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Tuesday, March 5th, 2019
- Lady Bird - Directed by Greta Gerwig and nominated for five Oscars, this warm, affecting comedy follows a high schooler who must navigate a loving, but turbulent relationship with her strong-willed mother over the course of her eventful and poignant senior year of high school.
- Cleo from 5 to 7 - Director Agnes Varda eloquently captures Paris in the ‘60s with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift as she awaits test results following a biopsy.
- The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Directed by Desiree Akhavan and Grand Jury Prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival, the film follows Cameron when she’s sent to a gay conversion therapy center after getting caught with another girl in the backseat of a car.
- American Honey - Nominated for six Film Independent Spirit Awards and winner of two Special Jury Prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, the film follows an adolescent girl from a troubled home who runs away with a traveling sales crew across the American Midwest to sell subscriptions door-to-door.
- Madeline's Madeline - From director Josephine Decker, the lines between performance and reality begin to blur when a young actress is pushed too far. An Official Selection at the Berlin International Festival, Madeline’s Madeline stars Molly Parker ("Lost in Space").
- Anita - Against a backdrop of sex, politics, and race, Anita reveals the intimate story of a woman who spoke truth to power.
- Killing Us Softly (Four-Part Series) - Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how print and television advertisements bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes, distorting the ideals of femininity over the decades.
- Women of '69: Unboxed - An intimate, personalized portrait of women of the 1960s through the eyes of one colorful class that graduated in 1969 and started to explore the New Old Age.
- Political Animals - This multi-award winning film tells the story of the civil rights struggle of this century - the gay rights movement - through the eyes of the first four members of the LGBT Legislative Caucus.
- The Girls in the Band - An award-winning documentary film that tells the poignant, untold stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists and their fascinating, history-making journeys from the late ‘30s to present day.
- Regarding Susan Sontag - An intimate and nuanced investigation into the life of one of the most important literary, political and feminist icons of the 20th century, Susan Sontag.
- Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise - The film traces Dr. Angelou's incredible journey, shedding light on the untold aspects of her life through never-before-seen footage, rare archival photographs and videos in her own words.
- Jane's Journey - A 2010 film that follows Jane Goodall across several continents, from her childhood home in England to the Gombe National Park in Tanzania, where she began her groundbreaking research and where she still returns every year to enjoy the company of chimpanzees.
- The Beaches of Agnes - From director Agnes Varda, this cinematic self-portrait touches on everything from the feminist movement and the Black Panthers to the filmmaker’s husband Jacques Demy and the birth of the French New Wave.
- Mavis! - An award-winning documentary on gospel/soul music legend and civil rights icon, Mavis Staples and her family group, The Staple Singers.
- Women's March - Shot on location in five U.S. cities in 2017, this is a story about democracy, human rights and what it means to stand up for values in today's America.
- I am a Girl - Nominated for four Australian Academy Awards including Best Documentary and Best Director, this inspirational feature-length documentary follows six girls from around the world, painting a clear picture of the reality of what it means to be a female in the 21st century.
- Miss Representation - Written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, this film exposes how mainstream media contributes to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America.
- Starless Dreams - A stark testimonial of the previously unseen and unheard, this award-winning documentary plunges into the lives of young teenage girls sharing temporary quarters at a rehabilitation and correction center on the outskirts of Tehran.
- Hooligan Sparrow - Maverick activist Ye Haiyan (a.k.a Hooligan Sparrow) and her band of colleagues travel to Hainan Province in southern China to protest the case of six elementary school girls who were sexually abused by their principal.
- How Music Can Change Your Life - University of Melbourne - March 4
- Scandinavian Film and Television - University of Copenhagen - March 4
- Introduction to Machine Learning - Duke University - March 4
- Human Rights Theory and Philosophy - Curtin University - March 4
- Moral Foundations of Politics - Yale University - March 4
- Mindfulness for Wellbeing and Peak Performance - Monash University - March 4
- Reasoning Across the Disciplines - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - March 4
- Introduction to Philosophy - University of Edinburgh - March 4
- Design Thinking - University of Virginia - March 4
- Conscious Capitalism - Babson College - March 5
- The Science of Beer - Wageningen University - March 5
- Ancient Philosophy: Plato & His Predecessors - University of Pennsylvania - March 11
- Journey of the Universe: The Unfolding of Life - Yale University - March 11
- The Psychology of Thrill Seekers - Emory University - March 11
- The Science of Well-Being - Yale University on Coursera - March 11
| Time | Event |
| 9:03a | 60 Free-to-Stream Movies for Women’s History Month: Classic Agnès Varda, a Portrait of Susan Sontag, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, and More
March is Women's History Month, and every month is a good one for watching movies. Well aware of both those facts, the people behind free-to-user online streaming service Kanopy have made a range of 60 woman-centric and mostly woman-made films available this month. Some of the women involved include Nouvelle Vague auteur Agnès Varda, director of Cléo from 5 to 7 and The Beaches of Agnès; Susan Sontag, the prolific writer and subject of Regarding Susan Sontag; and Greta Gerwig, who went from respected indie-cinema actress to even more respected indie-cinema director with 2017's Lady Bird.
