Related Guides
Find Films & Philosophy Videos
- Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window Academic Video Online delivers more than 67,000 titles spanning a range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. It includes documentaries, films, demonstrations, and other content types. Films in the Boston University Libraries catalog are licensed to Boston University for educational and research use only, for BU students, faculty, and staff.
- BU Libraries Search (BULS) This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of academic material provided by the library. The material covered by the search includes books, journals, scores, video and audio recordings, and other physical items held by the library. The search also covers ebooks and ejournals owned by the library, as well as online material provided by the library from a variety of sources.
Philosophy Videos
- Philosophy TV A video website devoted to philosophical thinking.
- Wi-Phi Wi-Phi’s mission is to introduce people to the practice of philosophy by making videos that are freely available in a form that is entertaining, interesting and accessible to people with no background in the subject.
- Carneades.org YouTube channel with hundreds of short videos on philosophy topics.
- TED-Ed: The Big Questions Short YouTube videos on philosophical puzzles,
Browse Selected Films
- Coming Out Under Fire (streaming, Academic Video Online) Coming Out Under Fire features nine gay and lesbian veterans who recount how they joined the patriotic war against fascism in the 1940s only to find themselves fighting two battles: one for their country and another for their right to serve. T
- She's beautiful when she's angry (streaming, Academic Video online) An essential documentary about the birth of the women's liberation movement.
- Killing Us Softly 4 - Advertising's Image of Women (streaming, Kanopy) In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence.
- The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men (streaming, Kanopy) Filmmaker Thomas Keith takes aim at the forces in male culture that condition boys and men to dehumanize and disrespect women. Keith breaks down a range of contemporary media forms that are saturated with sexism -- movies and music videos that glamorize misogyny; pornography that trades in the brutalization of women; comedy routines that make fun of sexual assault; and a slate of men's magazines and cable TV shows whose sole purpose is to revel in reactionary myths of American manhood. The message he uncovers in virtually every corner of our entertainment culture is clear: It's not only normal -- but cool -- for boys and men to control and humiliate women. By showing how there's nothing natural or inevitable about this mentality, and by setting it against the terrible reality of men's violence against women in the real world, The Bro Code challenges young people to step up and fight back against the idea that being a real man means disrespecting women.
- Adventures in The Gender Trade (streaming, Academic Video Online) Kate Bornstein, writer and performer, was born a man. This documentary presents her frank account of her personal journey from unhappy boy child into liberated transsexual lesbian. Intercut with her satiric night club act called "Hidden: A Gender," are the stories of a wide range of people who refused to have their identity defined by whether they were born male or female. We are thus presented with a spectrum of colorful gender anomalies: drag queens, transsexuals, cross dressers, gays and lesbians... and those who refuse to be categorized.
- Gay / Straight Couple (streaming, Academic Video Online) Discover a real life Will & Grace story - except in this romance, Will and Grace are married to one another and share a naturally conceived child. Meet university professors Terry and Deanne, a gay man and straight woman, who have found a truly "modern" love. But can a gay man and a straight woman really make a marriage work? Is this just a passing fad or a lasting commitment?
- Tokyo Gigolos (streaming, Academic Video Online) Kabukicho is Tokyo's famous pleasure quarters. Within a tiny space of 0.5 sq. km, the streets are jam-packed with over 5,000 shops, restaurants and bars, with all types of entertainment parlours, including brothels. Tens of thousands of people work, play and pass by Kabukicho every day. This time, we turn our attention to a special group of people -- the 'Tokyo gigolos'. On average they earn USD $3,000 each month, and as much as USD $30,000 when business is good. Lucrative earnings is the magnet that draws so many young people to this trade.
- Hormonally Yours (streaming, Academic Video Online) Men and women have markedly different hormonal make-ups. This episode looks at the chemical divide between the genders.
- Attraction (streaming, Academic Video Online) Can science predict sexual attraction? In a ground-breaking experiment, a team of scientists orchestrate a unique speed date with a hundred singletons to test their theories - with unexpected results. The scientists analyse our speed-daters bodies, faces, and psychological and social profiles to find out what the key predictors of sexual chemistry really are.
- Red Moon : Menstruation, Culture & the Politics of Gender Red Moon confronts one the world's oldest and most pervasive taboo subjects. With humor and refreshing candor, the documentary provides a fascinating, often ironic, take on the absurd and frequently dangerous cultural stigmas and superstitions surrounding women's menstruation. As educational as it is liberating, the film functions as both a myth-busting overview of the realties of menstruation, and a piercing cultural analysis of the ways in which struggles over meaning and power have played out through history on the terrain of women's bodies.
- The Science of Sexual Attraction (streaming, Academic Video Online) This documentary discusses how sexual attractiveness is perceived by both the male and female point of view.
- The Dickumentary (streaming, Academic Video Online) The story of the penis from its biological evolution in prehistoric fish, to today. Cultures have worshipped it, circumcised it & sought ways to make it larger. Traveling across 14 countries, this is an entertaining, comprehensive tour de phallus.
- Brainsex (streaming, Academic Video Online) IMen and women are just the same. Just as caring, just as promiscuous, just as good at a three point turn. Aren't they? The results of a new BBC sex survey of 500,000 people from around the globe - the largest ever carried out - provide very revealing answers. And five men and five women are put through a unique battery of experiments to uncover the real differences between the sexes.
- Pride denied Homonationalism and the future of queer politics (streaming, Kanopy)) Pride Denied tells the story of how corporate sponsors coopted the concept of LGBTQ pride, turning it into a feel-good brand and blunting its radical political edge.
