Topic civilisation
Obey
1.61K views
Obey is a video essay based on the book "Death of the Liberal Class" by author and journalist Chris Hedges. The film charts the rise of corporatocracy and examines the trending possible futures of obedience in a world of unfettered capitalism, globalisation, staggering inequality and environmental crisis -- posing the question, do we resist or obey?
Toxic Imperial Valley
402 views
Once advertised as the birthplace of a bright new future for the American Dream, Salton City, California is now crumbling into an apocalyptic landscape of pollution and desolate land. As farmers burn their fields, and the honey bee population dwindles, scum floats down the most polluted river in North America, which carries raw sewage, pesticides and factory waste from Mexico into the once-beautiful Salton Sea. Toxic Imperial Valley travels through these landscapes, meeting the squatters and other occupiers left, in what looks like the end of the world...
The Superior Human?
1.31K views
The idea that humans are superior to all other life forms is a fundamental underlying premise of western culture. It is an old historical idea, rooted in colonialism, and is embedded in religion and science. It is one of the root causes for destruction of the natural world, animal cruelty, war, the extinction of species and other immense problems. The Superior Human? challenges this arrogant and self-destructive ideology; unwinds the myths, using examples and 'common sense'.
Life After Chernobyl
414 views
In 1986, a catastrophic nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western USSR and Europe. Life After Chernobyl uses this event to show how wild nature reacts and survives when the world is suddenly rid of the impacts of industrialisation. Travelling to the site of Chernobyl, animals return, forests regrow, buildings disintegrate into grass -- perhaps saying in a rather horrific way that a nuclear accident is better for the natural world than industrial civilisation...
Surviving Progress
1.32K views
The dominant culture measures itself by the speed of "progress". But what if this so-called progress is actually driving us full force towards collapse? Surviving Progress shows how past civilisations were destroyed by "progress traps" -- alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the environment accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilisation escape a final, catastrophic progress trap?
The Net — Unabomber, LSD and The Internet
1.41K views
The Net explores the complex back-story of Ted Kaczynski -- the infamous 'Unabomber', as a prism to the often unexamined side of the history of the Internet. The film combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting counter cultural responses to the cybernetic revolution. For those who resist these pervasive systems of technology, the Unabomber came to symbolise an ultimate figure of refusal. For those that embrace it, as did and do the champions of media art like Marshall McLuhan, Nam June Paik and Stewart Brand, the promises of worldwide networking and instantaneous communication outweighed the perils. The Net links these multiple nodes of cultural and political thought like the Internet itself. Circling through themes of utopianism, anarchism, terrorism, CIA, LSD, MKULTRA, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Net exposes conspiracies and upheavals, secrets and cover-ups as the subversive history of the Internet...
The Fuck-It Point
5.46K views
People from civilisation are fast to defend it, saying that we depend on this way of life for our survival. It's an addiction. But what if civilisation is the very thing that is killing us and everything else around? How could we survive then? The Fuck-It Point is about this hidden side of civilisation, its true cost, why and how we need to take it down right now, and why most civilised people don't want to...
The Economics of Happiness
1.61K views
While corporations and governments continue to disseminate globalisation and the rapacious drive for consolidation of corporate power, people around the world are pushing back to reinstate local communities. Groups are coming together to rebuild human scale, local and ecological economies based on a new paradigm of localisation and sustainability. The Economics Of Happiness documents these shifts and shows how these communities have reclaimed their autonomy...
There’s No Tomorrow
1.08K views
There's No Tomorrow is a short animation that goes through the issues surrounding the collapse of industrial civilisation -- by collating the interconnectedness of resource depletion, population, energy problems and economic growth. Also examined are the many problems inherent in some proposed solutions, such as 'change-by-personal-consumer-choice' and the use of technology...
END:CIV
3.24K views
By examining the modern culture of industrial civilisation and the persistent widespread violence and environmental exploitation it requires, END:CIV details the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations, while further delving into the history of resistance and the prospect of fighting back against such abuse. Detailed is an overview of the environmental movement analogous with the historical whitewashings of the 'pacifist' social struggles in India with Gandhi and Martin Luther King in the United States; the rise of greenwashing and the fallacy that all can be repaired by personal consumer choices. Based in part on 'Endgame', the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen, END:CIV asks: If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the trees, poisoned the water, the air, contaminated the food supply and occupied the land by force, would you fight back?
Derrick Jensen — Endgame
1.61K views
What if you live in the most destructive culture ever to exist? What if that culture refuses to change? What do you do about it? Derrick Jensen, the author of 'Endgame' responds to these imperative questions and details a forecast of how industrial civilisation and the persistent and widespread violence it requires, is ultimately unsustainable -- and what to do about it. Jensen weaves together history, philosophy, environmentalism, economics, literature and psychology to produce a powerful argument that demands attention...
The Crisis of Civilisation
603 views
The Crisis of Civilization draws on archive footage and essentially monologue by author Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed to detail how global problems like environmental collapse, financial crisis, peak energy, terrorism and food shortages are all symptoms of a single, failed global system...
What A Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire
661 views
What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire covers the current situation facing humanity globally. It discusses issues such as peak oil, climate change, population overshoot and species extinction, as well as how this situation has developed...
Ancient Futures — Learning From Ladakh
322 views
In the Himalayas of India, Ladakh is landscape of sustainable living where traditional culture has prospered, virtually free of crime and pollution. Though as western culture colonises the area, centuries of ecological balance and social harmony are eroding. Ancient Futures reviews the dangers of western culture and prompts a challenge to re-examine what it means by "progress."