MEF

The Media Education Foundation produces & distributes films to inspire critical thinking about the social, political, & cultural impact of American mass media.

[MEF @MediaEd]

Last week's midterm elections delivered a blistering rebuke to Donald Trump and the Republican Party, fueled in part by growing bipartisan opposition to the U.S. war in Iran. The backlash offers a chance to ask a question that goes far beyond Iran: Why has the United States spent decades fighting wars, projecting military power, and propping up authoritarian regimes across the Middle East, regardless of which party controls the White House?

Our films Blood & Oil, Hijacking Catastrophe, The Race for What's Left, and The Age of Consequences illustrate that a major part of the answer lies in a deeply flawed assumption that’s shaped U.S. foreign policy under Democratic and Republican administrations alike: that American security depends on wielding military power to maintain global dominance, including control over the world’s oil supplies.

Find links to each film on our official blog post here: https://t.co/l95KlgDHG6

[MEF @MediaEd]

Edward Said, Stuart Hall, bell hooks, and Paul Gilroy helped revolutionize thinking about culture, identity, and power. Working from different perspectives, they challenged widely held assumptions about difference and belonging, asking how these beliefs take hold, whose interests they serve, and what they leave out.

These seminal scholars explain and explore their key ideas in seven MEF films, offering students insight into how dominant narratives shape our understanding of the world, reinforce existing power structures, and create opportunities for resistance and change.

Explore the titles on our blog: https://t.co/z1Jco4QRcw

#stuarthall #edwardsaid #bellhooks #paulgilroy

[MEF @MediaEd]

From The Guardian to Video Librarian, critics have praised our new release Body Parts for its revealing examination of sex and power in Hollywood, with special recognition of its educational value. We're proud to bring Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Helen Hood Scheer's celebrated documentary to classrooms and libraries.

📺 Watch Body Parts on our streaming platform today: https://t.co/PVtvjUuUNz

[MEF @MediaEd]

Media narratives don't just reflect the world. They help determine how we see it, what we believe about it, and whose interests are served by the stories we're told.

MEF’s ten bestselling films of the 2025–26 academic year, featured below, give students powerful tools for questioning those narratives. From race, gender, and sexuality to war, political dissent, and economic inequality, these films challenge conventional wisdom, expose the cultural and political forces behind familiar media messages, and help students recognize how power operates through the images, stories, and ideas they encounter every day.

All of these films are available on our new streaming platform in multiple formats: https://t.co/v2zx3Oc9za

[MEF @MediaEd]

As the midterms enter their final stretch, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric once associated with the far-right fringes has moved into the mainstream of American politics, with elected officials, political candidates, and media commentators openly trafficking in racist and dehumanizing attacks.

We’ve compiled eight MEF films that examine how anti-Muslim and anti-Arab fears have been manufactured and weaponized for decades to sell wars, divide Americans, suppress dissent, and obscure connections between Islamophobia, antisemitism, and other forms of hatred. From The Encampments, which documents the repression of Palestinian and Jewish students united in protest against Israel's genocidal violence in Gaza, to Healing from Hate, which examines how white-supremacist violence is motivated by antisemitism and Islamophobia alike, these films give educators powerful tools to help students recognize the politics of fear, question the narratives behind these tactics, and understand whose interests they serve.

Read our full blog post here to get the whole story and license the films: https://t.co/fZNbZb6Zg2

[MEF @MediaEd]

About 6,000 women enter menopause every day, yet the subject has long received far less sustained journalistic attention than its impact would suggest.

Earlier this year, the acclaimed independent news outlet @19thnews launched a dedicated menopause project whose reporting connects women’s midlife health to workplace policy, insurance coverage, medical research, racial inequality, aging, and access to care.

Our new release Breaking the News tells the launch story of @19thnews, a newsroom that treats gender not as a niche subject, but as something that cuts across politics, economics, health care, race, work, sexuality, and power, with an explicit commitment to women and LGBTQ+ people too often overlooked by mainstream journalism.

Read more: https://t.co/EfipSdKHK0

[MEF @MediaEd]

For most of Hollywood’s history, men have held disproportionate power over how women’s bodies, sexuality, and desire are portrayed on screen. The result has been a century of images and stories shaped far more by dominant ideas about women’s sexuality than by women’s own experiences and perspectives.

