Tag Archives: Collection Spotlight

Devilish Movies this Spooky Season: a Lilly Library@Bishop’s House Collection Spotlight

Annual Halloween guest post by Stephen Conrad

Satan, Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Baphomet, the Antichrist, Father of Lies, Moloch—however you name or summon him—the Devil rightfully plays a primary role in many fine horror movies. This spooky season of 2024 let’s survey a few of Duke Library’s more Satanic film holdings!

Quotation from To the Devil a Daughter
To the Devil, a Daughter, dir. Peter Sykes, 1976

A few outright classics should certainly be experienced when considering the Evil One in cinema. Such offerings include the Georgetown possession tale in the original The Exorcist, the creepy Satan-spawn Damien in The Omen, and the New York City cult Devil- offspring trip, Rosemary’s Baby.  Now that the standards are handled and our Satanic baseline is set, let’s delve further into the licking flames of Hell with further fiendish tales.

DVD cover
dir. John Carpenter, 2004

Leave it to genre master John Carpenter to direct a gripping and wild picture about green goo in the basement of a Los Angeles church that we discover to be the essence of Satan.  In Prince of Darkness, Donald Pleasance (character actor in other creepy  tales like Halloween) stars as the priest trying to corral the Devil while rocker Alice Cooper steals the show in the role of a street schizo lurking outside the church.

DVD cover
dir. Piers Haggard, 1971

 

Or do you perhaps prefer a Folk Horror classic? Then travel back to 18th century England and experience the terror of Blood on Satan’s Claw. From director Piers Haggard comes this tale of a village’s children enthralled to Satan, carrying out demonic and vicious acts in his name.

Staying in the UK for a spell, here’s a couple of classics from Hammer Studios featuring the legendary Christopher Lee. To the Devil a Daughter showcases Lee as an excommunicated priest who leads a group of Satanists raising a teenager to be the Devil’s representative on plant earth when she turns eighteen. Richard Widmark also stars as an American writer helping to thwart the evil designs on the sold-soul teen, played by Nastassja Kinski.

DVD cover
dir. Terence Fisher, 1968

And in The Devil Rides Out, Lee stars on the righteous side for a change as the Duc de Richleau, attempting to save victims from an occult group. Directed by Hammer maestro Terence Fisher,  this chiller most excitingly features a May Day ceremony helmed by the Goat of Mendes himself!

DVD cover
dir. Gilberto Martinez Solares, 1975

Is Mexican Nunsploitation more your speed? Well then here’s a true wonder for you called Sátanico Pandemonium (a/k/a La Sexorcista), from 1975. Sister Maria (Cecilia Pezet) is tempted by Lucifer into ever more blasphemous and violent and sexual acts, threatening to destroy her convent and send all the sisters to Hell. The movie’s tagline says it all: “From Bride of Christ to Slave of Satan”!

DVD cover
dir. Eric Weston, 1981

Back to America in 1981 for a computer hell of 0s and 1s in  Evilspeak.  Bullied cadet, Clint Howard, at a military school discovers a book of Black Mass, using it and his computer to summon Satan to help exact revenge on his tormentors. Maybe it was the inclusion of demon pigs that helped land this one on the infamous “Video Nasties” list in the UK in the ‘80s.

Satan is everywhere and these titles are but a smattering of the diabolical offerings lurking in the Duke Libraries stacks ready for you to request–if you dare! Choose your own infernal adventures and Happy Halloween to all you Blue Devils out there!

Many of the frights featured here are available streaming… so this Halloween season check out our chilling platforms (accessible with Duke NetID/Password): Swank Digital Campus Horror Movies (scroll down to the Horror category) and Kanopy Fright Fest.

P.S. Don’t be scared of DVDs and Blu-rays. You can check out an external drive and play these blood-curdling movies to your heart’s content…until it stops from horror?!!!

DVD drive with Halloween clip art

 

Hispanic Voices from our Collections: Part 2

Fall 2024 brings exciting changes to East Campus Libraries.  Lilly Library is undergoing a major renovation and expansion and, as many of you know, our staff and services have moved to the Bishop’s House. Our first collection spotlight of the year features books and films that celebrate Hispanic creators and stories.  This post, the second of two, highlights movies. Check out our selection of books too. Come to East Campus, explore the Collection Spotlight, and say hello to Lilly staff in our new digs!

FILMS

 Chicano Cinema and Media Art Series

This series showcases important and rare Chicano films and videos. Included in the collection are feature-length films and artists’ videos. Many of these works have been restored and the originals archived in the CSRC Library’s special collections at UCLA.

DVD cover, Frontierlandia


Fronterilandia = Frontierland: the border in the popular imagination of the U.S. and Mexico
(dir. Jesse Lerner, 2005)
Fronterilandi examines multiple points of cultural contact between the United States and Mexico. From Santa Barbara’s Fiestas, and South Carolina’s kitschy “South of the Border” tourist complex, to a Mexican Beatles cover band and Chicano rap, this film reveals the Borderlands as a laboratory of hybridity that continues to ignite the popular imagination of each nation. Working at the boundaries of experimental film and documentary travelogue, this film weaves together found footage, interviews, performance art, and music video, producing a masterful commentary that is at once poetic, disturbing and hilarious.

More titles in the series:
Laura Aguilar : life, the body, her perspective
Casa Libre = Freedom House
Film/video works by Willie Varela
Los Four ; Murals of Aztlán : the street painters of East Los Angeles
Harry Gamboa Jr. : early video art
Harry Gamboa Jr. : 1990s video art
No Movie
Please, don’t bury me alive! = ¡Por favor, no me entierren vivo!
Run, Tecato, run

Biopics

DVD cover Frida

Frida (dir. Julie Taymor, 2002)
Salma Hayek’s Oscar-nominated performance drives this fascinating biopic about Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo and her fiery marriage to fellow painter Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). The imaginative film also chronicles her political activism and the bus accident that left her in pain for the rest of her life. Geoffrey Rush, Ashley Judd, Antonio Banderas, Edward Norton.

More biopics:
Before Night Falls
Cesar Chavez
La Bamba
Motorcycle Diaries
Selena

Hispanic-American Classics

DVD cover, American Me

American Me (dir. Edward James Olmos, 1992)
Depiction of the Mexican Mafia and the Los Angeles prison system with an anti-drug and anti-gang theme. This film marks the directorial debut of veteran actor, Edward James Olmos.

 Real Women Have Curves (dir. Patricia Cardoso, 2002)
Real Women Have Curves is the story of a first generation Mexican-American teenager on the verge of becoming a woman. Ana receives a full scholarship to Columbia University but her traditional, old-world parents feel that now is the time for Ana to help provide for the family, not the time for college.

 Stand and Deliver (dir. Ramon Menendez, 1988)
Based on the true story of the determined Bolivian-born math teacher Jaime Escalante, this movie follows Escalante as he tries to teach calculus to the at-risk, majority-Latino students at James A. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.

DVD cover Tortilla Soup

Tortilla Soup (dir. Maria Ripoll, 2001)
A heartwarming comedy that’s all about food, family and a certain kind of magic that only happens at the dinner table. Martin is the culinary genius behind a successful restaurant and the widowed father of three daughters whom he has a compulsion to try and steer in the right direction. Hungry for their independence, the girls find themselves at odds with their traditionalist father.

Zoot Suit (dir. Luis Valdez, 2003)
Based on a play by the same name, this story is set in Los Angeles in the early 1940’s and centers around the trial and wrongful murder conviction of Henry Reyna and three other Chicano gang members. Discriminated against for their zoot suit-wearing Chicano identity, twenty-two members of the 38th Street Gang are placed on trial for a murder they did not commit.

More classics:
El Norte
Beatriz at Dinner
Girlfight
In the Heights
La Mission
Mosquita y Mari
Mi Familia = My Family
Quinceañera

Feature Films 

DVD cover La Misma Luna

Under the Same Moon = La Misma Luna (dir. Patricia Riggen, 2008)
Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. In Mexico, her mother cares for Carlitos. Unexpected circumstances drive both Rosario and Carlitos to embark on their own journeys in a desperate attempt to reunite. Along the way, mother and son face challenges and obstacles but never lose hope that they will one day be together again.

DVD cover, Sleep Dealer

Sleep Dealer = Traficante de Suenos (dir. Alex Rivera, 2009)
Memo Cruz siempre ha soñado con dejar su pequeño y huir a las grandes ciudades fronterizas del Norte. Pero cuando ocurre una tragedia imprevista y se ve obligado a huir, Memo descubre un nuevo mundo mucho más salvaje de lo que había soñado. El futuro próximo de Sleep Dealer es un mundo lleno de drones asesinos, fábricas de tecnología de punta, vendedores de memorias y una salvaje batalla contra los ‘aqua-terroristas’ emitada por televisión.

Set in the near-future is a world marked by closed borders, corporate warriors, and a global digital network. In this world three strangers risk their lives to connect with each other and break the barriers of technology.

More feature films:

Volver
Viva

Roma
Sin Nombre
El Secreto de sus Ojos = The Secret in their Eyes
El Mariachi
Maria Full of Grace
Cinema Mexico: las Peliculas que Hicieron
City of God = Cidade de Deus
Amores Perros

Documentaries

DVD cover Dolores

Dolores (dir. Peter Bratt, 2001)
One of the most important, yet least known activists of our time, Dolores Huerta was an equal partner in founding the first farm workers union with César Chávez. Tirelessly leading the fight for racial and labor justice, Huerta evolved into one of the most defiant feminists of the 20th century — and she continues the fight to this day, in her late 80s. With unprecedented access to this intensely private mother of 11, Peter Bratt’s film Dolores chronicles Huerta’s life.

More documentaries:
Harvest of Empire
Black in Latin America
Latinos beyond reel : challenging a media stereotype
Memories of a Penitent Heart = = Memorias de un corazon penitente
Mercedes Sosa: the Voice of Latin America
Nuestra Comunidad: Latinos in North Carolina

So you think that’s all we have… ??? Guess again!

The Digitalia Film Library offers a great variety of streaming video content including titles from across Latin America; and you can search by country. Duke Libraries provides access to thousands of streaming movies for you to enjoy. Find more great films in these platforms:  Swank Digital Campus, Projectr, Films on Demand World Cinema, Academic Video Online, Docuseek and Kanopy (available with Duke netid/password authentication).

DVD cover Mi Vida Loca

external DVD drive

 

AND we have thousands of DVDs you can borrow – including tons of titles that aren’t streaming anywhere (like Mi Vida Loca) – along with external DVD drives to play them!

 

Hispanic Voices from our Collections

Fall 2024 brings exciting changes to East Campus Libraries.  Lilly Library is being renovated and our staff and services have moved!!! Our first collection spotlight of the year can be found in Lilly Library at Bishop’s House. Our spotlight features books and films that celebrate Hispanic creators and stories.  This post, the first of two, highlights a selection of the books on display. Stay tuned for the movies. Come to East Campus, explore the spotlight, and say hello to Lilly staff in our new digs!

PART I – BOOKS 

 

Book cover
Yaguareté white : poems by Diego Báez

POETRY
Yaguarete White: Poems
Diego Báez’s debut collection explores the sense of alienation that accompanies those who hold multiple, sometimes contesting identities. A second-generation immigrant of mixed Paraguayan and white European descent, the American-born Báez wrestles with his heritage and with what it means to feel perpetually out of place.

More poetry:
Suggest Paradise: Poems
Banana [   ]
The Book of Wanderers
Cantoras

Book cover
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez

FICTION
Olga Dies Dreaming
Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico’s history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream – all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.

More fiction:
Silver Nitrate
Latin@ Rising: an Anthology of Latin@ Science Fiction and Fantasy

 

 

Book cover
Razabilly by Nicholas F. Centino

MUSIC
Razabilly: Transforming Sights, Sounds, and History in the Los Angeles Latina/o Rockabilly Scene
Pairing a decade of participant observation with interviews and historical research, Nicholas F. Centino explores the reasons behind a Rockabilly renaissance in 1990s Los Angeles and demonstrates how, as a form of working-class leisure, this scene provides Razabillies with spaces of respite and conviviality within the alienating landscape of the urban metropolis. A nuanced account revealing how and why Los Angeles Latinas/os have turned to and transformed the music and aesthetic style of 1950s rockabilly, Razabilly offers rare insight into this musical subculture, its place in rock and roll history, and its passionate practitioners.

 

 

More music:
The Sounds of Latinidad: Immigrants Making Music and Creating Culture in a Southern City

Rock and Roll Por Vida: Hispanics in Rock, Metal, and My Journey

Book cover
Metamorfosis by Rafael Trelles

ART
MetamorfosisA major review of the career of Rafael Trelles (b. Puerto Rico) since 1992. Included are over 80 images of surreal, fantastical paintings and sculptures. Trelles has an international presence. He founded the group Delfín del Cielo and in Mexico he was one of the founding members of La Iguana Marina and in Puerto Rico, El Alfil.

