SDH Captioned
Grades 7-12, College, Adult
Produced by Television Trust for the Environment
DVD Purchase $195, Rent $45
US Release Date: 2008
Copyright Date: 2008
DVD ISBN: 1-59458-820-1
Subjects
Anthropology
Asian Studies
Developing World
Environment
Ethics
Geography
Globalization
Health
History
Human Rights
Humanities
India
Islamic Studies
Millennium Development Goals
Rural Studies
Social Justice
Social Psychology
Sociology
United Nations
Women's Studies
The Prince
A young Pakistani landowner chooses between trying to implement the MDGs in the village that his family owns, and a quiet life.
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"Offers a crash course in the micro realities of development politics." Dr. Timothy McGettigan, Professor of Sociology, Colorado State University, Pueblo |
In Pakistan, a feudal prince's family has been making life hell for local villagers for centuries. Rafeh Malik is a young feudal prince who inherited Ratrian, a village in Northern Punjab, on his 18th birthday. Prince Rafeh had a friend from the city: Dawn TV journalist Shehryrar Mufti. And one day Shehryar told him: "Look, man, people just don't buy your act anymore. You can't make out you own these folks." It was apparently a dramatic moment of conversion. The prince claims he now realizes his land-owning caste has been living in the past.
Mufti has told him about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the prince says he's inspired to try and introduce them to his village. But in the process, he risks alienating his family and even the conservative villagers themselves. After all, they all live close to the edge of the troubled North West Frontier and don't necessarily want what the West calls "development."
Will the villagers accept the prince's offer? Will his family stop him? And how genuine was his conversion? In the face of self-doubt, selfishness and conservatism, will he decide to go on?
The other titles in the series are:
1. Edge Of Islam - Three Muslim students face a choice between their faith and their future.
2. Castro Or Quit - Two young doctors in Venezuela have to decide whether to leave the country or stay with their patients.
3. No Country For Young Girls? - A young Indian woman has to choose - stay with a husband who doesn't want female children, or make it on her own.
4. The Unforgiven - Should General Butt Naked (née Joshua Blahyi) - now a Christian pastor - be forgiven for his role in Liberia's horrific civil war?
5. Looking For My Gypsy Roots - Hungarian film director Arpad faces a dilemma - should he track down his Roma father?
6. The Dilemma Of The White Ant - Dominic Ongwen is both a victim and alleged perpetrator of LRA war crimes. Should he face an international court?
7. Three Sisters - Eritrea's women fought in the war; should they now liberate themselves from harmful traditional practices?
8. The Pied Piper Of Eyasi - The Hadza are among Africa's last hunter gatherers - should they follow charismatic Baallow into the modern world?
10. Running On Empty - Highlights the plight of two young mothers - one in South Wales and the other in Northern Ethiopia.
11. Collision Course - Reviews the positive steps being taken in India and Brazil to confront the serious public health issue presented by traffic accidents.
Reviews
"An effort to implement the UN's Millennium Development Goals produces a collision of cultures. This video offers a crash course in the micro realities of development politics. In rural Pakistan where, change--especially change that has been designed by bureaucrats who live half a world away--threatens to upset the balance in a community that has persevered through good and bad times for millennia."
"Life 6 is a wonderfully educational series that presents the viewers with the dilemmas faced by specific individuals in the socio-historical and economic context of their communities in the midst of an increasingly globalized world. The tremendous value of this series is that, in the brief thirty minutes that each episode lasts, it captures the complexities of the lives of those in it as they face Western influence that force them to reassert, defend, or challenge their local and/or individual identities, cultures, governance, wealth distribution, and practices of achieving justice and reconciliation--to name a few...Life 6 represents these issues in an objective and analytical way that will--without question--lead into a discussion and debate about them by academics and lay audiences alike."
"The problems of development go beyond the shortage of resources or capital or a lack of willpower on the part of developers or local people, as this good