The Great American Lie

Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.

In Man Made, Sunny tries to find out what society's ideas regarding masculinity entails. Does testosteron define your masculinity? Can men be victims? And do men suffer under these ideas? In the twentieth century, feminists have fought for the freedom of women and subsequently their emancipation. Is now the time for the emancipation of men, are they next to be set free?

A crypto-trader and an ex-clergyman travel to Berlin to throw a sex party. Filmmaker Ayoto Ataraxia documents them and their sex-positive community with a phone during the week leading up to the event, discussing sex and life. But will they cum?

On a Summer afternoon, Pedro packs the last few boxes before having to leave his apartment in New York. 12 years ago, Pedro and Ana had arrived in America from Portugal, in search of a dream. Now, Ana's voice describes, from the other side of the ocean, that same country to which they are returning. As the rooms are emptied, Pedro bids farewell to one life, welcoming another. But the dream that brought him will remain forever in the city that never sleeps, awaiting his return.

Abigail Disney looks at America's dysfunctional and unequal economy and asks why the American Dream has worked for the wealthy, yet is a nightmare for people born with less. As a way to imagine a more equitable future, Disney uses her family's story to explore how this systemic injustice took hold.

In Texas, construction workers face the deadliest conditions in the country. This documentary follows three immigrant families who are rising up to seek justice and equality in an industry rife with exploitation.

The collective of antipatriarchal men is a political organization that, since 2010, organizes spaces of group self-reflection to problematize the role of masculinity for those who identify as and/or are read as men. This documentary was filmed around one of their yearly regional forums.

In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs? Director Christopher Bell explores America's win-at-all-cost culture by examining how his two brothers became members of the steroid-subculture in an effort to realize their American dream.

A dive into the societal rules and expectations of the celebration of women’s bodies and their use to show love and power. The Disdress Dolls shimmy, shake, and strip across the stage, challenging concepts of strength and femininity by offering a vulnerable portrait of themselves and playful and macabre world.

Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge...

This film discusses the effect on how major American films in Hollywood were influenced by the Eastern European Jewish culture that most of the major movie moguls who controlled the studios shared. Through clips of various films, the filmmakers illustrate the dominant themes like that of the outsider, the outspoken American patriotism, and rooting for the underdog in society.