Central Skagit Library District

This film provides insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by families in three contrasting communities in Costa Rica. Developed for an innovative teaching collaboration between Southern New Hampshire University and earth University, the film looks at key community economic development issues as seen by the region's residents, by earth University students working in the communities, and by experienced University faculty. The video includes...

Deep in Southern Mexico's jungle, the Villa Luz limestone caves support an ecosystem that thrives in a highly poisonous, acidic environment. This rare type of cave is found in few spots on Earth. The Villa Luz, is known for the bacteria in its thermal sulphur springs that produce hydrogen sulfide gas. When the gases form bonds with oxygen, the result is sulfuric acid. The acid eats away at the cave walls, constantly altering the patterns in the cretaceous...

A collage of daily life in Aq Kupruk builds from the single voice that calls the townspeople to prayer, the brisk exchange of the baazar, communal labor in the fields, and the uninhibited sports and entertainment of rural Afghans.

In Shimofukuzawa, Japan, the local men's youth association organizes the annual Dosojin deity festival. The festivities are characterized by paper decorations and pantomime, with sexualized symbols promoting marriage and fertility.

For thousands of years, the Cree Indians of James Bay inhabited the northern Quebec forests - originally gathering wild rice, and later hunting, fishing, and trapping. Traditionally, small groups of families spent the winter months together in the bush, subsisting on moose, beaver, deer, wild geese and caribou.

In the late 19th century, the Canadian government removed ritual objects from the possession of the Kwakiut'l, a Native American community on the Northwest Coast. The 'potlatch', as it was called, was their way of celebrating their culture, their identity and their heritage. A ritual passing down of treasures, it symbolized a rebirth of tradition, a positive affirmation of their identity, past and present. In 1921 the Kwakiut'l people of Alert Bay,...

This film traces the remarkable journey of New Communities, Inc. and the struggle for racial justice and economic empowerment among African Americans in southwest Georgia. NCI was created in 1969 in Albany, Georgia by leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Congressman John Lewis, and Charles and Shirley Sherrod, to help secure economic independence for African American families. For 15 years, NCI cooperatively farmed nearly 6,000 acres, the...