Exploring Socio-Economic Class: Recommended Films

Note: This page is under construction. We will be adding synopses and titles over time. Please let us know if you have additions to our list!

Popular Movies

• Erin Brockovich
• Working Girl (especially for sororities)
• Spanglish
• Remember the Titans
• In America 
• Six Degrees of Separation
• Bastard Out of Carolina
• Real Women Have Curves
• Pretty Woman (available at Video Stop)
• Save the Last Dance (available at Video Stop)
• Match Point
• Grapes of Wrath
• Beloved (Based on the novel by Toni Morrison)
• Lone Star (An unsolved murder in a Texas border town uncovers a tale of corruption, intrigue, and forbidden love)
• Rabbit Proof Fence (In 1931, Molly and her younger cousins, Gracie and Daisy, were three half-caste children from Western Australia who were taken from their parents under government edict and sent to an institution, were taught to forget their families, their culture, and re-invent themselves as members of "white" Australian society. The three girls begin an epic journey back to Western Australia, traveling 1,500 miles on foot with no food or water, and navigating by following the fence that has been built across the nation to stem an over-population of rabbits.)

Educational/Documentary Films

• Struggle for Life: Poverty in New Hampshire
• People Like Us: Social Class in America
• Bessie Smith blues singer documentary
• A Civil Action
• Hoop Dreams Follows the high school careers of two young men from inner-city Chicago as they pursue their dream of playing professional basketball.

The following videos are available to borrow from the Office of Institutional Diversity & Equity:

• Pharaoh's Streets: Homelessness and Voices of Providence in the City of Angels Activist Ted Hayes is documented as he organizes the National Homeless Convention in the shadow of the Democratic National Convention -- an intelligent exploration of social movements, integrity, human and civil rights, social change, and class in the twenty first century.
• Who's Getting Rich and Why Aren't You? (CBS) An intimate look at the changing US economy and the middle class it is affecting, interviewing people whose stories represent the human aspects of profound economic change, from the entrepreneurs and specialists who became successful to the workers holding on to ideals that may no longer apply.
• American Dream Documents the true-life story of the 1985-1986 workers' strike against Geo. A. Hormel & Company in Austin, Minnesota.
• Dorothy Allison: Until Justice Roll Down Like Water MLK address at Dartmouth.
• North Country Feature film about coal mine sexual harassment class action suit.
• What I Want My Words to Do to You PBS, Eve Ensler women's prison project.