If the trailers for these films in this post intrigue you, you can, of course, go right to Kanopy to watch them in full. First, though, you'll want to pull out your local library card. "We stream thoughtful entertainment to your preferred device with no fees and no commercials by partnering with public libraries and universities," says Kanopy's about page, explaining that you need only "log in with your library membership and enjoy our diverse catalog with new titles added every month." To check and see whether your library (or university) is among Kanopy's partners, just type it into the search window on this page.
After logging in you can explore the full breadth of Kanopy's list of Women's History Month selections, which also includes documentaries like Wonder Women: The Untold Story of American Superheroines, The Girls in the Band: Female Jazz Musicians, Who Does She Think She Is?: A Portrait of Female Artists, and Women of '69: Unboxed: Women from the Sixties Share their Stories, as well as other examinations of women in politics, women in gaming, women in STEM, and women in prison. Once you've seen them all, you might consider exploring Kanopy's other cinematic offerings, from a variety of other documentaries to drama, comedy, and even horror and thriller as well as science fiction and fantasy.
That last section, one can't help but notice, comes headed by Mark Sawers' No Men Beyond This Point, which takes as its setting a world that hasn't been able to produce male babies for the past 60 years. Its main character is the last man alive. Kanopy describes it as "a wry mockumentary that asks the question, what would the world be like if women were in charge?" However positive or negative an answer to that question just popped into your head, all these films will surely give it a bit more nuance, and at no charge at that.
Kanopy's own list of five Women's History Month films recommended from each of their major collection runs as follows:
Related Content: 1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc. An Ambitious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Filmmakers The First Feminist Film, Germaine Dulac’s The Smiling Madame Beudet (1922) 11 Essential Feminist Books: A New Reading List by The New York Public Library Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. 60 Free-to-Stream Movies for Women’s History Month: Classic Agnès Varda, a Portrait of Susan Sontag, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, and More is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.  |
| 3:00p | 2,000 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) Getting Started in March: Enroll Today
FYI. 2,000+ MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are getting underway in March, giving you the chance to take free courses from top flight universities. With the help of Class Central, we've pulled together a complete list of March MOOCS. And below we've highlighted several courses that piqued our interest. The trailer above comes from the University of Edinburgh's Introduction to Philosophy. Here's one tip to keep in mind: If you want to take a course for free, select the "Full Course, No Certificate" or "Audit" option when you enroll. If you would like an official certificate documenting that you have successfully completed the course, you will need to pay a fee. You can browse through the complete list of March MOOCs here. Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. If you'd like to support Open Culture and our mission, please consider making a donation to our site. It's hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us provide the best free cultural and educational materials. 2,000 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) Getting Started in March: Enroll Today is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 5:37p | A Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth Over 200 Years (1790 – 2010)  The U.S. is barely even an adolescent compared to many other countries around the world. Yet it ranks third, behind China and India, in population. How did the country go, in a little over 200 years, from 6.1 people per square mile in 1800 to 93 per square mile today? We’ve previously featured maps of how the real estate came on the market. And we’ve brought you a map that tells the locations and stories of the peoples who used to live there. The map above takes a different approach, showing population density growth from 1790 to 2010, in numbers based on Census records. Originally appearing on Vivid Maps, the animated timeline contains no information about the how, who, or why of things. But we know that since it only accounts for those who were counted, the numbers of people actually living within the borders is often much higher. “Not only did the population boom as a result of births and immigrants,” writes Jeff Desjardins at the site Visual Capitalist, “but the borders of the country kept changing as well.” This change, and the fact that indigenous people were not recorded, leads to an interesting visualization of westward expansion from the point of view of the settlers. As Desjardins notes, the state of Oklahoma appears as an “empty gap” on the map in the late-1800s, lightly shaded while its borders are surrounded by dark brown. This is because “the area was originally designated as Indian Territory…. However, in 1889, the land was opened up to a massive land rush, and approximately 50,000 pioneers lined up to grab a piece of the two million acres opened for settlement.” Thousands of the people living there had already, of course, been pushed off their land during the decades-long “Trail of Tears.” The question of who “exactly is counted as a whole person?” comes up in the comments on Visual Capitalist post, another key consideration for understanding this data in its proper context.
