Films for the semester ahead
Classroom Films for the Semester Ahead
The fall semester is almost here.
As you finalize syllabi, update course materials, and plan campus and orientation programming, we wanted to highlight a selection of MEF bestsellers, new releases, and featured films that are especially well suited for the semester ahead.
These films give students clear, compelling ways to examine how media shape public understanding, reflect and reinforce cultural and ideological assumptions, and influence debates about identity, power, democracy, inequality, and public life.
We hope you’ll consider making them part of your teaching and programming plans for the semester ahead.
All of these films are available on our streaming platform in multiple formats. They’re also available as part of MEF’s Premium Collection, which offers flexible subscription and permanent-access licensing options. To learn more about the Premium Collection, contact Stephen Belcourt at [email protected].
Featured Films for Fall Courses
Body Parts
This clear-eyed look at sex and intimacy on screen reveals how Hollywood has long filtered women’s bodies through the male gaze and shows how actors and filmmakers are pushing back against old assumptions about power, consent, and representation.
LEARN MORE
Breaking the News
An inside look at the launch of The 19th, a newsroom created by women to challenge who gets to define the news — and whose lives, voices, and experiences are treated as central to democracy.
LEARN MORE
The Encampments
This immersive inside account of the 2024 Gaza solidarity encampments at Columbia University captures a defining flashpoint over protest, policing, media framing, and whose voices count in public debate.
LEARN MORE
The Black Atlantic
Paul Gilroy revisits his landmark work on Black identity, slavery, empire, and modernity, showing how music, literature, memory, and culture have shaped Black political life across national boundaries.
LEARN MORE
Theaters of War
Drawing on declassified documents, Roger Stahl reveals how the Pentagon and CIA have shaped Hollywood entertainment, turning war into spectacle while pushing its human costs out of view.
LEARN MORE
Television Event
This extraordinary behind-the-scenes account of The Day After, the 1983 TV movie that forced millions of Americans to confront nuclear war, shows how mass media can break through denial, disrupt official narratives, and change public debate.
LEARN MORE
Hazing
Byron Hurt takes a deeply personal look at hazing in fraternities, sororities, sports teams, marching bands, the military, and beyond, revealing how cultural norms and rituals of belonging can give way to violence, secrecy, and institutional denial.
LEARN MORE
The Invisible Doctrine
George Monbiot exposes the largely unnamed ideology of neoliberalism and traces how market logic came to dominate politics, media, and everyday life while concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands.
LEARN MORE
The Bystander Moment
Jackson Katz examines how dominant ideas about manhood help perpetuate gender violence, showing how media narratives and male peer cultures can normalize sexism and misogyny while fueling silence in the face of men’s abusive behavior.
LEARN MORE.
The Illusionists
This wide-ranging global critique of advertising and consumer culture reveals how media industries sell impossible beauty standards while turning insecurity about bodies, gender, race, and aging into profit.
LEARN MORE
