Browse Titles - 134 results

This challenging film begins with scenes from the devastation after the 2004 eruption on Manam Island and the evacuation of the population. Manam Island is a volcanic island located 12km off the north coast of Madang Province in PNG. Eruptions damage houses, pollute water supplies and devastate gardens leaving them covered by thick layers of ash and tephra, leaving the Island almost uninhabitable after the 2004 eruption. Most of the 9,000 displaced people were taken to three care centres along the Bogia coastline: Asuramba, Potsdam and Mangem. Land traditionally used as coconut plantations was allocated for provisional resettlement. The Red Cross Caritas and World Vision assisted refugees with basic emergency supplies and the Government provided subsistence food for a year.

But, what is the situation now 12 years later? The film highlights the experience of people in the face of intermittent volcanic activity on the Island, and conflicts of interest on the mainland, in terms of their right to land, food, health and education. Hospitality provided on the mainland by local hosting communities has to cope with the expanding refugee population and their needs for necessities such as garden land and housing materials. A message emerging repeatedly from people interviewed in the film is the responsibility of the government to resettle the people displaced by the volcanic activity on the Island.

View Teaching Guide for this video.

Although the mountain volcano Mauna Kea last erupted around 4000 years ago, it is still hot today, the center of a burning controversy over whether its summit should be used for astronomical observatories or preserved as a cultural landscape sacred to the Hawaiian people. For five years Na Maka o ka Aina captured on video the seasonal moods of Mauna Kea’s unique 14,000-foot summit environment, the richly varied ecosystems that extend from sea level to alpine zone, the legends and stories that reveal the mountain's geologic and cultural history, and the political turbulence surrounding the efforts to protect the most significant temple in the islands, the mountain itself. Mauna Kea – Temple Under Siege paints a portrait of a mountain that has become a symbol of the Hawaiian struggle for physical, cultural and political survival. The program explores conflicting forces as they play themselves out in a contemporary island society where cultures collide daily. In an effort to find commonalities among indigenous people elsewhere regarding sacred mountains, the documentary visits Apache elders of Arizona who face the reality of telescope development on their revered mountain, Dzil Nchaa Si An, known as Mt. Graham.