More art:
Images of the Spirit: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide
Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra “Calidad”
LatinX Photography in the United States: a Visual History
Our America: the Latino Presence in Art

 

Book cover
How Does It Feel to be Unwanted by Eileen Truax

MEMOIRS
How Does it Feel to be Unwanted?
Veteran reporter, Eileen Truax, weaves the stories of 18 immigrants with cogent analysis of the broader social circumstances of their status to offer a compelling picture of courage and resistance. She relates riveting personal stories while making the case for a more humane immigration policy

More memoirs:
¡Hola Papi! : how to come out in a Walmart parking lot and other life lessons
We Were Always Here: a Mexican-American’s Odyssey
On Becoming Nuyoricans

 

 

 

 

Book cover
LatinX by Claudia Milian

NONFICTION
LatinX
LatinX has neither country nor fixed geography according to Duke professor, Claudia Milian. It is the most powerful conceptual tool of the Latino/a present, an itinerary whose analytic routes incorporate the Global South and ecological devastation. Milian’s trailblazing study deploys the indeterminate but thunderous “X” as intellectual armor, a speculative springboard, and a question for our times that never stops being asked. LatinX sorts out and addresses issues about the unknowability of social realities that exceed our present knowledge.

More non-fiction:
Making the Latino South: a history of racial formation (by Duke professor, Cecilia Márquez)
Abstract barrios : the crises of Latinx visibility in cities
Latino Political Power
Queering the Border: Essays
Latinidad at the Crossroads: Insights into Latinx Identify in the Twenty-First Century

 

 

 

Lilly Collection Spotlight – Gone Fishin’

Book cover with a picture of a fish
Gone Fishin’: The Compleat Angler

Summertime is here! The pace on both East and West Campus is a little slower, so it’s a perfect time for a break from the academic rigor of the rest of the year. At Lilly, we go beyond the usual “beach reads” to cast our collection spotlight net wide as we dive into the Duke Libraries collections in search of fishy films and books.

And we mean fishy in the broadest sense – maybe there is a fish, or someone who fishes, someone with a aquatic name, or just a lot of water… it’s all about your sense of scale 😉

Books: Catch these some of these fish stories!

The Fishermen: a novel

The Fishermen
A Cain and Abel-esque story of a childhood in Nigeria. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, brothers take advantage of his absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river, they meet a madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings. What happens next will transcend the lives and imaginations of the book’s characters and readers.

Compleat Angler
First published in 1653, this literary and nature classic was created by a Londoner with a passion for rustic life. Cast in the form of a dialogue between the veteran angler Piscator and his pupil Viator, it both informs and delights with an ingenious exploration of fishing’s subtle intricacies and the pleasures of the natural world.

Sockeye Mother
To the Gitxsan people of Northwestern British Columbia, the sockeye salmon is more than just a source of food. The Sockeye Mother explores how the animals, water, soil, and seasons are all intertwined

The Outlaw Ocean

The Outlaw Ocean
There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.

Beyond That, the Sea
As German bombs fall over London in 1940, working-class parents send their eleven-year-old daughter to America to live for the duration of the war. Scared and angry, feeling lonely and displaced, Bea crosses the Atlantic to  Boston. As Bea comes into herself and relaxes into her new life–summers on the coast in Maine, new friends clamoring to hear about life across the sea – the girl she had been begins to fade away, until, abruptly, she is called home to London when the war ends.

When I was a Fish
This fast-paced biography recounts the life of Mike Bruton, one of the leading fish biologists in Africa, and also explores the various issues in which he was involved as a scientist, conservationist and science educator. Whether or not you are a fisherman, aquarist or sushi eater, you will be fascinated by these astonishing tales of a man who almost became a fish!

Miss Iceland
Iceland in the 1960s. Hekla always knew she wanted to be a writer; there is only one problem: she is a woman. Hekla heads for Reykjavik with a manuscript buried in her bags. She moves in with her friend Jon, a gay man who longs to work in the theatre, but can only find dangerous, backbreaking work on fishing trawlers. The two friends feel completely out of place in a small and conservative world.

 

Films?  “Reel” in more fish tales!
Catch or stream :

 

Jaws

Jaws DVD 138 or Stream (with Duke NetID)
You’re gonna need a bigger boat…
It is the ultimate fish tale!  Do we really need to provide a summary?

Mother of the River (Stream with Duke NetID)
Drawing on Caribbean folklore, this exuberant experimental drama uses animation and live action to discover a film language unique to African American women. The multilayered soundtrack combines the music of Africa and the diaspora-including Miriam Makeba, acappella singers from Haiti and trumpetiste Clora Bryant.

Contracorriente (Undertow)

Contracorriente = Undertow
Miguel, a respected Peruvian fisherman, is expecting his first child with his beautiful wife, Mariela. Their peaceful existence is threatened by Miguel’s love for Santiago, a visiting artist whose presence is viewed as a threat by the villagers.

Planet Ocean (Stream with Duke NetID)
A look at the natural beauty of the oceans and mankind’s impact on their ecosystem.

Cast Away
Chuck Noland, a FedEx systems engineer, finds his ruled-by-the-clock existence ended when a harrowing plane crash leaves him isolated on a remote island. As Chuck struggles to survive, he finds that his own personal journey has only just begun.

Moana – on DVD or Streaming

Moana Lilly DVD or Stream with Duke NetID
A mythic adventure set around 2,000 years ago across a series of islands in the South Pacific. The film follows the journey of a spirited teenager named Moana as she meets the once-mighty demi-god Maui, and together they traverse the open ocean, encountering enormous fiery creatures and impossible odds.

Aquarela  Lilly DVD or Stream with Duke NetID A deeply cinematic journey through the transformative beauty and raw power of water. From the precarious frozen waters of Russia’s Lake Baikal to Miami in the throes of Hurricane Irma to Venezuela’s mighty Angels Falls, water is the main character, with director Victor Kossakovsky capturing her many personalities.

 

 

 

Lilly Collection Spotlight: a Horror-ful Halloween

What is it about Horror in 2022?

It’s Alive: Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Movie Posters

A hallowed tradition at Lilly is shining our collection spotlight on  seasonal films and readings to reveal treasures hidden in our collections. For Halloween in 2022, a thirst for 1970s and 80s type horror film is all the rage.  Dare to visit the Lilly Library Lobby to discover films and books that will haunt you!

What is it about Horror – Films

When gathering the frightful films featured, we asked Stephen C., the Duke Libraries’ Team Lead for Western Languages in Monographic Acquisitions  for suggestions. Because of Stephen’s knowledge and interest in film, we invited him to curate (and order) new titles to give our horror collection a jolt! Enjoy Stephen’s latest batch of  horror-ful Halloween picks just waiting for you below:

Death Screams – Lilly DVD 34682 (filmed in North Carolina)

Death Screams
A slow-burn slasher filmed in and around Shelby, NC in 1982. It’s the last night of the local carnival and a maniac with a machete is picking off the local teens. A low-budget marvel full of regional charm (Red Bridges Barbecue Lodge anyone?) with some of the best extended small-Southern-town fair/carnival footage ever.

Mutations
Like an update on Tod Browning’s Freaks  crossed with an unfunny Little Shop of Horrors, this British production from 1974 features Donald Pleasence as a mad scientist turning his victims into plant-infused monsters. Featuring a cast of sideshow performers; including Kenly, NC native Esther Blackmon, the alligator-skin woman (who also appeared in The Sentinel)

Mystics in Bali
Indonesian supernatural horror from 1981 that is guaranteed to be one of the weirdest things you’ll ever see! The plot concerns an American woman named Cathy who ventures to Bali to learn about black magic but is soon a floating vampiric head with trailing organs/entrails under the control of a witch called the Queen of the Leák. And it only gets more odd from there!

Alison’s Birthday – VC 12657

Alison’s Birthday Any movie that begins with teens using a Ouija board is nearly guaranteed to portend evil befalling the cast and this 1981 horror from Down Under is no exception. Alison’s 19th birthday is upcoming and a wicked ritual is in the works for her that will transfer her soul to a crone. Acquired on the original VHS for extra experience enhancement.

Pieces  A sick 1983 Spanish piece of chainsawsploitation from director Juan Piquer Simón. Filmed in Madrid but supposed to be set on a Boston college campus, this sordid tale tells of a madman sawing up co-eds for his own ghastly ends. If you can somehow survive the duration you’ll be “rewarded” with a shocker of an ending!

Bloodthirsty Trilogy A fangsome trio of early/mid 70s vampire films from Japan’s Toho Studios: ‘Lake of Dracula’, ‘Vampire Doll’ and ‘Evil of Dracula’. Creepy mansions, golden eyes, hellish prophecies, empty coffins, dark secrets, thunderous nights and terrifying nightmares reign in these atmospheric and stylish cinematic takes on the vampire.

The Bloodthirsty Trilogy — Lilly DVD 34699

 

 

Films and their descriptions curated by Stephen Conrad. For other windows into our horror collection, check out Stephen’s previous posts: 5 Titles: Horror from African American Directors  and Scary Movies for a Horror-ful Halloween.

What is it about Horror – Books

Is it alive? Perhaps! Your appetite for  the horror film genre may be alive, so also check out our collection spotlight books to satisfy.  Explore horror films around the world, and learn about their creators and audiences.  Classic movie posters,  graphic novels, analysis of the use of music, and film criticism compel you, yes, compel you to read them.

Giallo! : genre, modernity, and detection in Italian horror cinemas

It’s alive! : classic horror and sci-fi movie posters from the Kirk Hammett Collection
This generously illustrated book highlights the finest examples from Metallica’s lead guitarist, Kirk Hammett’s personal collection—an astonishing trove of horror and sci-fi film posters that span the history of the genre.

Giallo! : genre, modernity, and detection in Italian horror cinemas
Taking their name from the Italian for yellow– reflecting the covers of pulp crime novels–these genre movies were principally produced between 1960 and the late 1970s.
These cinematic hybrids of crime, horror, and detection are characterized by elaborate set-piece murders, lurid aesthetics, and experimental soundtracks.

Jordan Peele’s Get out : political horror

Jordan Peele’s Get out : political horror
This  collection of sixteen essays is devoted to exploring Get Out’s roots in the horror tradition and its complex and timely commentary on twenty-first-century US race relations.

Scored to death 2 : more conversations with some of horror’s greatest composers
Scored to Death 2 collects 16 brand-new, info-packed, terrifyingly entertaining interviews with renowned composers who have provided the music for some of horrors most revered films, film franchises, and TV shows, including Get Out, Us, Martin, Re-Animator, The Walking Dead, Puppet Master, Saw, Creepshow, Day of the Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Dark Shadows, Burnt Offerings, The Terminator, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Ring, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Audition, Ghoulies, Happy Death Day, It Follows, Gretel & Hansel, and many more!

Queer horror film and television : sexuality and masculinity at the margins
Moving from the margins to the mainstream, via the application of psychoanalytic theory, critical and cultural interpretation, interviews with key directors and close readings of classic, cult and modern horror, this book will be invaluable to students and researchers of gender and sexuality in horror film and television

 

 

 

 

 

Lilly Collection Spotlight: Library Things for Your Curiosity Voyage

Library Things –
Embark on Your Curiosity Voyage

Films, Books, and Music of the 1980s in the Libraries’ Collections

Do you know that the creators of Stranger Things are from Durham, North Carolina?
The supernatural series may be set in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, but creators Matt and Ross Duffer grew up in Durham. Although the identical twins grew up in the 90s, the series is awash with popular culture references from the 1980s. They lived in Durham County and attended the Duke School for elementary and middle school, graduating from Jordan High School. The Duffer brothers later attended Chapman University in California where they studied film and media arts.

Enjoy the ambience of Hawkins – we mean Durham – and immerse yourself in the 1980s. Discover movies, books, comics, and music of the era in our Duke Libraries’ collections.

Films of the 1980s

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Spain) DVD 30088

To give a sense of the world beyond Hawkins/Durham, we’ve highlighted international films from the same period including Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Spain), Police Story (Hong Kong), Cinema Paradiso (Italy), and My Neighbor Totoro (Japan).

Films that the Hellfire gang watched include popular titles like Ghostbusters and E.T. – and, yes, those are in our film collection.

Visit the Library Things Collection Spotlight  in our lobby to browse these films*  – and more (the full list is here) –  that we’ve selected from our film collection.

Note: The list incudes some titles which  you can stream via your Duke NetID.

Music of the 1980s

LL Cool J’s Radio (1985)

Heavy Metal, Punk, Rock, Electronic, Pop, Rap – the 1980s are calling! Songs and artists featured in the show are seeing a resurgence of interest and gaining new audiences. If you wonder why “old” music such as Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (1985), Metallica’s Master of Puppets (1986), and the Clash have been at the top of playlists, you can thank Stranger Things. The 1980s also saw the rise of Rap as a musical force with the emergence of iconic performers such as LL Cool J, Grandmaster Flash, and Run D.M.C.

The Duke Music Library has a collection of CDs embracing all musical genres including rock, folk and rap. Don’t want to immerse yourself in the 1980s  with a boombox or other older formats?  Your Duke NetID  provides access to streaming music platforms.  Interested in the same sort of 1980s  (and more recent) music of Stranger Things?  Alexander Street Music database can lead you directly to genres of popular music.

Books of the 1980s

Stephen King’s It

While film, music, and the rise of gaming of the 1980s populate the atmosphere of Stranger Things, books about – and of – the period illuminate popular culture.  A selection of suspense and fantasy novels by writers such as Stephen King, graphic novels (which evolved from comic books), and books examining contemporary culture are available in the Lilly Library lobby.  Peruse these highlighted titles, plus a few eBooks in our Lilly Collection Spotlight Reading List.

