Films for Social Sciences

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This film guide provides ways to search for films.  For further assistance please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Sociology/Anthropology, Labour Studies, Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies (moninder_lalli@sfu.ca) or use the Ask a librarian to contact a colleague.

Find films 

There are two ways to find films in the SFU Library Collection: 1) by using Catalogue Search and 2) by searching the Databases for streaming videos.

Catalogue Search for films

Examples:

Databases for streaming videos

  • Criterion on Demand - Films available from Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage, DreamWorks SKG, Mongrel Media, Sony Pictures Classics, Alliance Films, Miramax Films, Warner Brothers, Lionsgate Films, The Weinstein Company, as well as a smaller number of independent producers. Title selections includes 1920 classics, new releases, foreign films, literary adaptations, documentaries, animated titles, and independent features.
     
  • Ethnographic Video Online - Documentaries, recordings, interviews, photographs, and field notes on human culture and behaviour around the world.
     
  • Films on Demand Master Academic Collection - Streaming educational video collection. Includes titles produced by PBS, BBC Worldwide Learning, British Pathe, HBO, Journeyman Pictures, National Geographic, and hundreds more. Options for embedding, creating playlists, and mobile device viewing. Includes captioning with interactive and searchable transcripts. 
     
  • NFB.ca - Films produced by the National Film Board of Canada (streaming online). Includes documentaries, animation and alternative dramas. Includes access to NFB Campus films and educational resources.
     
  • QMUNITY's Stories of Older Queers - Video interviews chronicling the experiences of older lesbian-gay-bisexual-transfolk conducted as part of a project called "Stories of Older Queers: Videography and Archives of Queer Elder Experiences."
     
  • Sage Research Methods Video - Videos on all aspects of the research process and methods. Also covers practical skills such as project management and writing for publication.
     
  • Theatre in Video - Online streaming video of plays and documentaries. It covers a wide range of 20th century theatre history.

For a more complete list, check: Databases for streaming videos

Films by topic or discipline

African diaspora

Catalogue searches:

Films

  • A brief history of the Black Lives Matter movement - the history of the Black Lives Matter movement. Historian and sociologist Afua Cooper describes some critical moments in black history and Vancouver activist Jacob Callender-Prasad talks about his role fighting anti-Black racism.
     
  • Black Lives Matter - In 2013 in Sanford, Florida, vigilante George Zimmerman was found not guilty of the murder of 17-year-old African American Trayvon Martin. As a result, the struggle against police violence flared up under the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and turned into one of the biggest grassroots movements in the United States. 
     
  • Discussing Racism with Dr. Christina Greer - Dr. Christina Greer, renowned author, educator, and expert on American history, Black ethnics, and public policy.... best practices for speakers and listeners, the real-life impacts of racism, and how conversations can lead to action.
     
  • Exploring Black history on Canada's Prairies - 110 years ago Reverend Henry Sneed led 194 African Americans to Amber Valley, Alberta, to establish one of the largest and most prosperous Black communities in Canada.
     
  • Five Centuries, Taking the Knee, Episode 2 - The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson led to unrest and triggered the Black Lives Matter Movement, which found wider resonance, particularly in the UK following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. In 2016 Colin Kaepernick knelt during the US national anthem to protest police shootings."
     
  • How Black Women Fought Racism and Sexism for the Right to Vote - African American women played a significant and sometimes overlooked role in the struggle to gain the vote.
     
  • How Much Do You Know about Black History in Canada? -  host of Exhibitionists on CBC Arts, the panel includes: Nikki Clarke, Ontario Black History Society; Afua Cooper, Dalhousie University; Andrea Davis, York University; and Karen Flynn, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
     
  • I am not your Negro [DVD format] - Using James Baldwin's unfinished final manuscript, Remember This House, this documentary follows the lives and successive assassinations of three of the author's friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., delving into the legacy of these iconic figures and narrating historic events using Baldwin's original words and a flood of rich archival material. An up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, this film is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter.
     
  • Sisters in the Struggle - features Black women who are active in community organizing, electoral politics, and labour and feminist organizing. They share their insights and personal testimonies on a legacy of racism and sexism. The analyses they present link their struggles with the ongoing battle against pervasive racism and systemic violence against women and people of colour.
     
  • Who we are : a chronicle of racism in America  [DVD format] - Interweaving lecture, personal anecdotes, interviews, and shocking revelations, lawyer Jeffery Robinson draws a stark timeline of anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America.