Our bestselling documentary Body Parts brings this largely untold history into view.

Learn more about the film and how to stream it: https://t.co/m4D3TF3UUB: https://t.co/aH4wMbVEbM

[MEF @MediaEd]

On October 6, longtime MEF collaborator Jackson Katz, a global leader in the gender violence prevention field, joined CBS Mornings hosts Norah O’Donnell, Gayle King, and Nate Burleson for a wide-ranging conversation about the Cornell sexual assault case and the larger questions it’s raised about consent, male peer cultures, bystander intervention, institutional responsibility, and prevention.

If you’re interested in digging deeper into the insights Katz shared on CBS Mornings, our bestselling film The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at Its Roots, made in collaboration with Katz, offers a sustained exploration of his pioneering work.

⏯️ Watch the full CBS Mornings conversation here: https://t.co/Bu2X2JI7OM
📺 Stream The Bystander Moment on the MEF Platform today: https://t.co/RlFUtYqqDa

[MEF @MediaEd]

Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian graduate student who became one of the public faces of the 2024 Columbia protests opposing U.S. support for Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, is back in the news.

Just last month, pro-Israel activists in Massachusetts successfully pressured a theater operator to withdraw from a sold-out event for Khalil’s memoir, No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention.

In that same stretch, Khalil and other pro-Palestinian students were also in the news after filing a lawsuit accusing Columbia of anti-Palestinian discrimination, retaliation, and failure to protect students from doxxing and harassment.

As Khalil and the Columbia encampments return to the center of a public fight over the meaning of pro-Palestinian speech and protest, our film The Encampments gives students a chance to make up their own minds about whether political and media attacks on Khalil and the protests square with what actually happened on the ground.

Full blog post:

[MEF @MediaEd]

Twenty years ago, MEF had the honor of becoming the educational distributor of Byron Hurt's groundbreaking documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes. Combining cultural criticism with personal inquiry, it brought together celebrated artists like Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Fat Joe, Chuck D, Jadakiss, and Busta Rhymes with leading scholars, critics, aspiring rappers, and fans. The result was a landmark examination of masculinity, race, gender, media, and corporate power.

20 years and a succession of acclaimed films later, we’re proud to celebrate the film that began our relationship with @byronhurt, and the extraordinary body of work that’s followed. Read the full tribute on our blog and bring Hurt's films to your classroom today: https://t.co/8y0oyn9se6

[MEF @MediaEd]

Newsrooms are shrinking. Ownership is concentrating. Nonprofit outlets are trying to build new models. And questions about funding, representation, editorial independence, and public trust are becoming harder to separate from the basic work of reporting the news.

Our new release Breaking the News takes viewers inside one newsroom trying to navigate this rapidly shifting terrain and build itself up from the ground up in real time. Breaking the News is available in multiple formats on our new streaming platform: https://t.co/N5wMl1UfSf

[MEF @MediaEd]

Indigenous Peoples’ Day, coming up on Oct. 12, gives educators an opportunity to celebrate Native histories, cultures, and resistance. It’s also a chance to help students think critically about dehumanizing media narratives and stereotypes that have reduced Native people to mascots, caricatures, costumes, and cultural symbols for generations.

From now through the end of October, we're offering 15% off our films More than a Word and Behind the Shield with code INDIGENOUS26. View a clip from Behind the Shield below and learn more about the two films on our blog here: https://t.co/rHhUpe8llc

[MEF @MediaEd]

The shocking allegations in the Cornell case raise urgent questions about peer cultures, bystander silence, institutional responsibility, and what it takes to prevent sexual violence. Our film The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at its Roots, features the work of @jacksontkatz who takes those questions directly into the cultural arenas where attitudes about masculinity, sex, power, and violence are formed and reinforced, from media and pornography to sports and peer groups.

Neither sexual violence nor silence occurs in a cultural vacuum. Every campus in the country needs to be asking what more it can do on to cultivate leadership on these issues and prevent sexual violence before it happens. The Bystander Moment is one resource to help your campus get started.

Read the full blog post here: https://t.co/oIkz3Zfvio

[MEF @MediaEd]

This year, Media Literacy Week (Oct. 26–30) comes at a moment when concerns about who controls our information ecosystem are becoming harder to ignore. Media ownership is becoming more and more concentrated. A shrinking number of media and technology companies, many controlled by billionaires, now wield massive power over what people see, hear, and talk about. And free speech and press freedoms are under accelerating attack.

