Milgram was a man of many interests, a sort of neo-Renaissance man. One of his strongest interests, besides social psychology, was filmmaking. In fact, at the height of his academic career he took courses in filmmaking techniques. Altogether, he produced six educational films during his lifetime. All of them are available from Penn State Media Services. Their website is www.mediasales.psu.edu.
His first film was the gripping black-and-white documentary, “Obedience.” It was shot at Yale in May, 1962, right after Milgram completed his series of experiments. Milgram made the film to provide visual evidence of his incredible findings.
Between 1972 and 1976, he made five films together with Harry From, a graduate student in his Ph.D. program in social psychology at CUNY. Harry had had training and experience as a film director in Romania and Israel before coming to the U.S.
Their first joint effort was “The City and the Self,” an award-winning film about the impact of city life on human behavior. This was followed by a series of four films about social psychology. They are:
- "Invitation to Social Psychology"
- "Conformity and Independence"
- "Human Aggression"
- "Nonverbal Communication"