To quote  Stranger Things‘ character  Dustin:
… I am on a curiosity voyage, and I need my paddles to travel. These books… these books are my paddles…

Our Duke Libraries and your Duke NetID  provide “paddles” that encompass books, film, music, and a breadth of online resources.  Explore Duke Libraries’ “library things” and embark on your own curiosity voyage!

 

Lilly Collection Spotlight: Notable Women in Science and Beyond

Notable Women in Science and Beyond

Lilly Library celebrates Women’s History Month  by shining our spotlight on Notable Women in Science and Beyond. Films and books that highlight the vital role of women in the sciences as well as other areas of society and culture are featured. Below are just a few of the many titles  – check them out in person or online!

Books about Women in the Sciences

Book cover Jennifer Doudna
Code Breaker: Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna

Life in code : a personal history of technology
Pioneering computer programmer Ellen Ullman worked inside the rising culture of technology and the internet. In Life in Code she tells the continuing story of the changes it wrought with a unique, expert perspective.

The code breaker: Jennifer Doudna, gene editing, and the future of the human race
Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues including Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions, a life science revolution.

The doctors Blackwell: how two pioneering sisters brought medicine to women–and women to medicine
In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive an M.D. She was joined by her younger sister, Emily, who was actually the more brilliant physician. Exploring the sisters’ allies, and challenges, we see a story of trial and triumph. Together, the Blackwells founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, the first hospital staffed entirely by women.

Films about Women in the Sciences … and Beyond

Hidden Figures available via streaming or DVD

Hidden Figures via Streaming , DVD, Book, or Audio book
NASA found untapped talent in a group of African-American female mathematicians that served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in U.S. history. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented them in U.S. history as true American heroes.

Geek Girls DVD 31054
Filmmaker Gina Hara, struggling with her own geek identity, explores the issue with a cast of women who live geek life up to the hilt: A feminist geek blogger, a convention-trotting cosplayer, a professional gamer, a video-game designer, and a NASA engineer.

Illustration of three women scientists
Picture a Scientist

Picture a Scientist DVD 33770 or Streaming
This documentary film chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists. A biologist, a chemist and a geologist lead viewers reveal their experiences as they confront brutal harassment, institutional discrimination, and years of subtle slights to revolutionize the culture of science.

We are the Radical Monarchs  Streaming
This film documents the Radical Monarchs–an alternative to the Scout movement for girls of color, aged 8-13. Its members earn badges for completing units on social justice including being an LGBTQ ally, the environment, and disability justice.

Daughters of the Forest  Streaming
This documentary tells the story of a small group of girls in one of the most remote forests left on earth who attend a radical high school where they learn to protect the threatened forest.

DVD cover photo collage of women
The Gender Chip Project

The Gender Chip Project DVD 5320
Filmmaker Helen de Michiel documented several young women majoring in the sciences, engineering and math at Ohio State University. They met regularly over their next three years of college, and created a community to share experiences and struggles. This documentary reveals women finding new ways to honor their own growth, motivations and experience as they imagine how to make the science and technology workplace a comfortable environment for women.

Symbiotic Earth : how Lynn Margulis rocked the boat and started a scientific revolution via DVD 31267 or Streaming
Symbiotic Earth explores the life and ideas of Lynn Margulis, a brilliant and radical scientist, whose unconventional theories challenged the male-dominated scientific community and are today fundamentally changing how we look at evolution, the environment, and ourselves.

My Love Affair with the Brain: the life and science of Dr. Marian Diamond  DVD 31280 and Streaming
As one of the founders of modern neuroscience, Dr. Diamond challenged orthodoxy and changed our understanding of the brain–its plasticity, its response to enrichment and to experiences that shape both development and aging.


Curated by:
Danette Pachtner
Librarian for Film, Video & Digital Media and Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies

Carol Terry
Lilly Library Collection Services, Communications & Social Media Coordinator

Lilly Collection Spotlight: Banned and Challenged Graphic Novels

Badly drawn, badly written and badly printed – a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems.” – Sterling North, Literary Editor, Chicago Daily News, 1940

Challenged from the Start

From the beginning, comics and graphic novels have had fans and detractors. To critics, comics were at a minimum second-rate and low-brow while at the extreme end, a corrupting force leading to juvenile delinquency.  In 1954, Frederic Wertham published the now infamous Seduction of the Innocent, linking juvenile delinquency to comics which led to a de facto censorship system which lasted for decades.

Fast forward to today, graphic novels, fiction and non-fiction works in comic-strip format, are frequent targets for challenges and bans. Though the majority of challenges come from parents and other concerned citizens, state officials have often lodged complaints. North Carolina’s own Lt. Governor, Mark Robinson, vehemently protested the inclusion of the graphic novel, Gender Queer, in school library collections, calling for its immediate removal.

Why graphic novels? 

Expanding beyond superheroes, authors and illustrators are connecting with their audiences on a variety of topics and issues through text and images. The combination of subject matter and static images makes graphic novels uniquely vulnerable to challenges.

Since 2013, graphic novels have made frequent appearances on the American Library Association’s yearly “Top 10 Most  Challenged Books.” In addition, the numerous challenges faced by publishers, libraries, retailers, and even readers over comics and graphics gave rise in 1986 to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit whose mission is the protection of the “First Amendment rights of the comics art form.”

Below are some titles in our collection that have been frequent targets of these challenges (click on the images for library location information). 

Blankets Book Cover
 

Color of Earth Book Cover Drama book cover

Fun Home Book Cover Gender Queer Book Cover

Maus Book Cover Persepolis Book Cover

Saga Book CoverThis One Summer Book Cover

Lilly Streams: Documentary Films for Black History Month

Post by Danette Pachtner, Duke Libraries’ Librarian for Film, Video & Digital Media and Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies

Black History Month is dedicated to the histories and stories of Black Americans and the African diaspora who have systemically been sidelined for centuries. Duke Libraries’ film collection has a treasure trove of titles to view and explore.

The Docuseek African-American Studies Collection is an interdisciplinary streaming video collection of over 80 award-winning films, featuring popular and classic films plus dynamic new releases, focused on social, political and cultural history and contemporary issues that are ideal resources for Black History Month.

Duke Libraries provides access to these streaming videos in The Docuseek Complete Collection, with Duke NetId/password authentication.

John Lewis
John Lewis: Get in the Way | dir. Kathleen Dowdey | 2020

John Lewis: Get in the Way tells the gripping tale of Lewis’s role in the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement through never-before-seen interviews shot over 20 years.

Power to Heal: Medicare and the Civil Rights Revolution details the history of how Medicare was leveraged to desegregate hospitals. Before Medicare, fewer than half the nation’s hospitals served black and white patients equally, and in the South, 1/3 of hospitals would not admit African-Americans even for emergencies.
Power to Heal illustrates how Movement leaders and grass-roots volunteers pressed and worked with the federal government to achieve a greater measure of justice and fairness for African-Americans.

Film poster
Horror Noire: a History of Black Horror | dir. Xavier Burgin | 2019

Horror Noire traces the extensive history of Black horror films. Delving into a century of genre films that by turns utilized, caricatured, exploited, sidelined, and finally embraced them, Horror Noire traces a secret history of Black Americans in Hollywood through their connection to the horror genre.

Al Helm follows an African American Christian choir’s journey to the Palestinian National Theater to put on a play about Martin Luther King, Jr. A rousing portrait of the changes unfolding in the Middle East as a nonviolent movement grows in Palestine, this dynamic and complex work is born of a brilliantly simple and potent idea: what would happen if African American Christians—the same group who served as exemplars of the Civil Rights Movement—could witness firsthand the plight of Palestinians today?

Still of Lovings
The Loving Story | dir. Nancy Buirski | 2011
Film Poster
A Crime on the Bayou | dir. Nancy Buirski | 2020

The classic documentary film, The Loving Story, from Nancy Buirski’s trilogy profiling brave individuals who fought for justice in and around the Civil Rights era, is a heart-rending story of the Lovings and the ground-breaking court case that legalized marriage between interracial couples. A Crime on the Bayou, is the final film in Buirski’s trilogy, which outlines the extraordinary story of Gary Duncan, arrested for touching a white boy’s arm, whose civil rights case in Louisiana went all the way to the Supreme Court in the late 1960s.

River City Drumbeat chronicles Edward “Nardie” White’s instruction of ancestral Pan-African culture and drumming in Louisville, Kentucky. For three decades, Edward “Nardie” White has been leading the River City Drum Corps in order to instill a foundation of purposeful resilience within his neighborhood youth. Against the backdrop of the American South, Mr. White’s drumline and its multi-generational network of support has been a lifeline for many young African Americans. In his final year as director he trains his successor Albert Shumake, a young artist whose troubled life was transformed by the drumline and Mr. White’s mentorship when he was a teen. During this transitional year, Mr. White and Albert reflect on the tragedies and triumphs in their lives and the legacy of the drum corps.

Father’s Kingdom depicts the untold story of the remarkable civil rights pioneer Father Divine. Once a celebrity who was decades ahead of his time fighting for civil rights, he has largely been written out of history because of the audacity of his religious claims, Father’s revolutionary ideas on race and identity still resonate today.

Film still
Black Girl in Suburbia | dir. Melissa Lowery | 2016

Black Girl in Suburbia takes a look at the suburbs of America from the perspective of women of color. Through conversations with her own daughters, with teachers and scholars who are experts in the personal impacts of growing up a person of color in a predominately white place, this film explores the conflicts that many Black girls in homogeneous hometowns have in relating to both white and Black communities.

New Docuseek releases include Stateless, a film that reveals the dark and deadly history of institutionalized oppression of Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic, and Oliver Tambo, about the man responsible for the release of Nelson Mandela and who helped to end the apartheid in South Africa.

If you would like to explore more streaming video brought to you by Duke Libraries, browse titles in Kanopy, Swank Digital Campus, Films on Demand World Cinema and Feature Films for Education as well as the Academic Video Online collections.

 

 

 

 

Lilly Collection Spotlight: Native Voices – Active Voices

Native Voices – Active Voices

Lilly Library’s exhibit Native Americans in North Carolina: the Path from the Past to the Present focuses on Library resources about Native American history in our state. If our resources pique your interest, a deeper look into Lilly’s collections unearths the creative breadth of indigenous peoples throughout North America. Books on Native American art, novels by Native Americans, memoirs of native experiences, as well as films and documentaries are available on display in the Lilly lobby.  A few of the more than fifty  Native Voices Active Voices titles in the spotlight are featured below:

Books

Moonshot: the Indigenous Comics Collection

Moonshot: the Indigenous comics collection
This collection of comic book stories showcase the rich heritage and identity of indigenous storytelling. From traditional stories to exciting new visions of the future, this series presents some of the finest comic book and graphic novel work on the continent.

Adjusting the Lens
Powerful case studies address the ways that the historical photographic record of Indigenous peoples was shaped by colonial practices, and explore how this legacy is being confronted by Indigenous art activism and contemporary renegotiations of the past. Contributors to this collection analyze the photographic practices and heritage of communities from North America, Europe, and Australia

The Longest Trail

The Longest Trail: Writings on American Indian History, Culture, and Politics
Author Alvin Josephy Jr.’s groundbreaking, popular books and essays advocated for a fair historical assessment of Native Americans, and set the course for modern Native American studies.
This collection, which includes magazine articles, speeches, a white paper, and introductions and chapters of books, gives a generous and reasoned view of five hundred years of Indian history in North America from first settlements in the East to the long trek of the Nez Perce Indians in the Northwest.

Film

Winter in the Blood

Winter in the Blood
“Virgil First Raise wakes in a ditch on the hardscrabble plains of Montana. He stumbles home to his ranch on the reservation only to learn that his wife, Agnes, has left him. Worse, she’s stolen his beloved rifle. Virgil sets out to find her, beginning an odyssey of inebriated intrigues with a mysterious “Airplane Man,” a beautiful barmaid, and two dangerous men in suits. This quixotic, modern-day vision quest moves Virgil ever closer to oblivion–until he discovers a long-hidden truth about his identity. But is it too late?”

Dance Me Outside
When the Kidabanessee Reservation in northern Ontario is shocked by a brutal murder of one of the residents, four teenagers find their friendships put to the ultimate test. The struggle to become men and women becomes entangled with a fight for justice as they find their friendships and romances maturing into something unexpected.

Mankiller

Mankiller : Activist, Feminist, Cherokee Chief
Wilma Mankiller is someone who humbly defied the odds to fight injustice and give a voice to the voiceless. She overcame rampant sexism and personal challenges to emerge as the Cherokee Nation’s first female Principal Chief in 1985. This documentary examines the legacy of the formidable Wilma Mankiller.

The Lilly Library Collection Spotlight Native Voices shines through February. Interested in the full list of titles? Check them out in Lilly’s Book and Films in Spotlight

Native American Heritage: What’s Streaming at Duke Libraries

For Native American History Month, one of Duke Libraries’ streaming video platforms,  Docuseek, is highlighting a number of films about and made by Indigenous Peoples.  Docuseek presents an excellent collection of documentary films about Native Americans,  including National Film Board of Canada’s First Nations films, Women Make Movies, and distributors Bullfrog Films and Icarus Films.

