SHIPPENBURG, Monday, Jan. 17 — The 12th Annual International Studies Film Series at Shippensburg University will focus on “Earth’s Environment: A Global Struggle.”

The four-film series, sponsored by the International Studies Program, is on Wednesdays in February, March and April. Each film is at 7 p.m. in Grove Hall Forum and is open to the public. The films are:

• Feb. 1: Beautiful Islands (2010). Three beautiful islands shaken by climate change are the film’s subject: Tuvalu in the South Pacific, Venice in Italy and Shishmaref in Alaska. The film takes viewers on a two-hour trip around the world to meet people whose lives near the water are disappearing. “
• Feb. 29: Milking the Rhino (2009). African nature documentaries usually ignore the people just off-camera living with the dangers and costs of wildlife. Milking the Rhino tells intimate, hopeful and heartbreaking stories of herders in Kenya and Namibia whose traditional ways of life are colliding with expectations of Western conservationists. The film is in Maasai, Ojihimba, Swahili and English.
• March 21:Blue Gold (2008). The film sheds light on the world’s rapidly approaching water crisis and suggests that wars of the future will be fought over water, as they are today over oil. As the specters of drought and death loom, the film finds people willing to risk everything for the right to water.
• April 4: Disorder, (2009).  Shot in Canton, China’s third largest city, Disorder shows gritty and sometimes bizarre events that can accompany rapid urbanization. The documentary captures, with remarkable freedom, the anarchy, violence and seething anxiety animating China’s industrial development. The film is in Chinese.