Media Education Foundation (Firm)

Wrestling with Manhood is the first educational program to pay attention to the enormous popularity of professional wrestling among male youth, addressing its relationship to real-life violence and probing the social values that sustain it as a powerful cultural force. Richly illustrating their analysis with numerous examples, Sut Jhally and Jackson Katz - the award-winning creators of the videos Dreamworlds and Tough Guise, respectively - offer a...

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. The film locates the origins of pride in sites of grassroots resistance and revolt, going back to the anti-police Stonewall uprising led by queer and trans people of color in 1969. It then traces how the deeply political roots of pride morphed into the depoliticized big-business PRIDE™...

In recent years, weapon-cam footage from distant wars has invaded the screens of civilian life. Now the crosshairs of the drone, smart bomb, helicopter gunship, satellite, and sniper scope have become a dominant window through which we see and "experience" war. Drawing from his book on this phenomenon, Dr. Roger Stahl traces the origins of this targeting footage and explores how it has been used to shape the public image of war in the twenty-first...

In 1960, NBC aired what some consider to be the first "reality television" show in American broadcast history. Hosted by Jane Wyatt of Father Knows Best fame, and billing itself as a "new kind of visual reporting," it was called Story of a Family, and it purported to document the day-to-day lives of the 10-member Robertson family of Amarillo, Texas. While the show has since faded from public memory, media scholars and television historians now recognize...

After assembling mock assault rifles out of everyday found objects, sculptor David Hess decides to turn them into an experimental public art installation to explore America’s obsession with guns. The fruits of that mission comprise the story of Gun Show, a fascinating and deeply moving documentary that steers clear of advocating a position and instead invites meaningful dialogue about the cultural power of guns. Beginning in Hess’s sculpture studio,...

Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend tells the inspiring story of Nicole Sherry McFadyen, one of only two women in history to be named Head Groundskeeper of a Major League Baseball team. Beginning with her first internship, the film shows how McFadyen rose through the ranks to become a leading innovator in the field and ultimately take the prestigious head job at storied Camden Yards in Baltimore. If you're looking for ways to counter negative gender...

The MeToo movement has shined much-needed light on the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and abuse and created unprecedented demand for gender violence prevention models that actually work. The Bystander Moment tells the story of one of the most prominent and proven of these models – the innovative bystander approach developed by pioneering scholar and activist Jackson Katz and his colleagues at Northeastern University’s Center for the Study...

Broken Trust takes an unflinching look at the secret world of sexual and emotional abuse experienced by athletes. Moving beyond attention-grabbing headlines, the film draws on courageous first-hand testimonies from Olympic and national-class athletes and coaches to reveal how victims in the sports world are often isolated and ostracized for speaking out, how parents are pressured to keep silent when confronted by abusive coaches, and how more and...

From award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt, HAZING offers a deeply personal look inside the culture, tradition, and secrecy surrounding hazing rituals in fraternities and sororities, sports teams, marching bands, the military and beyond. In the film, Hurt, who belongs to a fraternity himself, talks to members of Black and historically white Greek-letter organizations and other groups that practice hazing, and gives voice to survivors of severe initiation...

As nations around the globe attempt to fight sex trafficking, many consider legalizing prostitution. Two filmmakers travel across ten countries to explore the issue, attempting to answer the question: “How can we prevent sexual exploitation before it happens in the first place?” Though governments are getting better at prosecuting traffickers and providing aftercare to victims, it is time we begin to ask the question of what lies at the root.