The ways people have been categorized are products of contemporary biases, political attitudes, and legal and social discriminations. These attitudes are not incidental to the populating of the country, but materially integral. As we see the massive, yet hugely uneven, spread of people across the expanding country, we might be given the impression that it constitutes a unified surge of expansion and development, when the historical reality, of course, is anything but. Of the many questions we can ask of this data, “who fully counted as an American during each of these periods and why or why not?” might be one of the most relevant, in 1790 and today. Or, if you’d rather just watch the map fill up with sepia and burnt umber pixels, to the tune of some martial-sounding drum & bass, watch the video above. Related Content: Native Lands: An Interactive Map Reveals the Indigenous Lands on Which Modern Nations Were Built A Radical Map Puts the Oceans–Not Land–at the Center of Planet Earth (1942) Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness A Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth Over 200 Years (1790 – 2010) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 7:00p | 97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders the Meaning of Life: “What Is the Point of It All?”
If you’ve sat by the bedside of a dying friend or relative, or recovered from a terminal illness yourself, you may know too well: the concerns of yesterday—career anxieties, political high stakes, personal grudges—can slip away into the rear view, becoming smaller and more meaningless as hours pass into final days. What takes their place? Maybe a savoring of the moment, maybe regrets over moments not savored, maybe a growing acknowledgment that gratitude matters more than being right. Maybe a willingness to let go of prior ideas—not to adopt new ones, but to open to the questions again. Sometimes, this experience is bewildering and frightening, especially when coupled with the pains of illness and old age. Whatever insights one might have at the threshold of death, they cannot easily overcome “lifelong habits,” says Herbert Fingarette in the candid short film Being 97, a documentary made in the last months of the contrarian American philosopher’s life. By the time of his death,” notes Aeon, “Fingarette (1921-2018) had lived what most would consider a full and meaningful life. His marriage to his wife, Leslie, was long and happy. His career as a professor of philosophy at the University of California was both accomplished and controversial.” By this time, his wife of seventy years had been gone for seven. And at 97, physically frail and his career long over, Fingarette was coming to terms with “loneliness and absence” as well as with his need for help from other people to do simple tasks. After 42 years of teaching—and writing on subjects like self-deception, Confucianism, ethical responsibility, and addiction—he was also grappling with the fact he had been wrong about one particularly pressing matter, at least. Fingarette became infamous when, without undertaking any scientific research himself, he claimed in the 1988 book Heavy Drinking that alcoholism was a problem of self control, not a disease. But he does not speak of the political furor in this minor controversy. Eleven years later, he took on an even heavier subject in Death: Philosophical Soundings. “What I said was in a nutshell,” he recalls, “is there’s no reason to be afraid or concerned or anything about death because when you die, there’s nothing. You’re not going to suffer, you’re not going to be unhappy… you’re not going to be…. It’s not rational to be afraid of death.” He admits, “I now think that is not a good statement, because I think it’s important to figure out why it is then that people are afraid of death. Why am I concerned about it?” His best thinking aside, “my sense of realism tells me, well, no good reason or not, it is something that haunts me. I walk around the house and I ask myself, ‘What is the point of it all? There must be something I’m missing in this argument.’” He asks, he says, knowing “that there isn’t any good answer." But that doesn’t stop him from looking for one. We see Fingarette’s lifelong habits as a thinker push him forward in pursuit of what he calls a “foolish question,” although he intuits that “the answer might be… the silent answer.” It’s a painful existential realization for a man so devoted to logical argument and pronouncements of certainty. This film of Fingarette in his last months is both a personally moving portrait and a drama in miniature of a universal human dilemma: why is it so hard to accept the inevitable? Why do we have minds that struggle against it? The multitude of possible answers may be far less meaningful than the experience of the question itself, painful and transcendent as it is, whether we are grieving the loss of others, facing our own mortality, or, as in Fingarette's case, both at once. Being 97 will be added to our list of Free Online Documentaries, a subset of our collection, 1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc.. via Aeon Related Content: Death: A Free Philosophy Course from Yale Helps You Grapple with the Inescapable Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adventure and Creative Act Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders the Meaning of Life: “What Is the Point of It All?” is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
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