The Films of Bess Lomax Hawes B/W, 107 minutes
This DVD brings together four films by American folklorist Bess Lomax Hawes - GEORGIA SEA ISLAND SINGERS (1964), BUCKDANCER (1965), PIZZA PIZZA DADDY-O (1967), and SAY OLD MAN CAN YOU PLAY THE FIDDLE (1970) - made while at the Anthropology Department of San Fernando Valley State College. These films concentrate on performance and by implication how the performers’ aesthetics both inform and reflect societal values.

Ika Hands - SPECIAL EDITION color, 99 minutes
Here Gardner’s film about the Ika, a Mayan remnant living high in the Sierra Nevadas, is augmented by a conversation between the filmmaker and nobel laureate Octavio Paz and readings from Gardner’s journals illustrated with over 60 color photographs. This newly re-mastered DVD provides further insight not only on shamanism, but also answers to the question: What can images tell us?

John Bishop Short Films B/W & color, 87 minutes
This DVD brings together 14 short films and videos by John Bishop made between 1975-2000 broken down into three categories - documentary, observational and dance.

The Key From Spain: The Songs & Stories of Flory Jagoda color, 40 minutes
In this uplifting tale of survival and continuation, acclaimed Sephardic folksinger, Flory Jagoda, tells the story of her life, of all our lives. With warmth and passion, she sings the songs of her ancestors and contributes melodies and lyrics of her own to this timeless musical canon.

OSS Tales B/W & color, 68 minutes
Folklorists Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy visited Padstow, Cornwall in 1951, producing a film, Oss Oss Wee Oss, about its May Day celebration. In 2004, filmmaker John Bishop and folklorist Sabina Magliocco returned to Padstow to see how the custom was faring fifty years later. This DVD contains four films: Oss Tales (2007), Oss Oss Wee Oss (1953), Oss Oss Wee Oss Redux: Beltane in Berkeley (2004), and About the Oss Films (2007).

Running Out of Time color, 104 minutes
This documentary locates the crisis of Indian Adivasi agriculture in the larger context of Jharkhand’s political and economic history. Positing the indigenous Adivasi people and their ecosystem against overwhelming national interventions that have carved out an industrial and urban “state” in Jharkhand, it shows the fundamental impact of such development on Jharkhand’s environment and demography.

The Swahili Beat color, 28 minutes
This is an upbeat look at the remarkable history of the Swahili people of Kenya and Tanzania’s East African coast. Packed with the music and dance of its indigenous peoples, the film takes viewers along the coast from the fabled island of Lamu to Zanzibar, Mombasa, Kilwa, Bagamoyo and Dar es Salaam, tracing the development of the Swahili culture through the intermarriage of Arab settlers with local Africans.