Equity, diversity & inclusion (EDI), intercultural, racism

Catalogue searches:

Films

  • Colour Blind - a film about subtle racism and its daily impact on teenagers in high school. To outsiders, Princess Margaret Senior Secondary, in the heart of Surrey, BC, looks like an ordinary high school. To teachers and students, however, it was a school full of racial rage, segregation and violence. Its troubles began in 1995 when the predominately white student body became a predominately ethnic majority. Five years later, we follow five teenagers as they learn tolerance for each other's differences. Colour Blind documents that painful and confusing process of overcoming racial conflicts.
     
  • Cross-Cultural Communication  - This program looks at attitudes and beliefs and cultural patterns that affect cross-cultural communication. It discusses the work of E. T. Hall and the idea of high-context and low-context cultures; considers differing cultural perceptions of time; and examines such barriers to cross-cultural communication as prejudice, ethnocentricity, and stereotyping.
     
  • "The Hate U Give" Tackles Police Violence - author Angie Thomas addresses difficult topics including race relations, police violence and racial stereotypes.
     
  • How do Canadians resist intolerance? - Amira Elghawaby, a spokesperson for the National Council of Canadian Muslims, and Sameer Zuberi, a human rights advocate, say Canadians need to rise up against intolerance.
     
  • Inclusion and Equity for Workers with Disabilities - While inclusion and equity are increasingly important to organizations as they build and maintain their modern workforces, workers with disabilities are still often overlooked. While these oversights may often be unintentional, they can still have a detrimental impact on disabled employees' ability to do their jobs and on their overall wellbeing.
     
  • Love, Hate, and Everything in Between : A Film on Empathy - Topics include the anthropological roots of empathy; empathy-nurturing educational programs in schools; effects of hormones on the development of empathy; the spectrum of psychopathy; "us vs. them" and "in-group/out-group" mentalities; the suppression and reawakening of empathy in strife-torn regions such as Israel, Bosnia, and Rwanda; the "bystander effect"; mirror neurons; "sensitive artificial listeners"; and social entrepreneurism in a technology-facilitated empathic civilization. Immensely thought-provoking. 
     
  • Things Arab Men Say - Arab men worldwide are, for the most part, depicted by the mainstream media as terrorists, suicide bombers, or, at best, extremists. Things Arab Men Say, by Egyptian-born filmmaker Nisreen Baker, is an intimate and fascinating documentary that follows eight Arab Canadian friends who reveal a very different picture of Arab men
     
  • Understanding different cultural values and styles - The most successful organizations and managers are those who understand diversity and seek to profit from it; this program presents the views of African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and Native Americans who share their work experiences and demonstrate that what they want from others is no more than an open mind and a fair chance.
     
  • When words hurt - In a series of engaging interviews, this video... shows young people how to distinguish between unkind words and "hate speech," pointing out along the way the sometimes subtle characteristics of such verbal attacks. 
     
  • Who we are : a chronicle of racism in America - [DVD format] - draws a stark timeline of anti-Black racism in the United States, from slavery to the modern myth of a post-racial America.

Gender, sexuality and women's studies

Catalogue searches:

Films

  • Abortion : Stories from North and South -  From this cross-cultural survey--filmed in Ireland, Japan, Thailand, Peru, Colombia, and Canada--emerges one reality: only a small percentage of the world's women has access to safe, legal operations.
     
  • Brown women, blond babies [DVD format] - The Philippines tops the list of source countries for foreign domestic workers in Canada, and this documentary program looks at the working conditions, private and social lives and the homesickness of several of the women. 
     
  • The bystander moment : transforming rape culture at its roots - The MeToo movement has shined much-needed light on the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and abuse and created unprecedented demand for gender violence prevention models that actually work..
     
  • Campus Culture : Universities and the Issue of Sexual Misconduct - looks at how colleges and universities are navigating the difficult ground of sexual assault on campus and addressing charges that their institutions tolerate a "rape culture." Ormiston examines the steps taken by the University of Ottawa and Lakehead University in the wake of very public sexual misconduct scandals and speaks with young women who have been victimized.
     
  • The Colour of Beauty - Renee Thompson is trying to make it as a top fashion model in New York. She's got the looks, the walk and the drive. But she's a black model in a world where white women represent the standard of beauty. Agencies rarely hire black models. And when they do, they want them to look "like white girls dipped in chocolate." The Colour of Beauty is a shocking short documentary that examines racism in the fashion industry. 
     
  • Dreams of Equality : What Does Mainstream Feminism Promise - From music charts to executive boards, feminism is certainly in fashion. Yet some argue that once radical feminist ideas for the future have been harnessed for commercial gain. Are Beyonce and Simone de Beauvoir feminists really on the same side? How much do the second, third and fourth wave feminists share? 
     