These selections trace Indigenous activism, movement-building, politics, art, culture, language, astronomy, restorative-justice systems, and the fight to protect water and sacred lands.

film image
As Nutayuneaan (dir. Anne Makepeace, 2011)

 

As Nutayuneaan (We Still Live Here) 
Tells the amazing story of the return of the Wampanoag language, a language that was silenced for more than a century.
(Bullfrog Films; streaming with Duke netid/password)

film image
Conscience Point (dir. Treva Wurmfeld, 2021)


Conscience Point
Unearths a deep clash of values between the Shinnecock Indian Nation and their elite Hamptons neighbors, who have made sacred land their playground. (Women Make Movies; streaming with Duke netid/password)

film image
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (dir. Alanis Obomsawin, 2015)

 

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
Examines the historic confrontation between the Mohawks, Québec police, and the Canadian army that propelled Native issues into the international spotlight and into the Canadian conscience.
(National Film Board of Canada; streaming with Duke netid/password)

film image
The Mystery of Chaco Canyon, dir. Anna Sofaer, 2015)

The Mystery of Chaco Canyon
Unveils the ancient astronomy of southwestern Pueblo Indians.
(Bullfrog Films; streaming with Duke netid/password)

film image
Skydancer (dir. Katja Esson, 2021)

Skydancer
Academy Award-nominated director Katja Esson explores the colorful and at times tragic history of the Mohawk skywalkers, men who leave their families on the reservation to travel to NYC to work construction jobs.
(Women Make Movies; streaming with Duke netid/password)

film image
Standing on Sacred Ground (dir. Christopher McLeod, 2015)

Standing on Sacred Ground
In this four-part documentary series from the producer of In the Light of Reverence, native people share ecological wisdom and spiritual reverence while battling a utilitarian view of land in the form of government megaprojects, consumer culture, and resource extraction as well as competing religions and climate change.
(Bullfrog Films; streaming with Duke netid/password)

Native Cinema Showcase 2021

If these titles whet your appetite for more great movies, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s Native Cinema Showcase is coming up later this month. An annual celebration of the best in Native film, this year’s showcase is online  and runs from November 12-18, 2021. And Women Make Movies is screening online a selection of films by and about Native American women from November 19-30th; sign up here to receive more info.

Lilly Collection Spotlight: Scary Movies for a Horror-ful Halloween

Scary Movies for a Horror-ful Halloween

“Who are we gonna call” when we order films for Duke Libraries’ film collections? For Lilly Library, it’s not Ghostbusters but our guest curator, Stephen Conrad, that’s who! Stephen is Duke Libraries’ Team Lead for Western Languages in Monographic Acquisitions.  One of the hats he wears is “orders person” for new DVDs. Because of Stephen’s knowledge and interest in film, we invited him to curate (and order) new titles to give our horror collection a jolt! Enjoy Stephen’s horror-ful Halloween picks … if you dare!

Good Manners aka As Boas Maneiras

As Boas Maneiras Lilly DVD 34167
Translated into English as Good Manners, this is a Brazilian werewolf tale set in São Paulo, from directors Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra. A mysterious and wealthy woman hires a housekeeper/nanny for her unborn child. The two grow close but there are complications, to put it mildly. Part fairy tale, part musical, this beyond-genre experience is truly a wild one. (2017)

The Mutilator aka Fall Break

Mutilator  Lilly DVD 34199
Also known as Fall Break,  this North Carolina produced teen slasher was the first and only effort from director Buddy Cooper. Low in budget and high in gore, the picture is of particular interest for visitors to the NC coast, as large portions were filmed around the Crystal Coast locales of Morehead City and Atlantic Beach.

Season of the Witch Lilly DVD 34156

Season of the Witch  Lilly DVD 34156
One of George A. Romero’s earlier films, the retitled Hungry Wives is the tale of a suburban Pittsburgh housewife turning to witchcraft as an escape from her doldrums. Perhaps more social commentary than true horror, Romero is still a master and conjures dread and seediness from both roomfuls of shag carpet and boorish husbands.

House of the Devil Lilly DVD 34155

House of the Devil  Lilly DVD 34155
A truly creepy and terrifying evil-house movie, from 2009 but set in the horror/slasher epoch of 1983. Director Ti West continually ratchets up the fright as a cash-strapped college student takes a babysitting gig at a big old house outside of town. But, there are no kids. And it’s a full lunar eclipse. Oh yeah, and Satan’s in the house.

Messiah of Evil Lilly DVD 34200

Messiah of Evil  Lilly DVD 34200
1973. Quasi-zombies.  Art.  A bright Ralph’s supermarket at night.  ‘Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.’  JOY BANG! Suspended bed.  Proto Blue-Man-Group.  The director of ‘Howard the Duck’.  More art.  Fires on the beach. Undead Cult.  Point Dune.  Second Coming.  Electronic score.  Blood moon.  ELISHA COOK, JR.!

Without Name Lilly DVD 34171

Without Name  Lilly DVD 34171
Modern Irish eco-horror by director Lorcan Finnegan. A land surveyor and his assistant are sent on a job into a forest outside of Dublin, only for things to go eerily and dreadfully awry. The sound design is most notable, and to paraphrase the lead character: “I could say it is a doorway or frequency or dream….it is like those things, but not.”


Films and their descriptions curated by Stephen Conrad.  For another window into our horror collection, check out his companion post, 5 Titles: Horror from African American Directors

A Halloween Bonus Treat!
Seeking additional thrills and chills?
If you’re feeling brave, take a peek at our online
Screaming  videos!
Access these frightful films with
your Duke netid/password.

 


 

Lilly Collection Spotlight: LGBTQIA+ Graphic Novels

LGBTQIA+ Graphic Novels

Comics Code Stamp

In 1954, Frederic Wertham published the now infamous Seduction of the Innocent, linking juvenile delinquency to comics. Testifying before Congress in 1954, Wertham stated emphatically that “it is my opinion, without any reasonable doubt, and without any reservation, that comic books are an important contributing factor in many cases of juvenile delinquency.” The ensuing uproar on comics’ deleterious effects on the nation’s youth led to the creation of the Comics Magazine Association of American which in turn issued the Comics Code Authority (CCA).

While the adoption of the code by publishers was voluntary, comics without the CCA logo faced an uphill battle in terms of distribution. This de facto censorship system was wide-ranging, touching on such things as how persons in authority could be portrayed, how crimes could be presented, directives on illustrations, and the portrayals of marriage and sex.

The CCA had a long-term chilling effect on the portrayal of LGBTQIA+ characters in mainstream comics; However, its creation led to the vibrant underground comix movement where artists and authors ignored the strict code. Though the CCA was revised several times in the 1970s, loosening some restrictions, it wasn’t until 1992 in Alpha Flight #106 that Marvel’s Northstar stated, “I am gay.” The CCA was totally abandoned in the early 2000s.

Today, though there is still progress to be made, LGBTQIA+ persons and characters are found in graphic novels from superhero-themed to memoirs. The Lilly Graphic Novel Collection is a great place to begin your exploration. Below are a few highlights from our vast collection. Enjoy!

Fun Home

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. In this award winning graphic memoir, Bechdel chronicles her relationship with her distant father, an English teacher and director of the town’s funeral home, “Fun Home” to the Bechdel family. From childhood through her coming out to her parents, Fun Home explores Bechdel’s fraught relationship with her father, the exploration of her sexuality, and a tragedy that leaves her much to reckon with. Fun Home was adapted for Broadway and has the distinction of being the first Broadway musical featuring a lesbian protagonist. It won the Tony award for Best Musical in  2015. Bechdel is also the author of the critically acclaimed Dykes to Watch Out For series.

Bingo Love

Bingo Love by Tee Franklin (author) and Jenn St.-Onge and Joy San (artists). In 1963, Hazel and Mari meet at church bingo, and their friendship grows into love. This new found love, however, is unacceptable to their families and their community, and Mari’s family moves away.  Many years later, after Hazel and Mari each married and raised children, they reconnect at a bingo hall and realize that their feelings are unchanged. Fifty years later, through strength and determination, they claim the life that they always wanted. Bingo Love started as a Kickstarter project until it was picked up by Image Comics.

Our Work Is Everywhere

Our Work is Everywhere by Syan Rose. This graphic non-fiction work highlights the diverse voices in the queer and trans communities. Rose has a broad definition of work, not just what we do in our professional careers but also the ways that we improve ourselves, our communities, and our world. Interviews with queer and trans organizers, health justice activists, martial artists, and more are included, accompanied by Rose’s beautiful and expressive illustrations.

Gender Queer

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe (author) and Phoebe Kobabe (colorist). Both a memoir and an introduction to eir family and readers on what it means to be non-binary, Kobabe (e/em/eir pronouns) chronicles eir journey of self-identity. Kobabe’s touching and honest story is a useful guide on gender identity for everyone.

Heartstopper

Heartstopper by Alice Oseman. Begun as a serial webcomic in 2016, Heartstopper, available now in two printed volumes, introduces readers to Charlie and Nick who meet and develop a friendship at a British all-boys grammar school. The friendship grows into love. Optioned by Netflix,  Heartstopper is slated for live-action adaptation in the near future.

These influential and impactful works are among the hundreds of titles in the Lilly Graphic Novel Collection, located in the first floor Carpenter Room.

Powerful Documentary Films Honoring Indigenous Peoples

The Docuseek streaming video platform  provides a window into subjects and content from around the world and across disciplines. Here is a selection of titles that examine indigenous peoples of North America. Available through Duke Libraries with netid/password authentication, explore new cultures and topics through the lens of award-winning filmmakers.

Ama  Stream Online
A powerful look at the untold story of the involuntary sterilization of Native American women conducted by the Indian Health Service and lasting  well into the 1970s.
(Bullfrog Films, 2019, dir. Lorna Tucker)

 

Awake : a dream from Standing Rock Stream Online or Lilly DVD 31281
Moving from summer 2016, when demonstrations over the Dakota Access Pipeline’s demolishing of sacred Native burial grounds began, the film documents the story of Native-led  fight for clean water and the  environment. The film is a collaboration between indigenous filmmakers: Director Myron Dewey and Executive Producer Doug Good Feather; and environmental Oscar-nominated filmmakers Josh Fox and James Spione.

nipawistamasowin: We Will Stand Up Stream Online
The story of the killing of young Cree man Colten Boushie and his family’s pursuit of justice weaves a profound narrative encompassing the filmmaker’s own adoption. (National Film Board of Canada, 2020, dir. Tasha Hubbard)


Paulette
Stream Online
Follows the historic campaign of Paulette Jordan, the first Native American candidate — as well as the first woman — to win the Idaho Primary for Governor. (Women Make Movies, 2020, dir. Heather Rae)


Sisters Rising Stream Online
Native American survivors of sexual assault fight to restore personal and tribal sovereignty against the backdrop of an ongoing legacy of violent colonization. (Woman Make Movies, 2021, dir. Willow O’Feral)


Tribal Justice Stream Online

Anne Makepeace documents an effective criminal justice reform movement in America: the efforts of tribal courts to return to traditional, community-healing concepts of justice. (Bullfrog Films, 2017, dir. Anne Makepeace)


Without a Whisper Stream online

The untold story of the profound influence of Indigenous women on the beginning of the women’s rights movement in the United States. (Women Make Movies, 2020, dir. Katsitsionni Fox)

 

Honoring Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage

Explore films from the Duke Libraries to educate yourself about the significant contributions Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have made to U.S. culture, and as a reminder of ongoing challenges they face, along with the anti-racist work that we have yet to do.


Directed by Celine Parreñas Shimizu, 2021

The Celine Archive  
Streaming video – Duke netid/password required
The Celine Archive is simultaneously an act of journalism, a journey into family and community memory and archives, a love poem, a story of grief and trauma, and a séance for the buried history of Filipino-Americans. Filmmaker and scholar Celine Parreñas Shimizu artfully weaves together her own story of grief with the story of the tragic death of Celine Navarro, which has become lore. In 1932, Navarro was buried alive by her own community of Filipino-Americans in Northern California, but the circumstances surrounding her death were and are unclear and have oft been spun, sensationalized, and dramatized. The filmmaker, a grieving mother with ties to the same community, finds resonance with Navarro’s memory and long-lost story, and she sets out to first learn — and then tell — the truth about Navarro’s death, ultimately portraying her as a feminist heroine.

PBS, 2020

Asian Americans
Lilly DVD 33607 | Streaming video –
Duke netid/password required
Asian Americans
is a five-hour film PBS series that delivers a bold, fresh perspective on a history that matters today, more than ever. As America becomes more diverse, and more divided, while facing unimaginable challenges, how do we move forward together? Told through intimate and personal lives, the series will cast a new lens on U.S. history and the ongoing role that Asian Americans have played in shaping the nation’s story.

 

PBS, 2018

The Chinese Exclusion Act
DVD 31536 | Streaming video – Duke netid/password required
This American Experience documentary examines the origin, history and impact of the 1882 law that made it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America and for Chinese nationals already here ever to become U.S. citizens. The first in a long line of acts targeting the Chinese for exclusion, it remained in force for more than 60 years.

 

dir. by Puhipau and Joan Lander, 2005

Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege 
Streaming video – Duke netid/password required
Inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for 2020Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege paints a portrait of a mountain that has become a symbol of the Hawaiian struggle for physical, cultural and political survival. The program explores conflicting forces as they play themselves out in a contemporary island society where cultures collide daily. In an effort to find commonalities among indigenous people elsewhere regarding sacred mountains, the documentary visits Apache elders of Arizona who face the reality of telescope development on their revered mountain, Dzil Nchaa Si An, known as Mt. Graham.

