Jane Sloan Media Librarian jsloan@rci.rutgers.edu June 2005

Research Resources: Subject Research Guides: Media Collections:
Australiasia

This guide is a browsing aid to selected titles in the video/DVD collections at Rutgers Libraries. The most up-to-date, accurate, and complete information regarding the libraries' holdings is available only through IRIS, our online catalog.

Bathing babies in three cultures

A comparative series of sequences showing the interplay between mother and child in three different settings--bathing in the Sepik River in New Guinea, in a modern American bathroom, and in a mountain village of Bali in Indonesia.

1 videocassette (9 min.) : 1988

MEDIA 2-1994

Black harvest

Features a joint business venture between Joe Leahy, a wealthy mixed-race coffee plantation owner, and the Ganiga, an aboriginal tribe in Papua New Guinea. When world coffee prices collapse, the workers' wages are drastically reduced and this leads to tribal warfare.

1 videocassette (90 min.) : 1992

MEDIA 2-2111

Building bodies ; The Early seas

In the first program, naturalist David Attenborough examines mollusks, echinoderms, and crustaceans and speculates on the significance of the evolutionary reasons for such extreme diversity. Includes a look at marine invertebrates found in the area of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. In the second program, Attenborough examines the evolution of mollusks, nautilus and crinoids.

1 videocassette (60 min.) : 1981

MEDIA 2-1927

Cane toads

Documents the history of the Cane Toad in Australia. Imported into Australia in 1935, the Cane Toad is now a pest of plague proportions.

1 videocassette (46 min.) : 1987

MEDIA D-152

Cannibal tours

This documentary explores differences and the similarities that emerge when western and New Guinean people meet within the context of organized "travel adventure tours". This film offers a series of striking observations that exemplify the quandry of culture clash and the human sameness of people everywhere.

1 videocassette (77 min.) : 1987

MEDIA 2-2625

Celestial sentinels

Persian Gulf War reconnaissance...global navigation...international communications instantly...these are the work of the satellites that fill the skies above us. They have already drawn the world together. What new tasks will they undertake? Find out how satellites have actually kept the peace and how new, nonmilitary uses may help developing nations move into the 21st century.

1 videocassette (58 min) : 1992

MEDIA 2-2164

Coming of age

Explores the life and career of Margaret Mead, from her early field woek on adolescence in Samoa th her long-term study of childhood and the effects of western influence on the native people of New Guinea.

1 videocassette (52 min.) : 1990

MEDIA 2-2521

The Creative revolution

Fifty thousand generations ago the hunter-gatherers then living in Afica began to paint, carve, talk, travel, trade, and bury their dead. Scientists continue to debate the reasons for this sudden transformation. Don Johanson sets out to retrace the migration of our ancient ancestors from Africa, to Asia, to Europe and even to Australia. Prehistoric art and cave paintings are investigated in an effort to find clues about how and when our ancestors became modern human beings.

1 videocassette (60 min.) : 1994

MEDIA 2-2417

Dani sweet potatoes

Follows the highly sophisticated process of sweet potato horticulture developed by the Grand Valley Dani in West New Guinea.

1 videocassette (19 min.) : 1973

MEDIA 2-2449

The daughter of the regiment

The story centers on the waif Marie who is adopted by a French army regiment, falls in love with a Tyrolean youth called Tonio, but is carried off to live with the Marquise of Berkenfeld, who plans to turn her into a genteel lady and marry her to an aristocrat. But at the final curtain, the Marquise (who turns out to be her long lost mother) relents and lets her wed Tonio.

1 videocassette (122 min.) : 1986

MUSIC 190

Der menschen forscher = The anthropologist

This is a provocative and powerful film interweaving drama with documentary to profile famed Austrian anthropologist Rudolf Pöch. A major figure in the history of 20th-century European anthropology, Pöch did field work in New Guinea and the Kalahari, and during World War I, did research in POW camps studying the physical attributes of Russian prisoners. He used these studies to substantiate his theories on racial purity and superiority later used by the Nazis.

1 videocassette (60 min.) : 1992

MEDIA 2-2720

Everything is relatives

Explores the life and career of William Halse Rivers, whose work with the islands of the Torres Straits north of Australia and the Todas of southern India revealed the centrality of family relationships to many societies, and whose attempts to bring scientific methods to the new field of anthroplolgy greatly influenced the work of his successors.

1 videocassette (52 min.) : 1990

MEDIA 2-2519

Fieldwork

Explores the career of Walter Baldwin Spencer, whose studies of the Australian aborigines showed them to be a people with an extremely complex and subtle, rather than primitive, culture.

1 videocassette (52 min.) : 1990

MEDIA 2-2517

The films of Jane Campion

Peel (1982 : 9 min.) -- Passionless moments (1984 : 13 min.) -- A girl's own story (1983 : 27 min.)Three short films from director Jane Campion. Peel concerns a family outing in Australia which results in an intrigue of awesome belligerence. Passionless moments is a series of ten short, whimsical films portraying the inner world of ordinary people. A girl's own story concerns girlhood, Beatlemania, and growing up in the sixties.

1 videocassette (49 min.) : 1995?

MEDIA 2-3188

First contact

Describes the discovery of a flourishing native population in the interier highlands of New Guinea in 1930 in what has been thought to be an uninhabited area. Inhabitants of the region and surviving members of the Leahy brothers' gold prospecting party recount their astonishment at this unforeseen meeting. Includes still photographs taken by a member of the expedition and contemporary footage of the island's terrain.