  • From criminality to equality : 40 years of lesbian and gay movement history in Canada from 1969 to 2009 [DVD format] - series includes: 
    -- Stand Together (2002, 124 min.)...a documentary on the lesbian and gay liberation movement in Canada between 1967 and 1987 
    -- Queer Nineties (2009, 91 min.) 
    -- Politics of the Heart (2005, 68 min.) ...is a moving portrait of lesbian and gay families who re-shaped the cultural and political landscape of Quebec 
    -- End of Second Class (2009, 91 min.) ...traces the debate on same sex marriage in Canada up to the passage of equal marriage legislation on July 20, 2005.
     
  • Gender equality in budgeting : How Canada can learn from Sweden  - Gender equality in budgeting was a big theme for the Canadian government in 2018 with new measures announced to close the gender gap - and with that in mind, there's lots that Canada can learn from Sweden. Sweden has never ranked lower than fifth in the world for equality and has closed more than 81 per cent of the gender gap.
     
  • The history of the Pride movement and its importance today - June is Pride Month in many places across Canada and the world. While today you may think of Pride as a month of celebration, it started with protest movements and calls for equal rights for gay and lesbian people.  
     
  • LGBT Rights, An Overview 
     
  • Pronouns, LGBTQIA+, and Gender Identity - Part 1, Pronouns  - Apart from using people's names, pronouns are the way we express our gender and refer to other people's gender, but traditional gender pronouns (she/her, he/him) do not fit everyone's gender identity. These pronouns do not leave room for other diverse gender identities....In this course, psychologist Peter Quarry talks with Lore Burns about using gender neutral pronouns and why it matters to use them correctly. You will learn strategies for using non-gendered or gender-neutral pronouns in social and work situations, and why it is important.
     
  • Refugees come to Canada to escape gender persecution - Canada, as everyone knows, has long been a favourite destination for refugees seeking the safety and stability this country provides....Of the almost 90,000 refugee claim decisions since 2013, more than 10,000 involved persecution over race and ethnicity.
     
  • Re:orientations - revisits seven of the original participants as they see anew the footage of their younger selves, and reflect on their lives and all that has changed over the intervening three decades.
     
  • The Sex Trade - In the past 30 years and with the rise of the Internet, the sex trade has expanded worldwide and become a true industry. But who is benefiting from this phenomenon, which has turned the bodies of women into a commodity to be exploited?...High-end and street prostitution, escort agencies, massage parlours, strip clubs, the porn industry, sex tourism-the sex trade is sprawling, and has even spread beyond major urban areas. 
     
  • Transgender Rights, A Decades-long Struggle for Equality - Transgender issues today are rooted in a decades-long struggle for inclusion.

Indigenous

Catalogue search: (Indigen* OR aborig* OR native* OR indian) AND (canad* OR british columbia* OR ontario) - results limited to "videos"

Films

  • The Indian Speaks - culture and restoring what has been lost. It is the consciousness of tradition slipping away, with nothing equally satisfying or significant to take its place, that this film discovers wherever it goes. 
     
  • Mary Two-Axe Earley : I Am Indian Again - Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again shares the powerful story of Mary Two-Axe Earley, who fought for more than two decades to challenge sex discrimination against First Nations women embedded in Canada's Indian Act and became a key figure in Canada's women's rights movement. 
     
  • Giiwe - This is home - Between 1965 and 1984, Canadian child protection workers removed more than 20,000 indigenous children from their homes on reserves and placed them in foster care or put them up for adoption without the consent of their families or bands. 
     
  • How to be an ally to Indigenous peoples in Canada - CBC Kids News contributor Isabel DeRoy-Olson explores what it means to be an ally to Indigenous peoples in Canada....The term "ally" or "Indigenous ally" might have come up. What are allies, anyway?
     
  • nîpawistamâsowin : We Will Stand Up - On August 9, 2016, a young Cree man named Colten Boushie died from a gunshot to the back of his head after entering Gerald Stanley's rural property with his friends. The jury's subsequent acquittal of Stanley captured international attention, raising questions about racism embedded within Canada's legal system and propelling Colten's family to national and international stages in their pursuit of justice.
     
  • The Red Dress - Renowned Métis author and screenwriter Maria Campbell explores themes of cultural identity, sexual assault, and the familial impact of colonialism in The Red Dress, echoing the themes of her seminal memoir, Halfbreed...Today, the red dress is a powerful symbol recognizing the more than 1,000 missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. .

