1:10:16There is an staunch connection between medical science, the pharmaceutical industry and the structures of modern society. Drug manufacturers today fund aggressive marketing campaigns designed to create public awareness of "previously unknown diseases," or conditions known by less dramatic names in order to sell pharmaceutical drugs and other psychotropic interventions. Shyness is thus marketed as "Social Anxiety Disorder," worry becomes "Generalised Anxiety," and premenstrual tension as "Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder" which must be treated by drugs made popular through advertising, such as Paxil, Zoloft and Prozac. These drugs have become household names, not to mention a 20 billion dollar a year racket. How? Why?
57:15Servant or Slave follows the lives of five Aboriginal women who were stolen from their families and forced into indentured labour to be domestic "servants" for white people during the late 1890s and into 1900s in Australia. With the government exercising complete control over their wages and livelihood, many thousands of Aboriginal children were condemned to a treadmill of abuse, battery, rape, and slavery, only to discover that even today they've had to fight for recognition, respect and reparation for their treatment in the past. This film recounts their experiences, as a portrait of courage, strength and the fortitude to pursue justice for the crimes committed against them.
16:41Using undercover filming, Sex and Survival in Madagascar exposes the booming child sex trade of the 21st Century. In the hub of Madagascar, one of the world's poorest countries, prostitution is rampant and seen as an unavoidable means of survival. The film shows the complicity and complacency of authorities that do not act to stop this terror, and so the acts of resistance against sex slavery are carried out by the children themselves.
56:39Sex Slaves documents an extraordinary journey deep into the world of sex trafficking from the perspective of Viorel--a young man trying to find his wife Katia who was four months' pregnant when she left home looking for a job. Along the way, the production team takes a rare, hidden-camera look at various traffickers, pimps and middlemen who buy and sell hundreds of thousands of women each year. Lured by traffickers who prey on their dreams of employment abroad, many of the women are then kidnapped and "exported" to Europe, the Middle East, the United States and elsewhere. During this process, they are sold to pimps, locked in brothels, drugged, terrorised and raped repeatedly. In Eastern Europe, sex trafficking has become the fastest growing form of organised crime, with Moldova and Ukraine widely seen as major suppliers of women into the global sex trade...
43:44When Julian Assange arrived in Sweden in August 2010 he was greeted like a hero. But within weeks there was a warrant out for his arrest and he was being investigated on allegations of rape and sexual misconduct. Today, Assange is cornered in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, arguing he won't receive justice if he's taken to Sweden and that authorities in the United States are building a case for his extradition. In Sex Lies And Julian Assange, Andrew Fowler retraces what happened in those crucial weeks while Julian Assange was in Sweden. What was the nature of his relationship with the two women? And what happened with the police and prosecutors?
1:27:14During a ten-hour period in January 1995, Annabel Chong had sex with 251 men in front of cameras. The event was a world record and the resulting video sold more than 40,000 copies, starting a trend of record-breaking gang-bang pornography. Chong states that she intended for this act to "challenge the notion of women as passive sex objects," and added, "I wanted to take on the role of the stud. The more [partners], the better." Sex: The Annabel Chong Story revisits the story of that day and connects it to Chong's life as a student and as the daughter of a middle-class Chinese couple in Singapore. She talks about her decisions, and the film also follows her to an AIDS test after the world-record-setting recording where she also self-harmed and was never paid the $10,000 she was promised. The film closes on route home to Singapore, where Chong visits her parents who do not know about her dealings with the porn world, while friends and professors do. Should she tell her mother?
43:51From tiny tots strutting bikini-clad bodies in beauty pageants to companies marketing itty-bitty thongs and padded bras directly to 9-year olds; images of ever-younger sexualised girls pervasively saturate the media landscape. Add to that: ever-younger boys with 24-7 access to hard-core internet porn and the situation permeates every aspect of their lives--from skate parks to the school bus. By the time they’re eighteen, 80 percent of boys are watching porn online. Then add to that smart phones and social networking websites, and kids can not only consume X-rated images, but can now also produce them. Sexting has become a Grade 7 right of passage. Sext Up Kids exposes how growing up in a hyper-sexualized culture hurts everyone. Teens and pre-teens show and tell what they are doing and why they are doing it. Psychologists and social researchers reveal startling new evidence, tracking how the pressure to be sexy is changing teen and sexual behaviour in alarming ways. Parents and educators struggle to help kids navigate puberty in a world where the line between pop culture and porn culture is increasingly blurred. For every parent who thinks, “that’s not my son or daughter,” Sext Up Kids is your wake up call.
