Top Picks for the New Semester Fall 2024
Use these films in your fall classes to help students think critically about the power & influence of media culture and some of the most high-stakes issues & debates of our time.
Our Back-to-School Sale runs through 9/20! Apply code BACKTOSCHOOL24 at checkout.*
Award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt’s acclaimed film HAZING takes a deeply personal look inside the culture, tradition, and secrecy of hazing rituals in fraternities and sororities, sports teams, marching bands, the military, and beyond. Drawing on a range of voices, HAZING provides a nuanced and empathetic portrait of a culture that provides a sense of belonging even as it too often leads to violence, sexual degradation, binge drinking, institutional coverups, and debased notions of manhood. HAZING is indispensable for classes and campus programming during National Hazing Awareness Week (Sept. 23-27). 20% off through 9/20.
NEW RELEASE: The Cure for Hate, from award-winning filmmaker Peter Hutchison, documents the profound journey of atonement taken by Tony McAleer, a one-time white-supremacist skinhead and Holocaust denier, as he travels to the former Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau and explores the conditions that allowed for the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe. McAleer, the co-founder of the activist group Life After Hate, shines much-needed light on how men get into, and out of, violent extremist groups, and forces us to confront the dangers of allowing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of white-nationalist hate to fester unchecked and unchallenged. A timely reminder that transformation and healing are always possible. A timely reminder that transformation and healing are always possible.
COMING SOON: We’re releasing this brand-new, fully revised update of our 2020 film The Man Card just in time to make sense of the explosive gender politics shaping the 2024 presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The Man Card: 50 Years of Gender, Power & the American Presidency explores how the Right has been weaponizing regressive ideas about manhood for years to cast their opponents as “soft” and appeal to working-class white male voters at the level of identity rather than policy. Created by Jackson Katz, directed by award-winning filmmakers Peter Hutchison and Lucas Sabean, and slated for a September release. Stay tuned for details. 20% off through 9/20.
With the NFL set to kick off another season, don’t miss our bestselling film Behind the Shield, a fascinating and fast-paced look at the cultural and political influence of America’s most popular sports league. In the film, acclaimed journalist Dave Zirin explores how the NFL has promoted militarism and nationalism, glorified destructive ideals of masculinity and femininity, normalized systemic racism and corporate greed, and helped cast dissent as “unpatriotic.” At the same time, Zirin identifies an equally strong counter-current of player protest. The result is a film that’s less about sports, football, or even the National Football League, than about America itself. 20% off through 9/20.
NEW RELEASE: Television Event, from award-winning filmmaker Jeff Daniels, tells the remarkable behind-the-scenes story of the making of the The Day After, a blockbuster 1983 ABC TV movie about nuclear war that transfixed the nation and pressured U.S. and the Soviet leaders to return to the negotiating table and draw back their arsenals. At once darkly funny and deadly serious, Television Event is a superb and timely resource for educators and activists looking to raise awareness about the accelerating threat of nuclear war, the absurdity of current nuclear deterrence policy, and the inspiring history of the anti-nuclear movement.
Blowing the lid off a largely unknown, decades-long partnership between Hollywood, the Pentagon, and the CIA, Theaters of War traces how the U.S. military has shaped – and censored – the scripts of thousands of popular war epics and action movies over a period of decades. Featuring scores of clips from blockbuster films like Top Gun: Maverick and incisive commentary from propaganda experts, media scholars, combat veterans, and film industry insiders, Theaters of War is at once an explosive investigative piece, a riveting viewing experience, and a great tool for encouraging critical thinking about how we consume Hollywood films and understand the human costs of war. 20% off through 9/20.
NEW RELEASE! Beyond the Straight and Narrow, the newest installment in Katherine Sender’s groundbreaking documentary film series, examines the cultural, economic, and technological forces that have paved the way for an increasingly complex range of queer and transgender representations on American television. The film also considers this expanding, progressively nuanced range of LGBTQ television characters and plotlines against the backdrop of a growing right-wing backlash against LGBTQ visibility in our schools, athletics, and public spaces.
