Directed by James Der Derian, David Udris & Michael Udris • Documentary • 2010 • 84 minutes
Human Terrain is two stories in one. The first exposes a new Pentagon effort to enlist the best and the brightest in a struggle for hearts and minds. Facing long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military initiates "Human Terrain Systems," a controversial program that seeks to make cultural awareness the centerpiece of the new counterinsurgency strategy. Designed to embed social scientists with combat troops, the program swiftly comes under attack as a misguided and unethical effort to gather intelligence and target enemies.
The other story is about a brilliant young scholar who leaves the university to join a Human Terrain team. After working as a humanitarian activist in the Western Sahara, Balkans, East Timor and elsewhere, and winning a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford, Michael Bhatia returns to Brown University to take up a visiting fellowship. In the course of conducting research on military cultural awareness, he is recruited by the Human Terrain program and eventually embeds with the 82nd Airborne in eastern Afghanistan. On the way to mediate an intertribal dispute, Bhatia is killed when his humvee hits a roadside bomb.
Directed by Owen Gower • Documentary • 2015 • 112 minutes
In 1984, a Conservative government under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared war on Britain's unions, taking on the strongest in the country, the National Union of Mineworkers. Following a secret plan, the government began announcin...
Directed by Stephen Apkon, Andrew Young • Documentary • 2017 • 86 minutes
In a world torn by conflict — in a place where the idea of peace has been abandoned — an energy of determined optimism emerges. When someone is willing to disturb the status quo and stand for the dream of a free and secure...