Labour & work 

Catalogue searches: 

Films

  • A Time to Rise - On April 6, 1980, the Canadian Farmworkers Union came into existence. This film documents the conditions among Chinese and East Indian immigrant workers in British Columbia that provoked the formation of the union, and the response of growers and labour contractors to the threat of unionization. Made over a period of two years, the film is eloquent testimony to the progress of the workers' movement from the first stirrings of militancy to the energetic canvassing of union members.
     
  • Amazon Unpacked : The human cost of convenience - While companies big and small all over the world struggled to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic, a few have seen their fortunes increase - chief among them online delivery company Amazon and its owner Jeff Bezos. Amazon workers spoke to The Fifth Estate about COVID-19 safety protocols that came too late or weren't effective, punishing work demands and a climate that made them reluctant to speak up. 
     
  • Asylum seekers in Canada face harsh working conditions - Some asylum seekers in Canada face harsh and sometimes dangerous working conditions as they wait for a decision on their refugee status. CBC News spoke to one Haitian asylum seeker who came forward to tell his story of how he was recruited to work for a temp agency in Montreal, given false documentation, and asked to work in unsafe conditions
     
  • Bitter harvest - The story of the pandemic and the people who pick our food. Tens of thousands of migrant farm workers come to Canada each year to grow and pick our fruits and vegetables, but the coronavirus pandemic exposed issues with an outdated program that leaves workers vulnerable. Watch what it's like to work in Canadian fields.
     
  • The gig is up - A very human tech doc that uncovers the real costs of the platform economy through the lives of workers from around the world for companies including Uber, Amazon and Deliveroo.
     
  • The Grievance - This film illustrates the orderly processing of a grievance through several stages of negotiation between union and management, showing how the rights of a worker with a genuine grievance are protected under the union's contract. 
     
  • Imperfect Union : Canadian Labour and the Left - Part 2 - Born of Hard Times - The 1937 General Motors strike in Oshawa gives the Congress of Industrial Organizations a toehold in Canada, but on the eve of World War II Canada's tiny unions remain blocked by restrictive labour laws and, like the equally tiny Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, locked in struggle with communist rivals. Part 2.
     
  • In the Age of AI - It has been called "the new Space Race." This time it is China taking on the United States, and the race is to seize control of a technology with the potential to change everything: the way we work; how we play; how our democracy functions; how the world could be realigned....The film explores both the peril and the promise of this ascendant technology: tracing the battle between the U.S. and China to harness its power; examining fears about what AI advances mean for the future of work; and revealing how AI algorithms are ushering in an age of both great problem-solving potential and of new and troubling threats to privacy and democracy.
     
  • Made in Bangladesh - As Canadians, a lot of our clothes bear the label "Made in Bangladesh."... In Canada, retailers began flocking to the country after Ottawa dropped import duties from Bangladesh back in 2003. The result? Imports from Bangladesh to Canada shot up by 618%. Add to that the fact that the country has the lowest monthly minimum wage for garment workers at $38 a month or 24 cents an hour. It made Bangladesh irresistible to purveyors of fast fashion like Loblaw, Wal-Mart, HBC and Lululemon.
     
  • Migrant Dreams - [DVD format] -"tells the undertold story of migrant agricultural workers struggling against Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) that treats foreign workers as modern-day indentured labourers. Under the rules of Canada's migrant labour program, low wage migrants are tied to one employer."
     
  • No Time to Stop  - Kwai Fong Lai is from Hong Kong, Alberta Onyejekwe from Ghana, and Angela Williams from Jamaica. They are immigrants to Canada, visible minorities, and women, a combination designed to make their lives difficult. While Canadian society has yet to accustom itself to its immigrant reality, these strong and resilient women manage to adapt and survive. At home and at work, they speak candidly about the conditions that shape their lives.
     
  • What will our jobs look like when employers go droid? - Robots are getting smarter, and the consequences are becoming harder to predict. Who loses their jobs? Which industries are vulnerable? Kim Brunhuber explores the robot revolution.
     
  • Women and minimum wage - One hundred years after Canada introduced a minimum wage, it's mostly women still stuck at the bottom of the income ladder. And while some call recent minimum wage hikes a good thing, others call them job killers.

Research methods

Example:

Films

Sociology / Anthropology

Catalogue searches:

Films

  • Abandoned in Afghanistan : Canada's failed promise - The fall of Afghanistan left thousands of Afghans who had helped the Canadian military vulnerable to a vengeful Taliban government. 
     