 

directed by Renee Tajima-Peña, 1996


My America, or Honk if you Love Buddha
Lilly DVD 33771
The director of Who Killed Vincent Chin?  takes to the road to see what it means to be Asian American in our rapidly-changing society.

Directed by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima, 1990

 

Who Killed Vincent Chin?
Lilly DVD 28025  |   Streaming video –  Duke netid/password required
This Academy-Award nominated film is a powerful statement about racism in working-class America. It relates the stark facts of Vincent Chin’s brutal murder. Outrage filled the Asian-American community, after his accused murderer received a suspended sentence and a small fine, to the point where they organized an unprecedented civil rights protest. His bereaved mother, brought up to be self-effacing, successfully led a nationwide crusade for a retrial. This tragic story is interwoven with the whole fabric of timely social concerns. It addresses issues such as the failure of our judicial system to value every citizen’s rights equally, the collapse of the automobile industry under pressure from Japanese imports, and the souring of the American dream for the blue collar worker.

Asian and Asian American Film

Looking for Feature Films and more?

Lilly Library’s collection of feature films about Asian American and Pacific Islanders is rich and deep! Classic films, romantic comedies, family dramas, etc., created by Asians and Asian Americans are available to entertain and inspire you.

Discover the Duke Libraries’ collection of DVDs and streaming video platforms to watch Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell, Joy Luck Club , The Namesake and Minari along with a host of other great movies.

Streaming Access available via Duke netid/password.

Lilly Collection Spotlight: They Came to Play – Women in Sport

They Came to Play: Women in Sport

Collage of Book Covers
Discover  Women in Sport and Women Athletes

To celebrate Women’s History Month, Lilly Library shines a spotlight on Women in Sport. Books and movies – including e-books and streaming film – which feature women athletes are “teeming” in our collections. The titles featured here give a sense of the breadth of the issues and themes present in the world of women’s athletics.

To discover more about women athletes, browse the Duke Libraries catalogue.  A basic subject search of women athletes reveals hundreds of titles available.  Your Duke netID is your ticket to read, learn, witness, and celebrate the wide range of women and their athletic challenges and achievements!


Books and e-Books

Book Cover
GV697.A1 S416 2016

Game Changers: the Unsung Heroines of Sports History

Based on the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroines, this book focuses on the pioneering, forgotten female athletes of the twentieth century as featured in Instagram.  Rarely seen photos and in-depth interviews feature past and present game changers such as Abby Wambach and Cari Champion.

A Spectacular Leap [eBook]
A Spectacular Leap: Black Women Athletes in Twentieth-Century America

This online book offers a sweeping look at the experience of Black women athletes. Through the stories of six groundbreaking women– Alice Coachman, Ora Washington, Althea Gibson, Wilma Rudolph, Wyomia Tyus, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee– author Jennifer H. Lansbury outlines the careers of these women and their experiences with attitudes of race, class, and gender.

book cover
Futbolera [eBook]
Futbolera : a history of women and sports in Latin America

What do we know about the communities of women in sport in Latin America? Futbolera  weaves the stories of these women as athletes and fans in the tapestry of social class, national and racial identities, sexuality, and gender roles in countries better known for male athletes of global fame.

Book Cover
GV709 .S495 2016

Kicking Off: How Women in Sport are Changing the Game
There’s a battle being fought. It’s raging on the sports fields, in the newsrooms and behind the scenes at every major broadcaster. Women in sport fight for equality, but are they breaking down the barriers? Writer Sarah Shephard looks behind headlines to see whether progress is really being made.


Film – Documentary and Feature

Films exploring and illuminating the challenges faced by women athletes the world over are highlighted here:

DVD case Offside
Streaming or DVD 14381

Offside
Streaming or DVD 14381
During the 2006 Iran-Bahrain match, the Tehran soccer stadium roars with 100,000 cheering men and, officially, no women. According to Islamic custom, women are not permitted to watch or participate in men’s sports. Many ambitious young female fans manage to sneak into the arena but are caught and sent to a holding pen, guarded by male soldiers their own age. Duty makes these young men and women adversaries, but duty can’t overcome shared dreams and an overriding sense of national pride and humanity.

DVD cover Playing Unfair: the media image of the female athlete
Playing Unfair

Playing Unfair: the media image of the female athlete
DVD 21482 or Streaming

Examines the post Title IX media environment in terms of the representation of female athletes. It demonstrates that while men’s identities in sports are equated with deeply held values of courage, strength and endurance, the accomplishments of female athletes are framed very differently and in much more stereotypical ways.

DVD cover
Rise of the Wahine

Rise of the Wahine: Champions of Title IX 
Streaming

Dr. Donnis Thompson, coach, Patsy Mink ,U.S. congresswoman, and Beth McLachlin, team captain of the University of Hawaii volleyball team, battle discrimination from the halls of Washington D.C. to the dusty volleyball courts of the University of Hawaii, fighting for the rights of young women to play sports. The film reveals how change-makers overcome injustice with wisdom, an innovative spirit, and without becoming victims to their circumstances.

Best Films about Women in Sport?

In a less serious vein – do you have a favorite film about women in sports?

DVD covers
Film Picks: Women in Sport

Nine of the titles most frequently named in “Best” or “Top” lists are in our collections:


If you wish to learn more about Women in Sport or other related issues, you may Ask a Librarian.

Danette Pachtner Librarian for Film, Video, & Digital Media and Women’s Studies and Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies

Carol S. Terry Lilly Library

 

 

 

Animated April: the Favorite Four Revealed

Enchanted no more?
It’s down to the Favorite Four!

Lion King, Toy Story, Mulan, Finding Nemo images
Animated April’s Favorite Four

The voting for the Enchanted Eight in Round Two is over, and the Favorite Four remain. Lilly’s resident (or shall we say currently remote) analyst Nathaniel offers his take on the results of the latest Disney versus Pixar match.

VOTE to select the Perfect Pair HERE

Nathaniel Brown Media & Reserves Coordinator, Lilly Library
Bracketologist Nathaniel Brown

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen!  Round Three results of the Enchanted Eight are in…

Representing the FIRE region, the Lion King slashed the Incredibles! In the ICE bracket, Mulan thawed the number one seed Frozen in a rout! In the EARTH region, Toy Story made its way back to the winner’s circle by defeating Beauty and the Beast. And representing the UNDER THE SEA bracket, Finding Nemo “UP”ends Up!

The Fave Four match-ups are set! Who will continue their path to the championship? We have two number one seeds squaring off for a place at the championship table:

Representing FIRE, we have The Lion King and representing EARTH, we have Toy Story. Can Simba continue to wear his “big cub pants” and rip the championship hopes of Woody and company to shreds, proving that he is indeed king of the jungle, FIRE, and EARTH? Or will Woody put fear in the heart of young Simba with a “snake” and his “boot” and send the cub back to the desert of outcasts scouring for grub?

On the other side of the bracket, we have no number one seeds remaining. What we do have are two scrappy films that have demonstrated dominance in their own way. With a number three seed representing the ICE region, we have Mulan. And with a number two seed representing UNDER THE SEA, we have Finding Nemo. Already taking down a number two seed (WALL-E) and a number one seed (Frozen), can Shang “make a man” out of Mulan as she dons the old armor to not only snatch the helpless fish, but also snatch the championship wishes and title dreams? Or will Nemo prove he is not just “the little clownfish from the reef,” and that these are not just “fishing grounds,” but that he can be a “shark” in his own right? Will Dory take Mulan “down” under to 42 Wallaby Way?

Stay tuned to see who goes on to be the Perfect Pair!

VOTE for the Perfect Pair HERE

Voting Closes Sunday, April 19th at 8pm EDT

Written by Nathaniel Brown

Contributor Carol Terry

Animated April

Animated April @ Lilly Library

Team Pixar or Team Disney?

Animated April @ Lilly begins Monday, April 13!

Animated April – Are you Team Pixar or Team Disney?

Brackets aren’t just for March!

Do you like Looney Tunes, the quirkiness of Wallace and Gromit, anime like Spirited Away, French comedies like The Triplets of Belleville? Are you all about Disney classics or the latest offerings from Pixar?

Lilly Library has 100s of animated films. In fact, we have so many animated films, it’s time for you to “toon” in and enjoy our very own Lilly Library Animated April challenge: Pixar versus Disney.

If it’s animated, Disney and Pixar are the dominant players, so we’re highlighting eight films from each studio to face off in a special edition of our Animated April challenge starting Monday, April 13th. Join in the fun, pick your favorites, and maybe  win a prize!

Here’s how:
Vote when you visit our  Lilly Library Animated April cast of characters HERE.

Make your selections and vote for your choice of hot titles in Bracket Fire versus films that landed in Bracket Earth to eventually face the coolest films in Bracket Ice, which challenge the animated gems making waves in Bracket Under the Sea.

Brackets with film titles
All the Characters in Animated April

Voting dates are listed below and on the contest page.
Updates will be posted on Lilly’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts as well as in our blog, Latest@Lilly :

Nathaniel Brown Media & Reserves Coordinator, Lilly Library
Bracketologist Nathaniel Brown

Enjoy Bracketologist Nathaniel’s insights for each round:

All votes are to be submitted via Lilly Animated April .

Animated April

  • Round 1: Stellar 16:  CLOSED
  • Round 2: Enchanted 8 : CLOSED
  • Round 3: Favorite 4 : CLOSED
  • Round 4: Perfect Pair VOTE HERE
    Voting opens Monday, April 20 9am
    Voting closes Tuesday, April 21 8pm
  • Champion Crowned:  Wednesday April 22nd

*Did someone say PRIZES?
Participants who provide their Duke NetID and vote for the animated movie “champion” will be entered into drawings for virtual prizes, as well as special prizes for Duke students.

Be sure to make your picks of your favorites  – Pixar or Disney!

Lilly Collection Spotlight – Native Voices: the Duke Common Experience and Beyond

Native Americans in the Arts

by Ira King

Book There,There
There There – The Duke Common Experience

Need some new reading material or are you just interested in seeing what’s in the Lilly Library’s collections that you might not know about? Check out Lilly’s Collection Spotlight!

To accompany the Duke Common Experience Reading Program selection of Tommy Orange’s There There, our spotlight highlights books and films that center Native American voices and perspectives. Orange, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma, writes in his debut novel about a dozen Native Americans travelling to a powwow in Oakland, California. There There focuses on urban Native Americans, exploring the beauty and despair these characters experience as they navigate life in the United States.

Our collections include books on Native American art, novels by Native Americans, memoirs of native experiences, films and documentaries, and historical accounts. Here are a few highlights from our collection:

Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists

Book Cover
Hearts of Our People: Exhibit at the Minneapolis Museum of Art

This exhibition catalog from the Minneapolis Institute of Art highlights a broad spectrum of art created by Native American women. Work explored ranges from textiles to painting to photography and video, and covers antiquity to contemporary work. If you’re interested in checking out some Native art in person, the Nasher Museum’s exhibit, Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now, opens on August 29th.

Book Cover
Future Home of the Living God

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich Louise Erdrich, an acclaimed writer and member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe, experiments with a dystopian setting in this novel. The novel follows Cedar Hawk Songmaker, four months pregnant, as she ventures out of Minneapolis and seeks out her Ojibwe birth mother against the backdrop of a security state cracking down on pregnant women. Check out Erdrich’s bookstore if you are ever in the Twin Cities.

Everything You Know About Indians is Wrong by Paul Chaat Smith Smith, an associate curator at the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian, challenges mainstream assumptions about native peoples and cultures in this essay collection. This book blends memoir and cultural commentary to paint a more nuanced picture of native life.

Smoke Signals Based on a Sherman Alexie short story, this film follows two young Native Americans, Victor and Thomas, on a road trip to pick up Victor’s father’s remains. Smoke Signals is notable for having a Native American writer and director, as well as an almost entirely native cast and crew.

 

 

 

Lilly Collection Spotlight: Dear Duke

The Art of Writing / The Writer’s Art

Jane Austen book, Epicurus book, Letter from Birmingham Jail book covers
Collection Spotlight on Letters

Dear Duke,

When was the last time you wrote a letter or received a card in a real mailbox?
Before the Digital Age – and there was such a time – people wrote letters on paper and sent cards to each other. The latest Lilly Collection Spotlight shines on the disappearing art of letter writing, featuring a selection of books and films in which letters or ongoing correspondence play an integral role. Authors include literary and political figures such as Epicurus, Jane Austen, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Samuel Beckett.

3 DVD covers
Films about letter writing

The role letter writing plays in film, whether just as a plot device or as narration and explication helped us choose a few films from our collections. Relationships built through intimate correspondence, letters never received, mis-delivered or rediscovered frame many film narratives.  Steal a Pencil for Me, Mary and Max, Letters to Juliet and P.S. I Love You are among the films featured.

Accompanying our Collection Spotlight are two exhibit cases featuring artists’ correspondence. Displayed in the lobby case are volumes of Vincent van Gogh’s letters. He was a prolific letter writer whose writings provide insight into his work, his art, and his struggles.  Van Gogh often adorned his letters with drawings and sketches. The exhibit case in the foyer highlights  letters written by other artists including Georgia O’Keeffe, Albert Eisenstadt, and Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Notecard with written advice to Duke student
Duke Class of 2019 Notes to Duke 2022

p.s. 