1:23:04Sexy Baby
An ex-pornstar, a 12 year old girl, and a 22 year old who yearns for the 'normal' genitals as seen in porn movies, are just some of whom are chronicled in Sexy Baby to draw together how the current relentless culture of pornography, social media and popular culture are deeply and profoundly affecting the lives women and girls. Based on intimate and candid conversations with kids in middle school classrooms, suburban shopping malls, nightclubs, college dorms, and high school house parties, the film chronicles trends among small town and big city kids--the pervasive culture affects everyone, everywhere. Most youngsters know someone who has emailed or texted a naked photo of themselves. Many kids have accidentally or intentionally had their first introduction to sex be via hardcore pornography online. Facebook has created an arena where kids compete to be "liked" and constantly worry about what image to portray. Much of what was once private is now made public. The list goes on. Sexy Baby is a powerful indictment of the Internet age and the hyper-sexualised culture affecting women and girls everywhere, as well as an insight into the struggle of parents navigating this new culture, wanting what is best for their kids and the generations to come.
35:26Sexy Inc. analyses the hyper-sexualisation of today's media environment and its noxious effects on young people. Psychologists, teachers and school nurses criticise the unhealthy culture surrounding our children, where marketing and advertising are targeting younger and younger audiences and bombarding them with sexual images...
1:28:52Ninety percent of American media is controlled by five big, for-profit-conglomerates, creating a media monopoly of informational and social control never before possible. The overwhelming collective power of these firms raises troubling questions about democracy. Using a handful of in-depth cases out of a vast array of examples, speaking with renowned journalists, activists, and others, Shadows of Liberty reveals the hidden machinations of the news media, drawing into focus the vast mechanisms of censorship, cover-ups, and corporate control that have been built up over many decades. Journalists are prevented from pursuing controversial news stories, people are censored for speaking out against abuses of government power, and individual lives are shattered as the arena for public expression has been turned into a vessel for advertising, warmongering and distraction. Will the Internet remain 'free', or succumb to the same control by the same handful of powerful, monopolistic corporations--as we see?
Shifty
Shifty is a series of films that traverse the past 40 years in Britain, showing how the shift of political power to finance and hyper-individualism came together in powerful ways, to undermine one of the fundamental structures of mass democracy--the shared idea of what is real. As that fell apart, with it went the language and the ideas that people had turned to for the last 150 years to make sense of the world they lived in. As a result, life in Britain and the current and former colonies of its empire, has become strange--a hazy dream-like flux, where distrust in politicians keeps growing, and the political class seems to have lost control. Through archive footage, news reels, and on-screen-text in video essay format, Shifty documents the shapes of how this happened, using the vast ranges of footage to evoke what if felt like to live through an epic transformation during the 1980s.
51:35Are we willfully trashing the planet in the pursuit of endless things? What's the source of the frenetic consumer energy and desire? In a fast-paced tour of the ecological and psychological terrain of consumer culture, Shop 'Til You Drop challenges the viewer to confront these questions head-on. Taking aim at the high-stress, high-octane pace of materialism, the film moves beneath the seductive surfaces of the commercial world to show how the other side of consumerism is depletion--the slow, steady erosion of not only the natural world, but basic human and community values. Shop 'Til You Drop contextualises the turbulence of this moment, providing an unflinching critique of the limits of consumerism and the so-called "pursuit of happiness."
52:34Shots Fired
Following the police shootings of Bernardo Palacios Carbajal and George Floyd in the United States, Shots Fired investigates the use of deadly force by police in Utah, with local journalism partner The Salt Lake Tribune. The filmmakers are given rare behind the scenes access to police training, and in the police's bid to smooth public perceptions, access to discuss tactics and accountability, as well as racial disparities in the way force is used. The film pieces together data and videos from police 'use of force' cases, and asks the hard questions about police culture in the United States in general.
