1:22:28For close to a century, a great tale played out in the tiny town of Caledonia, Illinois. The Real Dirt On Farmer John tells this story of John Peterson, his farm and his family -- a story that parallels the history of American farming. But Farmer John is no laconic, Grant Wood-type with a scowl and a pitchfork. With the help of friends, John transformed his farm into an organic commune flooded with art and music, all in the centre of conformist Midwestern America...
58:32Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! speaks about the mainstream media's coverage of US interventions around the world and demonstrates the link between corporate media and government, and how this plays a major part in selling war at home and abroad...
32:44Santa's Workshop -- Inside China's Slave Labour Toy Factories shows the long working hours, low wages, and the dangerous work and conditions inside these toy factories. Workers who protest or try to organise unions risk imprisonment. Low labour costs and government protections for multinational corporations attract more and more companies to China. Figureheads blame the Chinese suppliers, but they say in the same sentence that increasing competition gives them no option. What and whom to believe?
59:50The controversies of corporations owning DNA, enforcing patents on living species, and pushing Genetically Modified seeds and crops across the globe, come together in Life Running Out Of Control. The battle between corporations and farmers is central to the film, with rapacious corporations such as Monsanto making claims that they are "improving upon nature," only to be met with fierce opposition from farmers, activists and local communities that show this is not the case. The film also explores the issues of the loss of biodiversity, to health concerns about Genetically Modified food, to the effects of GMOs in the environment.
47:49The United States heralded many grandiose promises of freedom and equal rights as they invaded Iraq. But still years on from the invasion, the reality of everyday life for women inside Iraq is of course a different story. To make this film, two Iraqi women risk their lives to spend three months travelling all over the country with a camera to record the lives and experiences of women they meet. Iraq -- The Women's Story provides a compelling account of a life inside Iraq that is never seen on news bulletins...
44:27From its origins as the Office of Strategic Services in the 1950s until present as the CIA, president Harry Truman's creation has been the object of mystery, thrills and fear to people all over the world with even the White House fearing the agency. With resources to assassinate political leaders, overthrow governments and start wars, Secrets Of The CIA documents these operations of the CIA from the perspective of ex-agents as they speak about their experiences working for the CIA, tell of what they were required to do in places like South America, Europe and in the United States, and how they enjoyed the work...
1:28:53Department of Defense documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act expose horrific government funded experimentation upon citizens conducted without their knowledge or consent. Is the United States knowingly using a dangerous battlefield weapon banned by the United Nations because of its long-term effects on the local inhabitants and the environment? Beyond Treason explores the illegal worldwide sale and use of one of the deadliest weapons ever invented. Was "Gulf War Illness" actually known by the military before hand?
38:38On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history occurred when a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, releasing 90 times the radioactivity of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sixteen years later, Chernobyl Heart travels to ground zero, following the devastating trail radiation leaves behind in hospitals, orphanages, mental asylums and evacuated villages. The film reveals those hardest hit by radiation, including thyroid cancer patients and children suffering from unfathomable congenital birth and heart defects, still decades later...
Crazy Rulers of the World is a series that investigates what happens when chiefs of the United States intelligence agencies and the army began believing in very strange things. With first-hand access to the leading characters in the story, filmmaker Jon Ronson examines the extraordinary and bizarre national secrets at the core of the war on terror.
1:24:58Sir! 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...
1:27:51Bees have been mysteriously disappearing, literally vanishing from their hives. Known as 'Colony Collapse', the phenomenon has brought the commercial food industry to crisis. Commercial honeybee operations pollinate monocrops that make up one out of every three bites of food in the western world. Vanishing Of The Bees follows beekeepers David Hackenberg and Dave Mendes as they strive to keep their bees healthy and fulfil pollination contracts across the United States; examining the alarming disappearance of honeybees and the greater meaning it holds about the relationship between industrial culture and ecology...
2:02:24US Foreign Policy -- The War Against The Third World is a video compilation series of 10 segments about CIA covert operations and military interventions since World War II.
50:30For many years now the American foreign policy has been characterized by the strong tie between the United States and Israel. Does the United States in fact keep Israel on its feet? And how long will it continue to do so?
37:29The Secret Policeman exposes first hand evidence of racism in the British police forces, revealing how much it has been driven underground since 2002 when a government inquiry branded the police as institutionally racist. Undercover journalist Mark Daly joins the Greater Manchester Police as a trainee, and infiltrates Bruche Police Training Centre in Warrington, Cheshire for several months using hidden cameras to capture direct instances of racism throughout the police force.
42:53S11 documents protest actions in Melbourne, Australia, 2000 against the World Economic Forum meeting. Specific accounts of police brutality and ferocious attacks on people protesting national and international issues are captured, in direct contradiction with mainstream media coverage, portraying activists as violent protesters.