In addition to the Collection Spotlight, browse the nearby interactive exhibit of handwritten notes from Duke Seniors, Class of 2019, to the First-Year members of Duke’s Class of 2022.

Feel free to pull out the notes from the board and read them. There is a bit of advice, personal observations, and even a little bit of wisdom on display!

Grammy Nominees – and Winners! – in the Music Library

Grammys at the ML
Grammy Awards Collection Spotlight

The 61st Annual Grammy Awards wrapped up in February, and now is your chance to catch up with some of the critically-acclaimed recordings that you may have heard about but haven’t had a chance to audition yourself. The Duke Music Library is pleased to unveil a new collection spotlight of recordings nominated for the 2019 Grammy awards, featuring more than 80 albums from just about every category you’ve heard of – and some you might not have!

In addition to some of the finest recordings from the last year in Opera, Musical Theatre, and Classical, this collection spotlight includes Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Kacey Musgraves, Beck, Fred Hersch, Drake, Joshua Redman, Kurt Elling, Buddy Guy, High on Fire, and many more.


Check out our very own “staff picks”:

Philippe Jaroussky and Artaserse, The Handel Album

French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky is among the most famous countertenors in the world right now, and it’s a voice range that has attracted growing interest in recent years. The high range of the countertenor voice and the manner in which its unusual qualities are produced results in a sound that has often been described as unearthly – it’s also a powerful and flexible voice type, able to handle music of stunning virtuosity and highly expressive pathos. All of these qualities are beautifully demonstrated in this album of arias selected by Jaroussky from among lesser-known Handel operas, highlighting pieces which he says “reveal a more intimate, tender side of Handel.”

Preview an incredible aria from the album, “Sussurrate, onde vezzose” from Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula, which evokes the limpid and gentle murmuring of waves. Jaroussky begins with an almost impossibly hushed suspended note on the word “whispering.”

-Laura Williams, Head Librarian, Music Library

 

Fred Hersch Trio, Live in Europe

Fred Hersch and company continue to find new and innovative modes of expression within the jazz piano trio context. Featuring new Hersch originals alongside fresh interpretations of a few standard tunes, this album really shines, both in recording quality and inspired live performance.

-Jamie Keesecker,  Stacks Manager and Student Supervisor, Music Library

 

High on Fire, Electric Messiah

Metal lifer Matt Pike gets the big nod after a year in which this release was not even the best thing he put out (that distinction would go to his other band Sleep’s album ‘The Sciences’). It was also a year in which he had a public struggle with diabetes that cost him a toe and grounded a large part of the tour for ‘Electric Messiah’. That said, when the award was announced early in the Grammy ceremony, the cameras spent many long seconds scanning back and forth looking for the winners in a mostly-deserted theater. Finally, from way in the back, Pike hobbled forward with the help of a cane, and accompanied by his metal peers, to accept his shiny statue. “We never really need an award for doing what we love…” was part of Pike’s on-stage comment, but the commendation was very cool all the same.  

– Stephen Conrad, Order Specialist for Music and Film and Team Lead for Western Languages, Monographic Acquisitions

 

James Ehnes, Violin Concertos by James Newton Howard and Aaron Jay Kernis

The new Kernis Concerto was written for Canadian violinist James Ehnes, and it really serves as a showcase for Ehnes’ strengths. He comes across as such an intelligent musician, really playing with (not just in front of) the other members of the orchestra – Kernis gives them some great moments of interplay here. This work also balances Ehnes’ ability to deliver beautifully straightforward, unfussy lines one minute and astoundingly virtuosic cadenzas the next. Oh, and apparently he watched his Grammy win on a live stream in his neighborhood grocery store parking lot. How much more Canadian and unpretentious can you get?

-Sarah Griffin, Public Services Coordinator, Music Library (and, yes, a violinist)

 


Come over to East Campus to see these and browse through many more on our display of CDs. Don’t have a CD drive on your laptop anymore? No, neither do we! Borrow a portable DVD/CD drive while you’re here.

Fans of accompanying visual materials may find these albums to be of particular interest:

  • Wayne Shorter’s immersive Emanon, packaged with its accompanying graphic novel by comic book artist Randy DuBurke.
  • The Berliner Philharmoniker’s 6-disc box set (4 CDs and 2 Blu-ray discs), The John Adams Edition, featuring the music of legendary minimalist composer John Adams, with photographic artwork by Wolfgang Tillmans. Recorded during the orchestra’s 2016/2017 season during which Adams served as Composer in Residence.
  • At the Louisiana Hayride Tonight, a massive 20-CD box set with 224-page hardcover book documenting the storied radio program broadcast live from the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana between 1948 and 1960. Includes a previously unreleased recording by Hank Williams, as well as rare gems from Johnny Cash, Kitty Wells, Elvis Presley, and many more.
  • Battleground Korea: Songs and Sounds of America’s Forgotten War brings together an assortment of songs, news reports, public service announcements, and other spoken-word audio (including a plea for blood donations from Howdy Doody) on four CDs, accompanied by a full-color hardcover book featuring song and artist information, record covers, advertisements, propaganda posters, and rarely-seen photographs from the war.
Battleground Korea and Louisiana Hayride

Lilly Library March Movie Madness The Fantastic Four

Survive and Advance: The Fantastic Four

A collage of the Final Fantastic Films
Lilly Library’s March Movie MaDnEsS: The Final Four Superhero Films

Survive and advance –  that should resonate with our Duke Crazies!  Did your superhero Movie advance to the Fantastic Four?

Take that Fantastic Four to a Dynamic Duo – Vote HERE now!

Nathaniel Brown Media & Reserves Coordinator, Lilly Library
Bracketologist Nathaniel Brown

Lilly’s March Movie Madness Expert Bracketologist, Nathaniel Brown,  offers a recap of the epic battle waged between the remaining Exteme Eight Films:

In the Metropolis region, although Captain America did upset the hometown boy in the first round, he couldn’t handle the family of animated heroes!  Jack-Jack, who’s really coming into his powers, overwhelmed the First Avenger and helped his Incredible family destroy Captain America: Civil War 116-48!

The Black Panther continued to take care of Wakanda business as he thrashed all five of the Guardians with the tally of  108-56!

Spider-Man: into the Spider-Verse overtook Wonder Woman and dethroned the first-born child of the Paradise Isle, defeating her 90-74!

And in a shocker, Thor’s mighty hammer, Mjolnir, struck a fatal blow and edged the Dark Knight out of Gotham—and out of the Extreme Eight round— 84-80!

Updated Brackets of March Movie Madness Showing Fantastic Four winners: Thor, Black Panther, The Incredibles, and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse
And then there were Four

Reminder: Round 3 voting
ends Thursday March 28th at noon.

VOTE

Can  you catch (the God of )Lightning in a bottle
and take the victory?

Contributors:
Nathaniel Brown, Lilly Library Media and Reserves Coordinator
Carol Terry, Lilly Library Collection Services & Communications Coordinator

Lilly Library March Movie Madness The EXTREME Eight

Then there were Eight…
The EXTREME Eight!

Collage of 16 entries with 8 losing films marked out
Did your superhero movie prevail?

Did your superhero Movie advance to the Extreme Eight?
Vote HERE now to take that Extreme Eight to a Fantastic Four!

Need some advice? You may want to check in with  Lilly Library’s resident Bracketologist, Nathaniel Brown, as he offers insights and expert March Movie Madness opinions :

Nathaniel Brown Media & Reserves Coordinator, Lilly Library
Lilly’s Bracketologist Nathaniel Brown

After Round 1, my brackets are still intact. What about yours? As predicted,  the Dark Knight protected Gotham in the first round by blasting his Lego counterpart 128-30. The God of Thunder Thor brought the thunder against Aquaman, stunning him and washing him away 134-24.

The Black Panther closed ranks and pounced Spidey right out of Wakanda 143-15. Meanwhile,, The Guardians of the Galaxy blasted the Justice League 142-16.

In a stunning upset, Superman Classic got defeated by the First Avenger in Metropolis! Cap takes it 122-36. The Incredibles proved too much for the X-Men United tossing them from the first round 144-14.

And on the Paradise Island, Wonder Woman edged out the wisecracking Deadpool, 87-71, preserving home field. Spidey and his multiverse surprised Tony Stark upending him 102-56.

Round 1 Results: the Extreme Eight winners displayed in the bracket layout
Round 1 Results: the Extreme Eight

 

Reminder: Round 2 voting runs through Sunday the 24th

VOTE 

Can  you catch (the God of )Lightning in a bottle
and take the victory?


Contributors:
Nathaniel Brown, Lilly Library Media and Reserves Coordinator
Carol Terry, Lilly Library Collection Services & Communications Coordinator

Lilly Library March Movie Madness: THE SUPERHERO EDITION

BREAKING NEWS!
The Extreme Eight Now Reigns

Collage of 16 entries with 8 losing films marked out
Did your superhero movie prevail?

ROUND TWO: Vote at  https://bit.ly/2YbqBxg

Which is Your universe: Marvel or DC?

Who is the best superhero or superhero faction? Does the Marvel Universe or DC Comics reign supreme? The decision is entirely in your hands if you enter Lilly Library’s March Movie Madness! While the battles for the rounds of 64 and 32 occurred on Knowhere and Xandar respectively, we announce that Super Sixteen combatants remain. Now the war has arrived on Earth (or, at least, Lilly Library) and it’s time to crown our champion!

This year’s Lilly Library March Movie Madness begins Monday, March 18th. It’s YOUR turn to enter into the fray and vote in the evolving brackets to help decide our ultimate superhero! And, yes – there are prizes!

BRACKETOLOGY by Nathaniel Brown

Nathaniel Brown Media & Reserves Coordinator, Lilly Library
Lilly Library’s Expert Bracketologist Nathaniel Brown
  • In the Gotham bracket, will the hometown advantage aid the Caped Crusader to pull out the victory and advance to the Fantastic Four? Which version of the Dark Knight will advance – the sarcastic and brooding Lego version, or the equally brooding, looking to retire Christian Bale version? Will the God of Thunder electrify Gotham instead? Or will the King of Atlantis flood the city?
  • In the Metropolis bracket, will the animated family of the Incredibles overtake the Xavier led group of mutants? Will the Man of Steel preserve home field and annihilate the First Avenger?
  • In the majestic bracket of Paradise Island, will Wonder Woman continue her blockbuster success and dethrone the wisecracking Deadpool? Will the Spider multiverse pelt the suit of the Man in a Tin Can with his web shooters?
  • Lastly, in the Wakanda bracket, will the all-powerful Justice League defeat the Guardians of the Galaxy (who always seem to have their own personal agendas but come together when it counts)? Or will the King of Wakanda pounce and maul the opposition provided by the Web-slinger?

Join Forces in the Super Sixteen Brackets

  • The SUPER SIXTEEN:
    Vote March 18th until noon on Wednesday, March 20th
  • The EXTREME EIGHT: Vote HERE
    Vote Thursday, March 21st  until noon on Monday, March 25th
  • The FANTASTIC FOUR:
    VoteTuesday, March 26th until noon on Thursday, March 28th
  • The DYNAMIC DUO Championship Round:
    VoteFriday, March 29th  until noon on April 1st
  • The CONQUERING HERO will be announced Monday, April 1st

Summon Your Powers and Vote *

16 field brackets for Lilly Library Superhero Films
Lilly March Movie Madness: the SUPERHERO EDITION

Link to the brackets: https://bit.ly/2FfSMTo

Bracket Updates at
Lilly Library’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

*NOTE: Participants who provide their Duke netID and compete in all the brackets to vote for our CONQUERING HERO, will be entered into  Prize Drawings for Student CRAZIES and for stalwart Duke Staff.

Do You Have Nerves of
DVD cover image of Superman: Man of Steel
Superman: Man of Steel

To Take It All The Way?

Here’s to a great adventure as we all advance through the Lilly Library March Movie Madness Superhero Brackets to crown the Conquering Hero!

Contributors:
Nathaniel Brown, Lilly Library Media and Reserves Coordinator
Carol Terry, Lilly Library Collection Services & Communications Coordinator

Warming Up to Winter in Lilly

Cold and dreary January doesn’t have to be the bleakest and grayest time of year. Visit Lilly Library’s new Collection Spotlight and exhibit to brighten your winter season! To warm you, the Lilly Collection Spotlight What’s Cooking in the Libraries? offers a serving of books and films in celebration of food, chefs, and international cuisine. To accompany our main course, feast your eyes on our latest exhibit Carnival, Carnevale, Carnaval, Karneval,  an overview and celebration of international Carnival traditions.

What’s Cooking in the Libraries?

Film and books for foodies

Food captured on-screen appeals to all our senses. Savor our diverse selection of foodie-films with favorites such as Ratatouille, Big Night, Tortilla Soup, City of Gold, Tampopo, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Chef, Eat Drink Man Woman, and many more!

Books about chefs, food history, and culinary traditions and cuisines complete our menu. Sample more books and films about food in Lilly and the Duke Libraries here.