The Occupation of the American Mind explores how U.S. officials, Israeli officials, and an American lobbying effort propelled by evangelical Christians, U.S. military interests, and right-wing pro-Israel pressure groups have helped shape U.S. media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over time. The film places special emphasis on efforts to conceal the brutality of Israel’s illegal, decades-long occupation of Palestinian land and to cast pro-Palestinian voices as anti-Semitic. Shines much-needed light on current attempts to silence and smear pro-Palestinian perspectives on American college campuses, and beyond, as Israel’s devastating U.S.-backed war on Gaza continues. 20% off through 9/20.
Our perennial bestseller Killing Us Softly 4, featuring pioneering media scholar Jean Kilbourne, methodically dissects how contemporary print and television advertisements create a misogynistic fantasy world of undernourished, oversexualized, and objectified women. Kilbourne also sets these images within the real-world context of eating disorders, gender violence, and the ongoing political backlash against women’s equality. Since the original version first premiered more than 40 years ago, Killing Us Softly has become a classic in the field and a staple in media literacy curricula around the world. 20% off through 9/20.
The late bell hooks was one of the most formidable and influential feminist cultural critics of our time. If you’re looking for an accessible introduction to her work, be sure to check out bell hooks: Cultural Criticism & Transformation. In the film, which we made with hooks in 1997 during one of the most prolific periods of her career, the celebrated author explores how popular culture reproduces dominant ideas about race, gender, and capitalism, and makes a convincing case for media education as a form of self-defense against unjust systems of power, oppression, and class domination. As relevant today as ever. 20% off through 9/20.
Tough Guise 2, the newest edition in Jackson Katz’s trailblazing exploration of masculinity, media, and violence, makes a powerful case that the ongoing global epidemic of gender violence can’t be understood without critically examining and disrupting regressive cultural norms of manhood. Since the first edition debuted almost 25 years ago, Tough Guise has become a go-to resource in college courses and gender violence prevention work for educators and activists looking to introduce key concepts in how dominant ideas about masculinity, and femininity, intersect with violence and power. 20% off through 9/20.
In Digital Disconnect, renowned media scholar Robert McChesney exposes how corporate capitalism has turned the internet against democracy. With breathtaking clarity, McChesney dissects how internet giants surreptitiously collect personal data and sell it to advertisers; how telecom monopolies collude with the national security state to advance mass surveillance programs; and how social media platforms filter people into ideological bubbles that prioritize partisan misinformation over real journalism. An invaluable and accessible introduction to the political economy of today’s digital media landscape. 20% off through 9/20.
In Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse, media scholar Sut Jhally makes the case that there’s no way to avert the coming climate catastrophe without first confronting the near-religious status of American consumerism and the immense cultural power of the advertising industry. Ranging from the birth of modern advertising to the full-scale commercialization of U.S. media culture today, Jhally shows how advertising taps into powerful emotions that blind us to the costs of growing global consumption and endless economic growth. Ideal for courses that look at consumerism, corporate propaganda, and climate change. 20% off through 9/20.
The award-winning Requiem for the American Dream features the legendary Noam Chomsky on one of the defining issues of our time: accelerating economic inequality. Combining Chomsky’s rare explanatory powers with breathtaking visuals and stunning motion graphics, the film dissects a long line of government policies that have benefited corporations and the wealthiest Americans while destroying the American middle class and undermining the very functioning of democracy. At once an extraordinary teaching tool and a remarkable piece of cinema. 20% off through 9/20.
Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun’s bestselling film Latinos Beyond Reel explores how dehumanizing media representations of Latino/a people have shaped public attitudes and government policies over time. Centering the voices of Latino/a journalists, community leaders, actors, directors, scholars, and children, the film pays tribute to the diverse histories, cultures, and contributions of Latino/a people while also identifying and dissecting a longstanding pattern of retrograde, fear-inducing anti-Latino/a stereotypes in American political discourse, news media, and popular culture. 20% off through 9/20.
From now through September 20, you’ll get 20% off most of the films in our catalog with the code BACKTOSCHOOL24.
*The sale excludes new releases.