1:24:58Sir! NO Sir!
Sir! NO Sir! tells the story of how--from the very start of the war, such as with the Green Berets--there was resentment within the ranks over the difference between the war in Vietnam and (as persons state in the film) the "good wars" that their fathers had fought. In the beginning some simply left the military as individuals, though over time, it became apparent that so many were opposed to the war that they could speak of a movement -- which over time eventually made the military almost inoperable...
1:31:38Skandal!
Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard is a thriller documentary of one of the largest world-wide financial crimes. It follows journalist Dan McCrum, who reveals the inside story of a 6-year investigation into the German corporation Wirecard and the dirty tricks that were deployed against him and the Financial Times, as they battle to expose a multi-billion euro fraud at the centre of one of Germany's most successful online payment corporations of the time. The film traverses the colourful characters of the scam, such as the mafia, porn barons, gambling outfits, Libyan and Russian intelligence agencies, corporate spies, private investigators, hired thugs and surveillance operatives, demanding answers of the chief executive officer, Markus Braun, awaiting trial in Munich, and its mysterious chief operating officer, Jan Marsalek, who vanishes.
Far from ending with the abolition of slavery, the trade in human beings is thriving more than ever before. Today, 27 million men, women and children are held, sold and trafficked as slaves throughout the world. From the sex slaves of Eastern Europe to China's prison labour slaves; from Brazil's hellish charcoal slave camps to entire families enslaved in Pakistan's brick kilns, this series exposes the people behind modern slavery and the companies who profit from it.
1:17:57We tend to think of slavery as one of the points in Colonial History's dark past—an offence against humanity that was abolished in the 18th century. But slavery is rampant like never before. It's just that today the slaves are well hidden in plain sight. The global economy has enabled the immense wealth of the West, giving rise to strengthening a sinister market in slaves throughout Africa, Asia, South America, Britain and the United States. This film sets out to discover where slavery is flourishing, why it's touching all of our lives, and how we can challenge it.
31:06Slim Hopes
Slim Hopes shows how the stories advertising tells us about food, femininity, and the female body directly contribute to anorexia, bulimia, and other life-threatening eating disorders. From ads that glamorise emotional eating with catch-phrases like "you can never have too much," to ads that promote thinness and tell women to watch what they eat, Slim Hopes takes the advertising industry to task for sending young women in particular, a set of deeply contradictory and unhealthy messages about food and body image.
29:05There are billions of people increasingly glued to 'smartphones' and consumed by the seemingly endless spectacle of 'social media.' But why? Reporter Hilary Andersson seeks to answer this question by tracking down insiders who reveal how social-media companies have deliberately developed habit-forming technology to get people addicted. Former Facebook manager, Sandy Parakilas, tells us the "goal is to addict you and then sell your time." Likewise, Leah Pearlman, the co-creator of the renowned 'Like' button, warns of the dangers of social-media addiction. Through these voices, and many others, Andersson shows how behavioural science is profoundly used by tech companies to keep people endlessly checking their phones, to the end of huge profits.
58:11Snowden's Great Escape documents the story of Edward Snowden in Hong Kong in the days after he gave journalists a trove of secret documents about the global mass-surveillance network. The journalists had returned home and the revelations were slowly being published, but Edward Snowden himself was alone, with minimal money, and the largest hunt in history to frantically drag him back to the United States was closing in. This film shows how Snowden, without contacts or money, was able to shake the United States government to its core, evade the hunt, and go on to expose and confirm the reality of ongoing global surveillance by the world's so-called democracies. The story serves as sobering inspiration for ordinary citizens to go against all odds and fight back against the pervasive dark world of surveillance and social manipulation, not only in the US or UK, but everywhere.
57:26Spin
Using the 1992 presidential election as his springboard, film-maker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson banters about "homos," Al Gore learns how to avoid abortion questions, George Bush talks to Larry King about halcyon and other drugs—all presuming they're off-air. Composed of 100% unauthorised satellite footage, Spin is a surreal expose of media-constructed reality, posing larger questions about the functioning of not only corporate media, but the political systems in which they support and how this in-turn plays to the media-constructed reality and so on.