Carnival, Carnevale, Carnaval, Karneval

Carnival Celebrations and Traditions

 

In addition to our feast of books and films about food, our exhibit Carnival, Carnevale, Carnaval, Karnaval highlights the variety and breadth  of carnival festivities celebrated throughout the world. Practiced over several centuries, the ancient tradition of a mid-February Carnival has evolved and become as varied and diverse as its many locales.  Originating from spiritual and religious traditions, present-day carnival festivities are exuberant and high-spirited affairs.  Venice, Rio, New Orleans, Bavarian towns, cantons of Switzerland, and the islands of the Caribbean are just a few settings noted for elaborate celebrations and revelry during the Carnival season. Explore films and books about carnival here.

Even though it is winter, Laissez les bons temps rouler!

 

The Dog Days of Summer at Lilly Library

Although classes have started and September is here, it’s still doggone hot outside. In honor of these waning dog days of summer, Lilly Library has curated a selection of dog books and films for you to enjoy (with or without your furry friends!) in the comfort of the A/C. Here are some of my personal favorites from our Collection Spotlight.

Best in Show

Best in Show Cover

One of my favorite mockumentaries, Best in Show lampoons dog shows and the people who obsess over them. If you’ve seen a Christopher Guest directed film before (Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind) lots of the usual suspects show up in this one, including Michael McKean, Jane Lynch, and Eugene Levy. Highly recommended for bloodhound fans.

Polaroids by William Wegman

Even if you’re not familiar with the name William Wegman, I’m willing to bet you’ve seen one of his photographs. Wegman is most famous for his many photos of his gray Weimaraner hunting dogs, who are often posed on furniture or wearing costumes. A wonderful book of phodography!

Wir kommen auf den Hund (We Go to the Dogs) by Michael Imhof Verlag

We Go To The Dogs Cover Image

An exhibition catalog from the Berlin Museum of Prints and Drawings, this book contains depictions of canines in art ranging from medieval times to the modern era. Recommended if you want to get a broad sampling of dogs in art.

Dog Day Afternoon

Dog Day Afternoon Cover

No actual dogs involved in this one, but it does feature the oppressive heat we’re currently facing here in Durham. Set during a steamy afternoon in New York City, this Sidney Lumet film follows two bank robbers (Al Pacino and the excellent John Cazale) as their plans go sideways and they are forced to improvise. This film is a must-watch masterpiece.

Drop by Lilly Library and check out the Collection Spotlight stand to the left of the front desk for more dog-themed books and films!

Forever Duke – Alumni in Literature and the Arts

Lilly Collection Spotlight

Duke Alumni Authors and Artists

Oh, the places they have gone!

Our Lilly Collection Spotlight shines on talented Duke Alumni including authors, broadcasters, researchers, as well as many who are accomplished in popular entertainment – both on screen and behind the scenes. Their studies while at Duke are varied, and for many, their majors were not directly related to their career. The featured books encompass a range of genres and styles – from sociological research to critically acclaimed fiction to sports journalism. Duke alumni working in film and television produce and appear in a variety of films including comedies, drama and thoughtful documentaries. Actors, directors, writers – they experience success both in front of the camera and behind. What they all have in common is their “Duke experience”.

Check out the entire list of books in the Lilly Collection Spotlight  and visit Lilly Library to view the exhibit Duke Alumni on the Screen and Behind the Scenes.

Among the Duke Alumni  Books in the Collection Spotlight:

Vinegar Girl: The Taming of the Shrew Retold

Vinegar girl : The taming of the shrew retold

Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler’s inspired, witty and irresistible contemporary take on one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies. Tyler graduated from Duke in 1961.

The Legends Club : Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano, and an epic college basketball rivalry
In the skillful hands of John Feinstein (Duke 1977), this extraordinary rivalry–and the men behind it–comes to life in a unique, intimate way. The Legends Club is a sports book that captures an era in American sport and culture, documenting the inside view of a decade of absolutely incredible competition.

Dollars and sense : how we misthink money and how to spend smarter

Dollars and sense : how we misthink money and how to spend smarter
Bestselling author  (Predictably Irrational) and behavioral economist Dan Ariely  (PhD Business 1998) teams up with financial comedian and writer Jeff Kreisler to challenge many of our most basic assumptions about the precarious relationship between our brains and our money.

The Gaza Kitchen: a Palestinian culinary journey

This is a richly illustrated and researched cookbook that explores the distinctive cuisine of the area known prior to 1948 as the Gaza District–and that of the many refugees who came to Gaza in 1948 and have been forced to stay there ever since. In summer 2010, Laila El-Haddad  (Duke 2000) and Maggie Schmitt traveled throughout the Gaza Strip to collect the recipes and shoot the stunning photographs presented in the book.

Forever Duke: On the Screen and Behind the Scenes

Accompanying the books in the Collection Spotlight, the current exhibit in the Lilly Library foyer is Forever Duke: On the Screen and Behind the Scenes. The works of Duke alumni filmmakers, writers and actors featured  include films and series found in the Lilly Library collections. A few of the more well known titles or personalities:

We Were Soldiers – directed by Randall Wallace (’72)

We Were Soldiers
Directed by Randall Wallace (’72) Wallace wrote and directed We Were Soldiers. Nominated for an Oscar as screenwriter for Braveheart, he also worked on films such as Pearl Harbor and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Community and The Hangover

Community featuring Ken Jeong

Ken Jeong (’90) was a premed student at Duke.  A licensed physician, Jeong found fame in comic roles in both television and film.

Other Duke luminaries include actress and Baldwin Scholar  Annabeth Gish (’93) who stars in the current X-Files, Martin Kratt (’89), the co-creator of the beloved children’s series Zoboomafoo and Wild Kratts, Oscar and BAFTA nominee cinematographer Robert Yeoman (’73) , film editor Alisa Lepselter who has worked on Woody Allen films such as Midnight in Paris and Match Point, and documentary filmmakers Ryan White (’04) and Rossana Lacayo (’79).

The Duke campus and Durham have also been featured in film and television; productions include Bull Durham, The Handmaid’s Tale (the film), The Program, Main Street, Iron Man 3, Kiss the Girls, Brainstorm and the late 1990’s  coming-of-age television series Dawson’s Creek.  Whether it’s American Pie 2Mystic Pizza, The Squid and the Whale or Parks and Recreation, you will find a Blue Devil!

 

 

 

March Movie Madness @ Lilly: the Elite Eight

Who is Still Standing? The Elite Eight

What is YOUR Pick?

There is No Crying in Baseball
Three of the Elite Eight are Baseball movies!

A League of Their Own turned off the Friday Night Lights for good, and Moneyball  and 42 continued to score on the field.  Alas, local favorite Bull Durham discovered that it is all “sunshine” as Remember the Titans piled on.  Rocky may have knocked out When We Were Kings, but he’ll soon to have face the GOAT Michael Jordan and teammates when it is game time in Space Jam! Can the youngsters  Karate Kid and Creed prevail?

NEW VOTERS are welcome! It’s not too late to vote in the Elite Eight, then on Saturday 3/31 make your picks for the Final Four and the Championship round on Monday 4/2.  Vote here 

Who’s left? Pick your brackets and VOTE in the  Elite Eight

 Extra Innings? OT? Bonus points?

We have more sports movies to recommend – check out the bench-warmer roster at March Madness-On The Bench

Remember, if you submit your Duke NetID, you may win a CRAZIE prize!

March Movie Madness @ Lilly Continues

Opening Round Recap and Results

Lilly March Movie Madness – Opening Round

Upsets Do Happen!

There was lots of action in the 1st Round of Lilly Library’s March Movie Madness brackets. Looks like “The Dude” was “Blind Side-d”, Caddyshack may have what it takes to be a Cinderella story, the Karate Kid “waxed off” Hoosiers, and Talladega Nights did a “Shake’n Bake” all over the Field of Dreams.

Round 3/Sweet Sixteen Voting

through Tuesday, March 27th.

March Movie Madness Round 2 Contenders

It’s never too late to join in March Movie Madness @ Lilly, so make your picks of the remaining contenders!

  • Complete your brackets for Round 3/Sweet Sixteen here.
  • Want to see the brackets in classic form?
    Download Lilly March Madness Round 2 Results

See you in the Elite Eight!

March Movie Madness@Lilly – Sports Films

What’s the best sports film of all time?

March Movie Madness @ Lilly

March Movie Madness @ Lilly  begins Monday, March 19th.

Lilly Library has 100s of sports films – ranging from iconic classics such as Rocky to quirky films like Shaolin Soccer to searing dramas such as Creed. In fact, we have so many sports films, we decided to select just 64 (sound familiar?) for our very own Lilly Library version of March Madness. You may not agree with our title selections (does that also sound familiar?), but don’t let that stop you from joining in the fun and having a chance to win a Crazie great PRIZE!*

Here’s how:

To vote, visit our 64-team Lilly Library March Movie Madness online field. Round two is now open for voting here!
To record your selections, vote for your choice of Heavy Hitters in Bracket A versus films that Go the Distance in Bracket B to eventually face those films that are Down to the Wire in Bracket C opposite the Full Court Press of Bracket D. Voting dates are listed below and on the contest page.
Updates will be posted in Lilly Library’s lobby  and on Lilly’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts in addition to our blog, Latest@Lilly.

Only votes submitted via Lilly March Movie Madness count.
Want a copy of the brackets just for fun? Download here.

*Did someone say PRIZE?

Participants who provide their Duke NetID and vote for the sport movie “champion” will be entered into a drawing for a Crazie fan grand prize!

March Madness @ Lilly: Sports Films

The details –  online voting dates:

  • Round 1: voting closed
  • Round 2: Thursday, March 22nd until midnight Sunday, March 25th
  • Sweet Sixteen: Monday, March 26th until midnight Tuesday, March 27th
  • Elite Eight: Wednesday, March 28th until midnight Thursday, March 29th
  • Final Four: Friday, March 30th until midnight Sunday, April 1st
  • Championship: Monday, April 2nd until midnight Tuesday, April 3rd

Results and Recaps

Result for Round 1:
Lilly March Movie Madness Round 1 Results
March Movie Madness Round 1 Results

There was lots of action in the 1st Round of Lilly Library’s March Movie Madness brackets. Looks like “The Dude” was “Blind Side-d”, Caddyshack may have what it takes to be a Cinderella story, the Karate Kid “waxed off” Hoosiers, and Talladega Nights did a “Shake’n Bake” all over the Field of Dreams.

Winner announced: Wednesday, April 4th!

Bonus: Extra Innings? Overtime?  Want MORE sports movies?

Some movies are so iconic that they are more suitable for the Hall of Fame. If you are wondering what great movies (and maybe not so great) did NOT make the field, check out the bench-warmers here at March Madness – On the Bench

At Lilly Library, now that it’s time for The Big Dance –
we hope you join in!

 

 

Lilly Collection Spotlight: They Came to Play | Women in Sport

To celebrate Women’s History Month 2018, Lilly Library is shining a spotlight on Women in Sport. Books and movies that feature women athletes are “teeming” in our collections. Come to East Campus and check out this month’s Lilly Collection Spotlight.  Click here for the complete line-up.

While you’re at Lilly, visit the exhibit in the foyer, On the Field, the Courts and Beyond: Women in Sports – TITLE IX, that complements our Lilly Collection Spotlight.

BOOKS

Book Cover, Game Changers: the Unsung Heroines of Sports History
2018 | Molly Schiott

Based on the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroines, a celebration of the pioneering, forgotten female athletes of the twentieth century that features rarely seen photos and new interviews with past and present game changers including Abby Wambach and Cari Champion.

Book Cover, Kicking Off: How Women in Sport are Changing the Game
2016 | Sarah Shephard

There’s a battle being fought. It’s raging on the sports fields, in the newsrooms and behind the scenes at every major broadcaster. Women in sport are fighting for equality with more vigour than ever, but are they breaking down the barriers that stand in their way? Sarah Shephard looks behind the headlines to see whether progress is really being made and tells the stories that can no longer be ignored. It’s time for women to switch their focus from the battlefield to the sports field, once and for all.

book cover: Charging the Net, a History of Blacks in Tennis from Althea Gibson... to the Williams Sisters
2007 | Cecil Harris and Larryette Kyle-DeBose

Beginning with the Williams sisters, the authors examine the foundation of their development as tennis phenoms during the 1990s and the prophetic yet unabashed approach of their coach, father, and sports psychologist, Richard Williams, in crafting a world within which they would be groomed to be successful. a compelling examination of the impact of African Americans on the world of professional tennis and the various challenges and outcomes of that involvement.

book cover, Sportswomen in Cinema, Film and the Frailty Myth
2015 | Nicholas ChareFILMS

An overview of films about women in sport and a timely critical analysis of their role in shaping perceptions of female athletic ability. It examines themes of aggression, beauty, class, ethnicity, physical feminism, sexuality, synaesthesia and technology in relation to mainstream and arthouse cinematic depictions of sportswomen from Pumping Iron 2 to Bend it Like Beckham. 

 

book cover The Match: Althea Gibson Angela Buxton
2004 | Bruce Schoenfeld

50 years ago when Gibson and Buxton were two of the top women’s tennis players in the world. Coming from widely divergent backgrounds (Gibson from a poor black family in Harlem, Buxton from a well-to-do Jewish family in London), the two hooked up in the mid-1950s and became tennis partners and lifelong friends.

Book cover, Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports
2015 | ed. Alex Channon

Offers a wide-reaching overview of current academic research on women’s participation in combat sports within a wide range of different national and trans-national contexts, detailing many of the struggles and opportunities experienced by women at various levels of engagement within sports such as boxing, wrestling and mixed martial arts.

