Get Resources - Book & Movie Reviews
Here’s a list of movies, books and articles about children, global poverty and/or the countries where we work. The list isn’t intended to give "the CFCA/Walk with the Poor perspective" on a particular issue, and not all content reflects our views.
The list is to help you educate yourself about the experiences, issues and perspectives that are found in the communities where we work. When you know more, you’re able to WALK with the poor even better. You begin to understand what solidarity can look like.
So, enjoy! And, if you watch a movie, or read a book, let us know how you liked it! We’d love to hear from you.
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ABC Africa Abbas Kiarostami and his assistant, Seifollah Samadian, travel to Kampala, Uganda,
at the request of the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development. For
10 days, their camera captures the faces of a thousand children - all orphans - whose parents have died of AIDS. Recording tears and laughter, music and silence, life and death, the film attests to Africa's resilience in the face of so much suffering and disease.source: IMDB |
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Back to School WIDE ANGLE's ongoing profile of seven children in seven countries struggling to overcome daunting obstacles to achieve what is not yet a global birthright - a basic education. We began filming with the children in Afghanistan, Benin, Brazil, India, Japan, Kenya and Romania during their first year of school in 2003, and returned to film their progress three years later - only to find that some are hanging onto their enrollment by a thread. With over 100 million children around the globe out of school, this special puts a human face on an issue with profound consequences for global development. The full documentary can be viewed online.source: PBS |
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Baraka Filmed without words in 24 countries, BARAKA shows us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." BARAKA is an incredible journey through 6 continents, 24 countries. The movie has no plot, contains no actors and has no script. It is a collection of breathtaking images from around the world that show the beauty and destruction of human beings. source: IMDB |
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Born into Brothels This film is a chronicle of filmmakers Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's efforts to show that world of Calcutta's red light district. To do that, they inspired a special group of children of the prostitutes of the area to photograph the most reluctant subjects of it. As the kids excel in their new found art, the filmmakers struggle to help them have a chance for a better life away from the miserable poverty that threatens to crush their dreams. source: IMDB |
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Mountains Beyond Mountains
By Tracy Kidder At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most. This magnificent book shows how radical change can be fostered in situations that seem insurmountable, and it also shows how a meaningful life can be created, as Farmer—brilliant, charismatic, charming, both a leader in international health and a doctor who finds time to make house calls in Boston and the mountains of Haiti—blasts through convention to get results.source: BookBrowse |
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Planet of the Slums
By Mike Davis
According to the United Nations, more than 1 billion people now live in the slums of the cities of the South. In this brilliant and ambitious book, Mike Davis explores the future of a radically unequal and explosively unstable urban world.
From the sprawling barricadas of Lima to the garbage hills of Manila, urbanization has been disconnected from industrialization, even economic growth. Davis portrays a vast humanity warehoused in shantytowns and exiled from the formal world economy. He argues that the rise of this informal urban proletariat is a wholly original development unforeseen by either classical Marxism or neo-liberal theory.source: Verso |
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Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World
By Robert Neuwirth
Investigative journalist Robert Neuwirth lived among squatter communities from Rio to Bombay to Nairobi to Istanbul to give us an impassioned, inside view of squatter life and a glimpse into the urban future. He met people in Nairobi who built homes with their bare hands, Turkish families who plot land invasions, and children in Rio whose parents justify outfoxing the authorities as the only path to a better life. And he shows us that in cities like Rio, squatter settlements have become decent places to live for formerly landless people. Tracing the notion of private property from the enclosure movement in Europe to the settlement of the U.S., Neuwirth shows how squatting rights may actually be seen as more "natural" than the current laws practiced in the U.S.Source: Labyrinth Books |
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The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
By Jeffrey Sachs
Marrying vivid eyewitness storytelling to his laserlike analysis, Jeffrey Sachs sets the stage by drawing a vivid conceptual map of the world economy and the different categories into which countries fall. Then, in a tour de force of elegance and compression, he explains why, over the past 200 years, wealth has diverged across the planet in the manner that it has and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of poverty.Source: Powells.com |
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