43:51Spin the Bottle critiques the role that popular culture plays in glamorising excessive drinking and high-risk behaviour, in contrast to the ways alcohol affects the lives of real young men and women in reality. This film decodes the power and influence of seductive media images to show how they shape personal identity when linked to the use of alcohol. Nowhere is this link more apparent than on America's college campuses. By exploring the party scene, Spin the Bottle also shows the difficulties young people have in navigating a cultural environment saturated with messages about gender and alcohol. Interviews with health professionals provide a clear picture of how drinking impacts student health and academic performance, but it is the students' own experiences and reflections that tell the real story behind alcohol's alluring public and cultural image.
1:04:33Filmmaker Denice Ann Evans draws heavily on the voices of students in this powerful exploration of hookup culture on college campuses. Supplementing the stories of students with analysis from health professionals and social commentary, the film's main concern is whether hookup culture is offering young people a new and potentially liberating set of sexual rules, or whether it's simply reinforcing traditional gender roles and blurring the line between consent and coercion. The result is a timely film that asks tough questions about the relationship between hookup culture, gender politics, and the alarming levels of sexual assault and binge drinking that continue to plague college campuses.
52:18Exempt from environmental protection laws, the oil and gas industry has left idyllic landscapes and rural communities throughout the United States pockmarked with abandoned homes, polluted waterways and aquifers, as well as plenty of sick people. Split Estate zeroes in on Garfield County in Colorado, and the San Juan Basin where more demonstrations of water that can be set on fire are found, but industry isn't just stopping there -- fracking is spreading across the United States, with plans to even drill in the New York City watershed, as well as elsewhere around the globe. As the appetite for fossil fuels increases, Split Estate debunks claims by an industry that assures the public that it is a good neighbour, driving home the need to stop fracking, both here and abroad...
44:12Split Screen tells the story of January 6, 2021, where an estimated 2,000 people stormed the United States Capitol building, attempting to stop the certification of votes from the 2020 election. What started as a protest became violent chaos, killing several people and injuring over 140. The event was the culmination of years of angst, anger, violence, and confusion, that began stirring years or even decades earlier in the thick of growing polarisation in the United States. Certain media outlets and social media influencers spread content fuelling division and angst in the months leading up to and following the election. Allegations of voter fraud--rejected by state and federal officials in both parties, as well then-Attorney General William Barr--were amplified and emboldened by conservative media, ultimately igniting the rage and frustration of an undeniable portion of people in the United States who get their news and information through big tech, and the slurry of social media echo-chambers.
44:10Spoil
A group of conservation photographers travel to British Columbia, Canada, to capture the region in response to plans by several oil companies who want to build a pipeline for export from the Alberta tar sands, across British Columbia to the coast of the Great Bear Rainforest. The tar sands in northern Alberta are the largest, most destructive industrial projects in human history. The proposed pipeline not only threatens this area, but many others across Canada and indeed the world. Spoil follows several renowned photographers and videographers who show the Great Bear Rainforest's landscapes, wildlife, and indigenous culture; calling to act before it's too late...
47:31Spy Merchants reveals how highly-invasive spyware, which can capture the electronic communications of a town, can be purchased in a 'grey market’ where regulations are ignored or bypassed. Mass surveillance equipment can then be sold onto authoritarian governments, criminals, and terrorists alike. During a four-month undercover operation, an industry insider working for Al Jazeera filmed the negotiation of several illegal, multi-million dollar deals that breach international sanctions. The proposed deals include the supply of highly restricted surveillance equipment. The undercover operative also secured an extraordinary agreement to purchase powerful spyware with a company who said they didn’t care who was the end-user.
55:23September 11 has indelibly altered the world in ways that people are now starting to earnestly question: not only perpetual orange alerts, barricades and body frisks at the airport, but greater government scrutiny of people's records and electronic surveillance of their communications. The US National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in wiretapping and the sifting of Internet communications of millions of people worldwide, including their own...