Guides @ UF: Making a World of Difference: Stories About Global Health: Other Media

Accessing Films and Other Media

Kanopy

Kanopy is a streaming service that provides access to shows and films. Many of the films listed on this guide can be found in Kanopy, which you can access for free through UF.

Access Kanopy Through UF

Public Libraries

Your local public library provides access to film and other media both digitally and physically. The links for the Alachua County Library are below, but if you are a member of your local library, check out their catalog or Hoopla (where you can access free eBooks, movies, music, TV shows, comics, eAudiobooks, and graphic novels) to see if any of these are available!

HIV/AIDS

AIDS Jaago
Acclaimed directors Mira Nair, Santosh Sivan, Vishal Bhardwaj and Farhan Akhtar examine the AIDS crisis in India with four short films that dispel common myths and illustrate how the disease affects ordinary people.
Carandiru
This film follows Drauzio (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos), a physician and AIDS/HIV specialist, volunteering work in the Carandiru Penitentiary, the largest prison in Latin America, in São Paulo, shortly before the 1992 massacre, where 111 prisoners were killed by police forces.
A Closer Walk
A Closer Walk is Robert Bilheimer's documentary film about the global AIDS epidemic. Subjects and storylines encompass the broad spectrum of the global AIDS experience and include people with HIV/AIDS from all walks of life; AIDS children and orphans and those caring for them; doctors, nurses, and social workers; human rights advocates; and prominent scientists, economists, researchers, government leaders, and NGO officials.
Pandemic: Facing AIDS
Covers the key aspects of the world AIDS epidemic through powerful documentary stories about five victims and their communities, on five continents.
Pills, Profits, Protest: Chronicle of the Global AIDS Movement
"Pills Profits Protest" is an up-to-the minute documentary about global AIDS treatment activism. It examines the national and international grass roots response to an epidemic that has already overshadowed the Black Death in terms of human lives lost.
Yesterday
The film tells a story of a young mother, Yesterday (Leleti Khumalo), who discovers she has AIDS. Her husband, a migrant mine laborer, rejected her despite being the one that infected her. Her ambition becomes to live long enough to see her daughter, Beauty, go to school.

Infectious Disease

Contagion
Contagion is a 2011 American medical thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh. The plot concerns the spread of a highly contagious virus transmitted through respiratory droplets and fomites, attempts by medical researchers and public health officials to identify and contain the disease, the loss of social order as the virus turns into a worldwide pandemic, and the introduction of a vaccine to halt its spread.
The Horseman on the Roof
Based on the 1951 French novel Le hussard sur le toit by Jean Giono, the film follows the adventures of a young Italian nobleman in France raising money for the Italian revolution against Austria during a time of cholera.
The Great Fever
From writer, producer and director Adriana Bosch (Fidel Castro, Reagan, Jimmy Carter), this one-hour film documents the groundbreaking research of intrepid Cuban scientist Carlos Finlay and the heroic efforts of Major Walter Reed and his medical team, some of whom put their own lives on the line to eradicate yellow fever.
Outbreak
Outbreak is a 1995 American medical disaster film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and written by Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool. The film focuses on an outbreak of Motaba, a fictional ebolavirus- and orthomyxoviridae-like virus, in Zaire, and later in a small town in California.

Health Systems, Poverty and Social Inequality

Children Underground
Children Underground is an American 2001 documentary film directed and produced by Edet Belzberg. The film which is set in Bucharest, Romania, explores the lives of five children who are shown fighting, abusing themselves, and becoming addicted to Aurolac. This documentary follows the five homeless children in Romania, where the collapse of communism has led to a life on the street for 20,000 children
The Constant Gardener
The Constant Gardener is a 2005 drama thriller film directed by Fernando Meirelles. The story follows Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes), a British diplomat in Kenya, as he tries to solve the murder of his wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz), an Amnesty activist, alternating with many flashbacks telling the story of their love.
Seducing Doctor Lewis
Seducing Doctor Lewis (French: La grande séduction, lit. 'The Great Seduction') is a 2003 Quebec comedy film and the first film directed by Jean-François Pouliot. A much-needed boost, in the form of a new factory, is promised to the residents of the tiny fishing village St. Marie-La-Mauderne, provided they can lure a doctor to take up full-time residency on the island. Inspired, the villagers devise a scheme to make Dr. Christopher Lewis a local.

Race, Culture, Ethnicity, and Medicine

The Clay Bird
Matir Moina (Bengali: মাটির ময়না; also known in English as The Clay Bird) is a 2002 Bengali war-drama film written and directed by Tareque Masud. The film deals with its historical references during the independence of Bangladesh. It portrays the experiences of a young protagonist, his family, his teachers and his life at the madrasah.
Genghis Blues
Genghis Blues is a 1999 American documentary film directed by Roko Belic. It centers on the journey of blind American singer Paul Pena to the isolated Russian Republic of Tuva to pursue his interest in Tuvan throat singing.
Moolaadé
Moolaadé ("magical protection") is a 2004 film by the Senegalese writer and director Ousmane Sembène. For fear of enduring genital mutilation, a group of girls flee their own "purification" ceremony and take refuge with Collé (Fatoumata Coulibaly), a woman who had spared her daughter from the same fate. Collé casts a spell to protect the girls, which causes much consternation among among the village elders.
Motherland Afghanistan
Set against the backdrop of a land in turmoil and transition, this inspiring film reveals the devastating stories behind a reproductive health crisis essentially neglected by the Western media and provides a rare glimpse into the heart of humanity through the quiet deeds of those who attempt to heal.
Seven Years in Tibet
Seven Years in Tibet is a 1997 American biographical war drama film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. It is based on Austrian mountaineer and Schutzstaffel (SS) sergeant Heinrich Harrer's 1952 memoir of the same name, about his experiences in Tibet between 1944 and 1951.
The Story of the Weeping Camel
The Story of the Weeping Camel (Mongolian: Ингэн нулимс, Ingen nulims, "Tears of the Camel") is a 2003 docudrama film distributed by ThinkFilm. The plot is about a family of nomadic shepherds in the Gobi Desert trying to save the life of a rare white bactrian camel calf after it was rejected by its mother.

Find More

The list above is not comprehensive; here are some film lists if you want to dive into more!

100 Inspiring Global Health Films
This is a crowd-sourced list of over 100 inspiring, must-watch movies focused on global health topics maintained by Madhukar Pai, Chair, Department of Global and Public Health at McGill University.
Public & Global Health in Movies & TV
IMBD collection
Global Health Documentaries & Movies
Guide from Mayo Clinic Libraries