1 videocassette (54 min.) : 1982

MEDIA DANA 2-2003 319

Gorgeous starring Hermoine the modern girl

Undermined by her evil inner voice, Hermoine the modern girl tries exercise, plastic surgery, beauty therapy and bulimia to look gorgeous for a job interview. Eventually, she rebels against her inner voice and her obsession with beauty.

1 videocassette (11 min.) : 1994

MEDIA 2-3077

Green plans documentary

A look at the comprehensive national environmental policies, or green plans, that the Netherlands and New Zealand have developed.

1 videocassette (56 min.) : 1995

MEDIA 2-2721

Hatred

Investigates the connection between hatred on a personal level and hatred between nations. Includes news film footage and interviews with various people.

1 videocassette (55 min.) : 1995

MEDIA 2-6035

Hillary & Tenzing climbing to the roof of the world

Documents the first successful climb to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Includes actual footage of the climb.

1 videocassette (56 min.) : 1996

MEDIA 2-4269

Joe Leahy's neighbors

The sequel to "First contact" by filmmakers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson concerns Australian prospector and explorer Leahy's mixed-race son Joe. Never recognized by his father, Joe has pursued a course of Western life and has risen to affluence. But he lives amongst the Ganiga tribe, who envy his success and question the means by which he got his land.

1 videocassette (90 min.) : 1988

DANA 706

The Kawelka Ongka's big Moka

In Papua New Guinea, status is earned by giving things away rather than acquiring them. This program explores the Moka, a ceremony in which people. sometimes whole tribes, give gifts to members of other tribes. The larger the gift, the greater the victory over the recipient. Follows one individual, Ongka, as he prepares for the giving of his moka.

1 videocassette (52 min.) : 1991

DANA 209

The Kuru mystery

Nobel prize-winning pediatrician Carleton Gajdusek searches for the cause of the slow virus kuru, which is decimating a tribe of Stone Age people in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

1 videocassette (60 min.) : 1984

MEDIA 2-419

Lords of the air ; The Rise of mammals

In program 17, naturalist David Attenborough describes the evolution of bird feathers as well as territorial behavior, courtship display, navigation, and migration of birds. At the end of the program he speculates on the extinction of the dinosaurs and why birds failed to inherit the earth. In program 18, Attenborough offers a detailed study of the many marsupial species, paying special attention to the primitive marsupials found in Australia.

1 videocassette (60 min.) : 1981

MEDIA 2-1934

Magical curing

[Pt. 1] Introduction to Wape society -- [pt. 2] Niyel demon curing festival -- [pt. 3] Epilo's koyil demon exorcism and funeral -- [pt. 4] Mani demon hunting and curing festivalsA black and white film consisting of footage shot between 1970 and 1972 by anthropologist William E. Mitchell, filming alone, during fieldwork with the Wape people of the West Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. All of the depicted events were filmed as they naturally occurred, without direction.

1 videocassette (27 min.) : 1988

DANA 217

The Marsupials ; Mammals of the sea

In the first program, naturalist David Attenborough examines the different species of marsupial in Australia and the emergence of placental mammals as well as kangaroos. The second program examines the emergence lifestyles, and adaptations of aquatic mammals.

1 videocassette (60 min.) : 1981

MEDIA 2-1935

Muvver tongue

Discusses the development of Cockney English and its influence on Australian and New Zealand English.

1 videocassette (VHS) (60 min.) : 1986

DANA 29

Off the verandah

Explores the career of Bronislaw Malinowski, who substantially altered the methods of anthropological field work through his own activities among the natives of the Trobriand Islands in the Pacific.

1 videocassette (52 min.) : 1990

DANA. MEDIA 1747 2-2520

Senso daughters

Through interviews the story of military brothels and Japanese comfort women during the war in Papua New Guinea is revealed. Experiences of both the Japanese and the Melanesians are shared.

1 videocassette (54 min.) : 1989

MEDIA 2-5018

Sharkcallers of Kontu

Examines the villagers of Kontu, in Papua, New Guinea, who, for centuries, have gone to sea in canoes to call, trap, and kill sharks, which are believed to contain the spirits of their ancestors.

1 videocassette (55 min.) : 1986

MEDIA 2-2473

The stolen eye

Jane Elliott performs her famous blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment on a group of white and Aborigine adults in Australia.

1 videocassette (50 min.) 2002

MEDIA 2-6550

Taking pictures

Australian documentary filmmakers explore the issues and pitfalls of filming across cultural boundaries through interviews and samples of their films of Papua New Guinea. It also covers the work of indigenous Papua New Guinea filmmakers and their own experience making sense of film and culture.

1 videocassette (56 min.) : 1996

MEDIA 2-5430

Trobriand cricket an ingenious response to colonialism

An ethnological study of the changes made by the Trobriand Islanders to the game of cricket, which was introduced to them by Methodist missionaries. The game as adapted becomes a tribal rite.

1 videocassette (54 min.) : 1976

MEDIA MEDIA DANA D-26 6-86 202

The Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea

The Trobriand Islands, regarded as anthropology's most sacred place, lie off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. The island society has a complex balance of male authority and female wealth. Magic spells and sorcery pervade everyday life. This program focuses on two important events: the distribution of woman's wealth after a death and the "month of play", a time of celebration following the island harvest.

1 videocassette (52 min.) : 1991

MEDIA 2-1406

What's a heaven for?

From Sputnik and Gagarin to Challenger and "Star Wars," space exploration has contributed to international political change, including helping to bring about the end of the Cold War. Today, the Space Age has entered an era of new motivations and challenges. Satellites might even be used to help developing countries. So what is space really for? Delve into this fascinating question and learn where the space age is taking us.

1 videocassette (58 min.) : 1992

MEDIA 2-2168