1:12:45Resist -- The Aftermath Of The RNC8 follows activists Rob Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald and Luce Guillen-Givins; attorney Robert Kolstad, volunteers/arrestees from the community, and others impacted by the actions against the Republican National Convention in 2008. Taking a look back over the last year, the video shares some helpful advice for activists organising under state repression...
45:49The Great Barrier Reef is one of the great natural wonders of the world. But now the area faces threats not only by changes to the climate, but by direct assaults from industry going to any lengths to extract Coal Seam Gas. This report travels to Queensland to show how at least six major port developments -- either being planned or currently underway -- are directly putting The Great Barrier Reef in jeopardy...
23:14Interspersed with shots of direct-action and interviews with participants, Big Rattle In Seattle documents the protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation conference in September 1999.
1:25:55Coca Cola is one of the most visible brands in the world, but there's one part of the operations the corporation doesn't want you to see. Colombia is the trade-union-murder-capital of the world. Since 2002, more than 470 workers' leaders have been brutally killed, usually by paramilitaries hired by private companies intent on crushing the unions. Amongst the top unscrupulous corporate brands is Coca Cola...
34:51Combining graphs and other visual examples in animation, this short film goes through the issues surrounding the collapse of industrial civilisation--by collating the interconnectedness of energy depletion, carrying capacity, population growth, peak natural resource extraction, and other issues with the problems of exponential economic growth on a finite planet. Can this current way of life continue? The film takes us through these problems and also examines some of the many flaws inherent in some proposed solutions, such as 'change-by-personal-consumer-choice', or the vague belief in technology as the deus ex machina to save the day. These serious problems need serious solutions and require a radical rethinking of this current way of life that cannot continue indefinitely. Time is short...
1:44:33As one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet, Crude takes a look inside the $27 billion "Amazon Chernobyl" case, viewing the real-life high stakes legal drama set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, globalisation, hackneyed celebrity 'activism', human rights, multinational corporate power and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures...
1:47:39Let's Make Money investigates the development of the world-wide financial system, showing that elitists economically exploit the rest of society, especially in the developing world, but also in western nations. Using the savings of a typical depositor as a case study, the film moves around the global system, showing exploitation at many levels. There are several interviews with investment managers, politicians, economists as well as homeless people and workers who give their take on the system and its impacts...
1:22:22Modern society loves mobile phones -- the selection between different models and gadgets has never been bigger. But the production of this technology has a hidden, dark, bloody side. The main minerals used to produce mobile phones are coming from the mines in the Eastern DR Congo. The Western World is buying these minerals up at a furious rate, financing a bloody civil war which, during the last 15 years, has cost the lives of more than 5 million people. Blood In The Mobile explains the connections between mobile phones and the civil war in the Congo, while technology corporations whitewash the issue to "supply and demand" and claim ignorance...
38:19Culture Jam documents a movement against advertising and the repurposing of commercial messages by following pranksters and subversive artists as they hijack, subvert and reclaim corporate media space in the battle of public 'mind-share' dominated by the consumer culture. Stopping in San Francisco, New York's Times Square and other parts of the United States, Culture Jam documents some jamming in action—armed with everything from DIY anti-ad stickers, custom neon, to the art of performance and guerilla film screenings—to illustrate just some of what people can do to push back against the saturation of commercial media messages in public space.
1:12:24In 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, director Iara Lee embarks on a journey to better understand a world increasingly embroiled in conflict. Several years later, after travelling to five continents, Lee encounters growing numbers of people who have committed their lives to change. From Iran to Burma to Palestine and Lebanon, Cultures Of Resistance explores how art and creativity can mould with the greater culture of resistance, a part of the battle for peace and justice...
1:34:41Following up from The End Of Suburbia, this film examines the rich interplay on the subtle relationships between the energy crisis, neighbourhood gardens and the collapse of the 'American dream'. Escape From Suburbia outlines potential solutions with interviews from individuals across the world who are brave enough to challenge their communities toward change...
1:50:34On October 15th 2007, a series of intense police raids occurred around the small village of Ruatoki in New Zealand. Operation 8, as it was called, was the result of 18 months of invasive surveillance of Maori sovereignty and peace activists accused of attending 'terrorist training camps' in the Urewera ranges—the homeland of the indigenous Tūhoe people. This film examines why and how the raids took place. Did the "War on Terror" become a global witch-hunt of political dissenters reaching even to the South Pacific?
1:33:45In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg shook the United States to its foundations when he leaked top-secret Pentagon documents to the New York Times that showed how five Presidents consistently lied about the Vietnam War. Consequently, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger called Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America," who "had to be stopped at all costs." But Ellsberg wasn't stopped. Facing 115 years in prison on espionage and conspiracy charges, he fought back...