These are issues MEF has been examining for decades. Our films look not only at media content, but at the systems, structures, and interests that shape it, including corporate ownership, advertising, surveillance-based business models, algorithms, and the political and cultural forces that influence what gets produced, distributed, and seen.

We’ve selected 12 films for Media Literacy Week that help students connect media content to the larger economic, political, and cultural forces behind it. See the list on our blog here: https://t.co/2zKqrxpNDk

[MEF @MediaEd]

Each October, Domestic Violence Awareness Month calls attention to the devastating toll of domestic abuse and the urgent need to support survivors. But it also raises another crucial question: What can we do to help prevent gender violence before it happens?

That question is at the heart of The Bystander Moment, featuring leading gender violence prevention educator Jackson Katz.

This October, we’re offering 15% off The Bystander Moment and all titles in our Gender Violence Prevention Collection with the code DVAM2026.

Learn how to license the film here: https://t.co/Rh5pbWCIx1

[MEF @MediaEd]

It's National Hazing Awareness Week, which invites campuses to confront hazing not simply as a series of dangerous incidents, but as a broader cultural problem. Byron Hurt’s acclaimed documentary HAZING explores the deeper forces that allow hazing to persist — including entrenched ideas about strength, belonging, and leadership. Learn more about National Hazing Awareness Week and how to access the full film on our blog: https://t.co/Rb8HSSDjsJ

#NationalHazingAwarenessWeek #antihazing #culturalawareness #byronhurt

[MEF @MediaEd]

Within days of each other, thousands of miles apart, two firestorms have erupted over what can be said about Gaza.

In Israel, the documentary NAZA went from a 25-minute standing ovation and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival to threats against the Israeli filmmakers who made it. In the United States, the rapper @Macklemore went from opening for Ed Sheeran to being dropped from Sheeran's U.S. tour after being accused of antisemitism.

In both cases, the response to speaking out about Gaza moved quickly from disagreement to vilification and punishment. MEF has been documenting this pattern for decades, in films ranging from our early collaborations with Edward Said to our recent release The Encampments, which Macklemore executive produced. Read the full blog post with links to license each film here: https://t.co/GIqutrDTi2

#macklemore #naza

[MEF @MediaEd]

As anti-Latino rhetoric, racial profiling, and hostility toward immigrants continue to rise, there’s an urgent need to help students understand the cultural forces that have helped fuel this climate of fear and resentment.

This National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), we’re offering 15% off Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun’s acclaimed documentary Latinos Beyond Reel with the coupon code HERITAGE26. Learn more here: https://t.co/jvqhZD1ngN

[MEF @MediaEd]

In anticipation of tomorrow’s 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, U.S. media outlets have been airing deeply moving commemorations. Stories about the 2,977 lives lost. The heroic sacrifices of first responders. And the kindness, compassion, and generosity so many Americans displayed in the face of the horrors that unfolded.

As powerful as these commemorations have been in helping us remember the human toll of that day, they’ve been equally powerful in helping us forget the human costs of America’s response.

We've examined how news and entertainment media have helped normalize, promote, and even glamorize U.S. militarism and endless war since 9/11 for years. Check the 🔗 below for a full blog post on the subject and a selection of MEF films that ask us to reckon not only with what happened that day, but with what was done — and continues to be done — in its name.

All videos and films are all available for classroom use in multiple formats on our new streaming platform:

Full blog post: https://t.co/R634FuIFr0

[MEF @MediaEd]

Ten years ago this month, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence against Black Americans. While the gesture was quiet, it set off a full-scale political and cultural firestorm that exposed deep fault lines in American attitudes toward race, patriotism, militarism, and dissent.

Kaepernick never played another NFL game. Many speculated that he had been effectively blackballed by the league.

This extraordinary history ­— and the NFL’s emergence as a multibillion-dollar media empire that wields enormous cultural influence — are at the heart of our film Behind the Shield: The Power & Politics of the NFL, featuring acclaimed Nation journalist Dave Zirin. Learn how to watch the full length film: https://t.co/v18ReVKp4R