FILMS

DVD case Offside
DVD 14381

During the 2006 Iran-Bahrain match, the Tehran soccer stadium roars with 100,000 cheering men and, officially, no women. According to Islamic custom, women are not permitted to watch or participate in men’s sports. Many of the ambitious young female fans who manage to sneak into the arena are caught and sent to a holding pen, guarded by male soldiers their own age. Duty makes these young men and women adversaries, but duty can’t overcome their shared dreams, their mutual attraction, and ultimately their overriding sense of national pride and humanity.

DVD cover Playing Unfair: the media image of the female athlete
DVD 21482 and Streaming Video

Examines the post Title IX media environment in terms of the representation of female athletes. It demonstrates that while men’s identities in sports are equated with deeply held values of courage, strength and endurance, the accomplishments of female athletes are framed very differently and in much more stereotypical ways.

DVD cover Personal Best
DVD 11362

A promising hurdler, played by Mariel Hemingway, finds needed emotional and athletic seasoning with a caring mentor. After the two fall in love, their relationship is threatened as both vie for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.

 

DVD cover Grandes Ligas
DVD 25223 and streaming video

Members of the Cuban National Women’s Baseball Team discuss their passion for the sport and hardships they faced in Cuba’s society filled with machismo, prejudice and daily hardships.

DVD cover Watermarks
DVD 6270

The story of the surviving members of the  Viennese Hakoah sports club women’s swim team, a world-dominating competitor in the 1930s. The club was eventually shut down during Hitler’s reign, though all the women managed to escape capture. Combines historical footage and contemporary interviews to reconnect the women’s lives and memories.

DVD cover Edge of America
DVD 5579

The new man in town has just accepted a position as an English professor on a reservation in Utah. Finding it hard to fit in with the Native American community, he decides to take on the challenge of coaching the girls’ basketball team.

DVD cover Whip It
DVD 18946

Bliss Cavender is a small-town teenager looking for her own path. Tired of following in her family’s footsteps, she discovers a way to put her life on the fast track–literally. She lands a spot on a roller derby team and becomes “Babe Ruthless.” Co-starring Drew Barrymore in her feature film directorial debut.

 

Best in Snow: Collection Spotlight

Collection Spotlight: Best in Snow

Contributors: Carol Terry, Danette Pachtner and Ira King

Winter Sports:  Skiing, Skating and Hockey

Winter Olympics and Sport

Tired of cold wintry weather? Don’t be snowboardcurl up with interesting reading, or peak at these films … what do you have to luge? (Are we skating on thin ice here?)

If you are ready for vicarious international adventures in spectacular snow and ice, Lilly Library’s collections will transport you. Our latest Collection Spotlight shines on winter sports, Olympic history and snowy landscapes inspired by the upcoming Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. Some winning titles are featured below, but judge for yourself and see the full list in Best in Snow.

Film

  • The Price of Gold (2014, dir. Nanette Burstein) ESPN 30 for 30
    The world couldn’t keep its eyes off two athletes at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer – Nancy Kerrigan, the elegant brunette and Tonya Harding, the feisty blonde who would stop at nothing to get on the Olympic podium.
  • Sister (2012, dir. Ursula Meir)
    Sister-Lilly DVD 27001

    A drama set at a Swiss ski resort and centered on a boy who supports his sister by stealing from wealthy guests.

  • Curling (2010, dir. Denis Côté)
    On the fringe of society in a remote part of the French-Canadian countryside, the fragile relationship and unusual private life of a father and daughter is jeopardized by dreary, unforeseen circumstances.
  • Of Miracles and Men (2009, dir. Jonathan Hock) ESPN 30 for 30
    The story of one of the greatest upsets in sports history has been told. Or has it? On a Friday evening in Lake Placid, a plucky band of American collegians stunned the vaunted Soviet national team, 4-3 in the medal round of the 1980 Winter Olympic hockey competition. Americans couldn’t help but believe in miracles that night, and when the members of Team USA won the gold medal two days later, they became one for the ages. But there was another, unchronicled side to the “Miracle On Ice.”
  • Blades of Glory (2007, dirs. Josh Gordon and Will Speck)
    Cool Runnings
    Cool Runnings Lilly DVD 7974

    In 2002, two rival Olympic ice skaters were stripped of their gold medals and permanently banned from men’s single competition. Presently, however, they’ve found a loophole that will allow them to qualify as a pairs team.

  • Cool Runnings (1998, dir. Jon Turteltaub)When a Jamaican sprinter is disqualified from the Olympic Games,he enlists the help of a dishonored coach to start the first Jamaican Bobsled Team.

Books

  • Speed Kings by Andy Bull
    Spped Kings
    Speed Kings – 1930s Lake Placid Olympics

    In the 1930s, as the world hurtled towards terrible global conflict, speed was all the rage. Exotic, exciting and above all dangerous, it was by far the most popular event at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. It required an abundance of skill and bravery. And the four men who triumphed at those Games lived the most extraordinary lives.

  • Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity, and the Limits of Sport by Mary Louise Adams
    In contemporary North America, figure skating ranks among the most ‘feminine’ of sports and few boys take it up for fear of being labelled effeminate or gay. Yet figure skating was once an exclusively male pastime – women did not skate in significant numbers until the late 1800s, at least a century after the founding of the first skating club. Only in the 1930s did figure skating begin to acquire its feminine image.
  • Two planks and a passion : the dramatic history of skiing
    Sochi 2014
    Sochi 2014 – Olympics in photos

    Roland Huntford’s brilliant history begins 20,000 years ago in the last ice age on the icy tundra of an unformed earth. Man is a travelling animal, and on these icy slopes skiing began as a means of survival. In polar exploration, skiing changed the course of history. Elsewhere, in war and peace, it has done so too.

  • Sochi 2014 : the Olympic Games through the lens of John Huet and David BurnettCommissioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to create a personal record of the Olympic Games, Huet and Burnett  capture the essence and adventure of the Olympic Games through stunning and unconventional photographs.

So many more books and films  examine the Olympics from a range of perspectives – from pure sport and Olympic ideals to international political and social concerns and controversies. Explore further in our Collection Spotlight, and visit  Best in Snow.

Lilly Collection Spotlight on Photography

Post contributed by Ira King, Danette Pachtner and Carol Terry. October has been declared Photography Month in North Carolina—come to Lilly Library and borrow a book or movie from our collection spotlight on photography!   In addition to the books available on our Spotlight shelf , Lilly’s focus on photography can be seen with our exhibits The f-Stops Here: Photography in North Carolina in the foyer, Duke: a Perspective – photographs by William Hanley III, and Mario Sorrenti: Draw Blood for Proof,  the “medium” rare book selected by Visual Studies Librarian Lee Sorensen.

With the advent of the smartphone and social media platforms like Instagram, photography has suffused our daily lives. You may shoot a pic of the Duke Chapel on the way to an early morning class, take a photo of your lunch at West Union, and get a snapchat vista from your friend on vacation in the mountains. If you’re obsessed with images, we’ve got you covered with this month’s Collection Spotlight at Lilly Library! Check out the wide range of photography books and films on display.

Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs
Adams, whose work was recently featured in an exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art, was one of the most celebrated landscape photographers of the Twentieth Century, renowned for his black and white depictions of the stunning scenery of the American West. This book collects photographs from across his multi-decade career. Recommended if you’re craving a reminder of the sublime beauty of the outdoors.

Toy Stories by Gabriele Galimberti
In this unique collection, photographer Gabriele Galimberti traveled around the world photographing children and their toys, spending thirty months on the road and visiting fifty-eight different countries. These striking photographs are fun, but also illuminate the social, economic, and gender issues that surround what toys children grow up with. Recommended if you’re missing your childhood room.

The Beautiful Smile by Nan Goldin
This collection, released on the occasion of Goldin’s 2007 Hasselblad Award, features intimate, diaristic photographs and portraits. Rising to fame as a member and chronicler of the LGBTQ subculture in 1980s and 1990s New York City, Goldin includes both photos from that era and newer works in this book. Recommended if you’re looking for photography that captures both the beauty and fragility of life.

Chromes: 1969-1974 by William Eggleston
One of our personal favorite photographers, Eggleston photographed “ordinary” objects and people around the South and his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. Eggleston’s work in color helped legitimize the form in a field that was previously dominated by black and white photography. Recommended if you’re a Big Star fan and/or enjoy photos of old gas stations.

And don’t forget that Lilly has a great collection of films you can borrow.

Here are a few titles from our Video Spotlight: Photography on Film

Lilly DVD 8892

La Jetee (1962)
Since its release in 1962, Chris Marker’s La Jetée has emerged as one of the foundational texts of postwar European cinema. With its rhythmic editing, nostalgic voiceover and parade of black-and-white images, La Jetée exercises a hypnotic effect on its viewers. This short, experimental ‘photo-roman’ stays with you long after its 29 minutes are over.

Lilly DVD 6054

Pecker (1999)
John Waters’ film about a budding Baltimore photographer. Pecker (he got the nickname for pecking at his food as a child) photographs the mundane sights of his Baltimore neighborhood: the hamburger joint where he works, rats making love in the alley behind the diner, the oddball characters in his family, and the dancers in the local lesbian strip club.

 

Lilly DVD 29861

City of God (2002)
This movie takes place in the favelas or slums of Rio de Janeiro created to isolate the poor people from the city center. They have grown into places teeming with life, color, music and excitement–and with danger. One of the characters, Rocket, obtains a stolen camera that he treasures and takes pictures from his privileged position as a kid on the streets.

Lilly DVD 20755

Our feelings took the pictures: Open Shutters Iraq (2008)
Iraq-born Maysoon Pachachi’s film documents a project in which a group of women refugees from five cities in Iraq living in Syria learn to take photographs and present their lives to each other. Accompanying book is in Perkins Library.

Lilly DVD 26643

Through a lens darkly: black photographers and the emergence of a people (2014)
Filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris offers what he calls a “family memoir” via historical images of African Americans initially through popular and disturbing stereotypes such as those portrayed in D.W. Griffith’s classic 1915 film Birth of a Nation to more realistic and poignant photographs. Using a series of narrative images by African American photographic artists including Anthony Barboza, Hank Willis Thomas, Lorna Simpson, and Gordon Parks, among others, Harris sheds light on a seldom-told aspect of our culture.

As you can see,  Lilly Library offers a wide range of books and film about the art, science and history of photography which we hope you will enjoy.

Lilly Spotlight-Cuban-Americans, the Duke Common Experience and Beyond

Cuban-Americans, the Duke Common Experience and Beyond

Need some new reading material or just interested in seeing what’s in Lilly Library’s collection that you might not know about? Check out Lilly’s Collection Spotlight!

Lilly Spotlight on Duke Common Experience

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month and the Duke Common Experience Reading Program selection of Richard Blanco’s The Prince of Los Cocuyos, our spotlight shines on books and films relevant to his and the Cuban-American experience.  Blanco, the inaugural poet for Barack Obama in 2012, writes in his memoir of his childhood growing up in Miami as a son of Cuban immigrants. The memoir finds Blanco grappling with both his place in America and his sexuality, striving to discover his identity.

Our collections include books on Cuban Art, the Cuban-American immigrant experience in the United States, LGBTQ communities in Hispanic culture, and several books of Blanco’s poetry. Here are a few highlights from our Lilly Collection Spotlight:

Books:

Adios Utopia — Art in Cuba Since 1950
This exhibition catalog covers Cuban art from 1950 to the present viewed through the particular lenses of the Cuban Revolution, utopian ideals, and subsequent Cuban history. The collection covered in this book will be on display at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis starting in November.

Latinx Comic Book Storytelling:Latinx
An Odyssey by Interview by Frederick Luis Aldama

In this book, scholar Frederick Luis Aldama interviews 29 Latinx comic book creators, ranging from the legendary Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame to lesser known up and coming writers/illustrators.

Matters of the Sea / Cosas del mar by Richard Blanco

This bilingual chapbook contains a poem Blanco wrote and read for the reopening of the US Embassy in Havana in 2015. Blanco writes in the opening lines, “The sea doesn’t matter, what matters is this: we all belong to the sea between us, all of us.”

Films:


CubAmerican (2012)  DVD 28418
Exploring the causes leading to the exile of millions of Cubans from communist Cuba by depicting the journey of illustrious Cuban-Americans to their new life in the United States

 

Finally the sea (2007) DVD 12185
“The wreckage of an empty Cuban raft is the catalyst for Tony, a successful Cuban-American businessman, who files from Wall Street to Cuba to discover his roots. His journey develops into a striking love story where politics and romance collide

Mambo Kings (1992) DVD 27116
Musician brothers, Cesar and Nestor, leave Cuba for America (NYC) in the 1950s, with the hopes of making it to the top of the Latin music scene. Cesar is the older brother who serves as the business manager and is a consummate ladies’ man. Nestor is the brooding songwriter, who cannot forget the woman in Cuba who broke his heart. This is an unrated version of the film, with one restored scene.


Visit our Collection Spotlight shelf, in the lobby to the left of the Lilly desk. 
There are many more titles available to you, and if you want more suggestions – just ask us. Stay tuned – We will highlight our diverse and varied holdings at Lilly with a different theme each month.

Submitted by Ira King
Evening Reference Librarian & Supervisor
Lilly Library