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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.
Featured Films
Our Mom's A Dyke (streaming, Academic Video Online)
This is a charming documentary about adolescent girls who had to deal with an unexpected complication in their suburban life. Their mother suddenly dissolved her marriage and then told the girls in strictest confidence that she was a lesbian.
Just Mom and Me: Single Motherhood (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Single motherhood in the United States is not just the experience of poor, uneducated women, or minority teenagers, as often depicted by the media and in the press. The reality is that there are 25 million single mothers heading households in America and they come from all walks of life. Just Mom and Me interweaves the stories of five mothers, whose circumstances are vastly different, who are raising children on their own
The surrogate scam (rugemodre) (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Childless couples make up a lucrative and sometimes illegal market. Surrogacy is banned in most European countries. Even so, a growing number of childless couples cross boarders and pay women from Third World countries to carry and deliver a child. The baby is taken away from the surrogate mother a few hours after being born.This investigative documentary digs into an industry of hope, despair - and cynical middlemen. The search takes us through various countries, ex. Peru, India, England and USA
The Oldest Mother on the Block (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Everyone over the age of twelve knows how a baby is made. But for the fastest growing age group of women having babies, the magical process of sperm meeting egg takes place in a Petri dish. Many women over age forty soon realize that their own eggs have expired. These women decide to use eggs donated from a younger woman. This film follows three older women, as they struggle to achieve a pregnancy and later, as they cope with the unique problems of being an older mom
Motherhood on Trial: The Tragedy of Susan Smith (streaming, Academic Video Online)
The case of Susan Smith, a young mother who drowned her sons in South Carolina, repelled and fascinated the whole nation. Amidst all the uproar it is interesting to note that Newt Gingrich claimed the tragedy was the inevitable outcome of years of liberal control of Congress. Motherhood on Trial challenges viewers to examine current conservative thinking that blames the breakdown of the traditional family for causing crime, poverty, illiteracy, teenage pregnancy and other problems.
Google Baby (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Google Baby is a journey across three continents telling the story of the up and coming baby production industry in the age of globalization. Doron, an Israeli entrepreneur with a high tech background proposes a new service - Pregnancy producing. The pregnancy producer (as he introduces himself) provides customers with a cost effective solution using outsourcing of the surrogacy element to India as a way to lower prices.
On My Own (streaming, Academic Video Online)
On My Own is an eye-opening documentary that shatters the stigma of single motherhood. Sweeping through the black experience in America, On My Own's comprehensive attitude is a refreshing breeze that cools the heated, and often unproductive, discourse of black family life in America. Through conversations with single mothers, fathers, community leaders and family experts, the documentary offers another facade to the one-sided image of single motherhood.
Making Grace (streaming, Academic Video Online)
Ann Krsul and Leslie Sullivan want to be mothers - together. They complement one another perfectly: Ann's analytical and worrying nature balanced by Leslie's more instinctive and soothing demeanor. Together, they discover the process of creating a family -- from selecting a sperm donor and determining who will work and who will carry the baby, to Lamaze classes, the baby shower, and figuring out how to explain "two mommies" to their nieces and nephews. A year later baby Grace is born, and we experience with Ann and Leslie the challenges and joys of motherhood, including those unique to lesbians.
Mom's apple pie: the heart of the lesbian mothers' custody movement (streaming, Academic Video Online)
While the beginning of the LGBT Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum, the 1970s witnessed horrific custody battles for lesbian mothers. 'Mom's Apple Pie: The Heart of the Lesbian Mothers' Custody Movement' revisits the early tumultuous years of the lesbian custody movement through the stories of five lesbian mothers and their four children"
The Gloucester 18 : the realities of teen pregnancy (streaming, Kanopy)
In 2008, eighteen high school girls from Gloucester, Massachusetts were accused of making a pact to become pregnant. The mainstream media perpetuated and sensationalized the story, with reporters flying in from as far away as Australia, the UK, and Brazil. The Gloucester 18 looks behind all the headlines and hype to tell the real stories of these girls, and in the process puts a human face on a startling statistic: that the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world. The filmmakers draw on interviews with the girls, their families, high school counselors, physicians, and media personalities to unpack what really happened, and explore the complicated emotional and practical challenges faced by teens on the brink of motherhood.
Future Baby (streaming, Academic Video Online)
This investigation takes us around the world to examine human reproduction from a variety of different perspectives, from patients and researchers to egg donors and surrogate mothers to laboratories and clinics. The hopes and wishes of future parents mesh with research on how to optimize the human genome in the face of an ever accelerating rate of progress. FUTURE BABY presents us with a visually stunning snapshot of a future which has already arrived, a snapshot that is as disturbing as it is informative.
Refrigerator mothers (streaming, Docuseek)
From the 1950s through the early 1970s, the American medical establishment thought it had found the cause of autism: poor mothering. Doctors presumed that the bizarre behaviors of autistic children--rigid rituals, difficulty with speech, extreme self-isolation--stemmed from their mothers' emotional frigidity. Medicine now knows that autism is a brain disorder, not the result of poor parenting. But for a whole generation of women branded as cold "refrigerator mothers," the damage had already been done