The Hutterites, To Care and not to Care: Spiritual cousins of the Mennonites and Amish, the Hutterites live simply with austerity. By a way of life that is supremely communal rather than individualistic, the Hutterites have rid themselves of poverty, homicide and anxiety about the future.

An ethnography of the American Hutterite community, a spiritual sect with roots in medieval Russia, whose lifestyle emphasizes communal living and technological simplicity. First settled along the Dakota bank of the Missouri River in the 1870s, the Hutterites dress in 16th-century styles and live in collective agricultural communities, shunning mainstream Western values more than any other group in North America.

DVD Features:

• Rated: Not Rated
• Region: All Regions
• Languages: English,
• Format: Full Screen
• Time: 58 minutes
• Release: 1993

The Amish, How they Survive: The Amish live far outside the cultural mainstream. During the last century, they grew from 5,000, inhabiting a handful of states, to 200,000 souls living in 25 states and one Canadian province.

Preferring community to technology, the Amish live their lives in close fellowship with each other. Within their religious communities, everyone agrees on what technologies to adopt, what clothes to wear and what horse-powered transportation to drive.

A decade ago, approximately 90% of Amish earned their incomes from farming operations. Today, in some communities, less than 5% do so. Learn how the Amish have successfully responded to a tightening agricultural economy. See how their strict adherence to community values contributes to their doubling in size every 20 years.

This documentary takes you on an intimate journey into Ohio Amish life and culture. You will discover how rapid growth and economic pressures threaten their community. You will also meet a people who, as a result of creative disengagement with the culture around them, thrive.

Burton Buller documents the lives of the Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites. His programs have appeared on PBS, Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Hallmark Channel, ABC TV and NBC TV.

DVD Features:

• Region: 1
• Languages: English,
• Subtitles: English,
• Format: DVD, Widescreen
• Time: 49 minutes
• Release: 2005

Amish: A People of Preservation: An award-winning PBS documentary. The Amish keep surprising their technology-programmed neighbors by keeping alive ways and beliefs that many modern Americans wish they could recapture.

In this colorful, updated documentary, Mennonite historian John Ruth takes us sympathetically into the Amish mindset. Dr. John A. Hostetler, author of Amish society, comments on the survival of an alternative to the kind of world we have made. As the Amish increase in numbers, some of them migrate from homesteads in Pennsylvania toward more open farmland. Those staying where the land is too crowded to farm have developed an amazing variety of cottage industries. But all such changes are made very carefully, in order not to sacrifice spiritual covenant and community for the sake of convenience.

Read A Reflection on this Documentary at our Blog.

DVD Features:

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Region: Region 1
• Number of discs: 1
• Language: Enlighs
• Run Time: 54 minutes

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