them. Not until he leaves does she look across the room and see that her own meal was on another table. A Comedy of errors.

18. The Way Home shows what happened when eight ethnic councils of women came together to talk honestly about race, gender and class in the US The result is an unpredictable collection of stories that reveal the far-reaching effects of social oppression and present an inspiring picture of women moving beyond the duality of black and white.

19. Community Voices. A multi-cultural array of patients, clinicians, and other healthcare workers explore the many ways that differences in culture, race and ethnicity affect health and the delivery of healthcare services

20. Crash. For two days in Los Angeles, a racially and economically diverse group of people pursue lives that collide with one another in unexpected ways. These interactions are always interesting, and sometimes quite unsettling. The film explores and challenges your ability to judge books by their covers.

21. Last Chance for Eden is a documentary about eight men and women discussing the issues of racism and sexism in the workplace. They examine the impact of society's stereotypes on their lives in the workplace, in their personal relationships and within their families and in their communities. In the course of their dialogue, they also explore the differences and similarities between racism and sexism - an area that has seldom been researched, but has heatedly become a very important issue needing to be understood and dealt with.

22. North Country. What Josey Aimes wants is a decent job so she can put food on the table and take care of her kids. What she gets is threatened, insulted, ogled, fondled, belittled, attacked and called filthy names. "Take it like a man," her callous male boss says. Instead, she takes it like a human being - and fights back. Charlize Theron portrays Josey in North Country, the searing story of women who broke the gender barrier laboring in hazardous Minnesota iron mines... and broke legal ground with the nation's first class-action sexual-harassment lawsuit.

23. Cuban Roots/Bronx Stories: Cuban Roots/Bronx Stories highlights the experience of a black Cuban American family, revealing that the Cuban-American experience is more diverse, racially and ideologically, than we are often led to believe.

24. Quilombo Country: This documentary is about rural communities in Brazil known as quilombos, from an Angolan word that means encampment. Quilombos were either founded by runaway slaves or begun from abandoned plantations. As many as 2,000 quilombos exist today. The film provides a glimpse into these communities, with extensive footage of ceremonies, dances and lifestyles, interwoven with discussions about their history and the issues most important to them currently.

By pressing accept button you understand the terms and conditions of which we are lending you the film. Please note that this service is only available to Stony Brook Faculty, Staff, and Student. This service is not available to outside individuals who may be interested in these films.