Suggested Videos for Use with Chapter 4

Period Piece - A 30 min. documentary about menarche --a girl's first menstrual period -- which is a fundamental experience in every woman's life, yet one that is rarely celebrated.
http://www.jayrosenblattfilms.com/period.html

The Last Warriors - Filmed over a four-year period, this visually stunning five-part series intimately captures weddings, funerals, rites of passage, and celebrations among seven of Africa’s fierce yet spiritual warrior tribes. Sharing a proud and violent past and an uncertain future, do the men and women depicted in these programs represent the final heirs of their ancient ways of life?
http://www.films.com/Films_Home/Item.cfm/1/11794/ixs

Kinaalda: Navajo Rite of Passage - The Kinaalda ceremony, an intricate four-day event performed to guide a young girl’s ascent to womanhood, is considered one of the most important and sacred rituals among the Navajo people. Filmmaker Lena Carr was regrettably denied her Kinaalda ceremony because of her parents’ relocation out of the reservation. In this highly moving and visually arresting documentary, Carr journeys back into her childhood by intimately chronicling her 13-year old niece’s initiation into womanhood.
http://www.wmm.com/girlsproject/c556.htm

A Rite of Passage - [From the San (Ju/Wasi) Series] - A small ceremony called "marking" takes place when a !Kung boy kills his first large antelope. Hunting not only provides meat and useful skins and sinews, but a young man's successful kill also discharges a social obligation to his potential father-in-law, who is provided with meat to distribute to the entire village.
http://www.der.org/films/rite-of-passage.html

Return To Belaye: A Rite of Passage - An insider's look at a manhood initiation ritual in the village of Belaye, Senegal, West Africa. The Documentary focuses on filmmaker, Amy Flannery and her husband, Papis Goudiaby, as they leave their home in the United States and journey back to Papis' birthplace where he must undergo the tribe's traditional initiation rite. http://www.der.org/films/return-to-belaye.html

Stand by Me - (motion picture) The movie set in a small Oregon town during the last weekend of summer in 1959. The protagonists (Will Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O'Connel) are all twelve years old and they will begin Junior High School right after the long Labor Day Weekend. The boys have time for one final adventure before they must leave their boyhood days behind forever. They overhear some older boys discussing the location of the body of a boy their own age who has been hit and killed by a train.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00003CXIP/qid=1104956801/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-8158541
-9148756?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846

To Sir With Love - (motion picture) This movie is the only one of the selected films that focuses on the power of a single adult to positively affect the maturation process for a group of adolescents. Poitier plays Mark Thackery, a black engineer who can't find a job because of racism and a slow economy. Thackery takes a job teaching at a high school in London's tough East End as a temporary measure until something turns up in his field. Poitier knows nothing about teaching and his first class is a group of rowdy, disruptive and undisciplined lower working-class teenagers.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00003L9C1/qid%3D1104956892/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/104-
8158541-9148756

American Grafitti - (motion picture) American Graffiti is easily the most famous and popular baby boomer coming of age movie. The film takes place during a single night in 1962 and follows the adventures of a group of Modesto, California teenagers. For Ron Howard and Richard Dreyfus the last night of summer is also their last night in Modesto. Both will leave for college the next morning. The audience knows that the end of childhood innocence is just around the corner, but for one night the clock is rolled back and we return to a simpler world where rock and roll music, hot cars, and teen sex are the only serious concerns of the small town teens.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/078322737X/qid=1104956920/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-8158541-
9148756?v=glance&s=dvd

Guardians of the Flutes: The Secrets of Male Initiation - High in the mountains of New Guinea live the Sambia people, a war- like tribe whose secret rituals of initiation are aimed at making their warriors courageous and bold. Only because their culture is threatened have they allowed these initiation rites to be documented on film.
http://www.filmakers.com/indivs/GuardiansFlutes.htm

Sorcerers of Zaire - For the rural Chokwe tribe of southwestern Zaire, hardship and starvation are a way of life. The mood in their villages is one of austerity and mystery. To assure that their modest food supply is distributed fairly, the Chokwe use a complex system of reprisals in which sorcerers are hired to resurrect ancestral ghosts to haunt those who hoard goods, causing them illness and death.
http://www.films.com/Films_Home/Item.cfm/1/6136/ixs

Views on Jewish Life and Death - Four films expressing Jewish views of life and death.
http://www.aldenfilms.com/indexes/indexh.htm

Generation to Generation: Jewish Families Talk About Death - Families often need help talking about a difficult and painful subject: the death of a loved one. Generation to Generation provides that help. Personal stories of loss, related with sensitivity and insight by children and their parents plus commentary from religious leaders and bereavement counselors show how open and honest dialogue can help heal the pain of loss.
http://www.behrmanhouse.com/cat/edres/vidgento.shtml