  • Breaking the Wall 0f Displacement, How Social Analysis Sheds Light on the Edges of Society - The last two decades have seen a sharp growth in the number of people who have been driven out of human livelihoods and frameworks that protect their basic needs and rights. Among the expelled are the growing numbers of displaced people in poor countries who live in formal and informal refugee camps, minorities in rich countries who are kept in prisons, workers whose bodies are destroyed on the job, and populations warehoused in ghettoes and slums. The current so-called "migrant crisis" in Europe is perhaps the most acute version of a larger process of expulsion from life-spaces. 
     
  • Children of War  - A remarkable documentary in which teenagers from war-torn countries, filmed in interaction with Canadian high-school students, speak with dignity, maturity and candor about the struggles of their people and the suffering they have endured. From El Salvador, Guatemala, Northern Ireland, East Timor, and the African countries of Namibia and Zimbabwe, they participated in the 1985-86 International Youth for Peace and Justice Tour. Several of the teenagers are political refugees. 
     
  • COVID and Race - This brief program explores the impact of race and racism on rates of exposure to and infection with COVID-19.
     
  • The Disruptors - Jamie Bartlett uncovers the reality behind Silicon Valley's glittering promise to build a better world. He visits Uber's lavish offices in San Francisco and hears how the company believes it is improving our cities. But in Hyderabad, India, Jamie sees the human consequences of Uber's utopian vision. Riding shotgun in a truck as it drives itself for more than a hundred miles on a highway, Jamie asks what the next wave of Silicon Valley's global disruption will mean for all of us. In search of answers, he gets a warning from an artificial intelligence pioneer who is replacing doctors with software. 
     
  • Does a Basic Guaranteed Income Decrease the Need for Social Services? (5/3/18) - The idea of a basic guaranteed income is getting a trial run in a Canadian province for three years. Four thousand randomly selected Ontario residents will get thousands of dollars a year, and in exchange, they give up some social supports, while the government gets back some money. Economics correspondent Paul Solman talks with some participants, as well as some skeptics.
     
  • Hope Against Hopeless - The video deals with the causes that provoke the refugee 'waves' and the trespass of Human Rights. It aims to shed light at the illegal movement of immigrants and refugees from Syria to Turkey and later on into Cyprus. Shocking images of immigrants at the borders of Syria and Iraq oscillate between hope and hopelessness. 
     
  • Income Inequality Impairs the American Dream of Upward Mobility A Debate - In the last 30 years, the wages of the top 1 percent have grown by 154 percent, while the wages of the bottom 90 percent have grown by only 17 percent. 
     
  • Naomi Klein : Rise of Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Klein explains the ideas and research behind her international best seller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - which boldly challenges and exposes the popular myth of the free-market economy's peaceful global victory....Moving from Chile in 1973 to Iraq today, Klein reveals a chilling tale of how a scattering of individuals is making a killing while many more are getting killed.
     
  • Next Stop Istanbul : The Refugee Crisis - With neighboring Syria in ruins and stricken by a civil war, Turkey keeps its borders closed in exchange for billions of euros from the European Union. Many Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans have managed to cross the porous borders and are now in Istanbul, the gateway to Europe. Will they stay there or is crossing to Europe too irresistible? Last year, thousands drowned during the sea crossing to Europe. 
     
  • No Place Called Home - With a photojournalist's eye, director Craig Chivers focuses his lens on the day-to-day struggles encountered by Kay Rice, her partner Karl and six children, whose goal is to break the generational cycle of poverty... In capturing the stark realism of a life with few options, No Place Called Home puts a modern face on what it means to be poor in Canada.
     
  • Overcoming personal racism : what can I do? - Dr. Sue suggests what each of us can do to overcome our personal racism.... He extracts five basic principles of how one overcomes racism: (1) learn about people of color from sources within the group, (2) learn from healthy and strong people of the culture, (3) learn from experiential reality, (4) learn from constant vigilance of your biases and fears, and (5) learn from being committed to personal action against racism. "
     
  • Syrian Diaries : Women of the Uprising - Over a period of seven months in 2012, a group of Syrian women created video diaries to let the world know what living under Bashar al-Assad's rule is like. In this documentary, the six tell how revolution and war transformed their lives. 
     
  • What systemic racism in Canada looks like - The police killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed have brought renewed attention to systemic racism. In Canada, some have been quick to deny its existence. But these experts say racism has been normalized within Canadian institutions.
     
  • Xenophobia in the Age of COVID-19 - Verbal and physical attacks on Asian-Americans are on the rise as the new coronavirus, which scientists believe originated in China, spreads across the globe. Scapegoating immigrant groups in times of disease outbreak has a long history.