Along the way to winning an eight-hour workday and fair wages in the early 20th century, the Wobblies were one of the few unions to be racially and sexually integrated and often met with imprisonment, violence, and the privations of prolonged strikes. The Wobblies airs a provocative look at the forgotten American history of this most radical of unions, screening the unforgettable and still-fiery voices of Wobbly members -- lumberjacks, migratory workers, and silk weavers -- in their 70s, 80s, and 90s.
On 8th August 1945, the United States dropped its second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. The city was a veritable apocalyptic vision, devastated by this new type of weapon. Nagasaki -- The Horror Of Fat Man documents the memories of survivors, both Japanese civilians and Western Prisoners Of War, as they relate the morbid aftermath of the bombings, the United States occupation, and the segregation that still effects fallout victims to this day.
Every day in Vienna the amount of unsold bread that is sent back and thrown away is enough to supply Austria's second-largest city, Graz. Around 350,000 hectares of agricultural land, above all in Latin America, are dedicated to the cultivation of soybeans to feed Austria’s livestock, while one quarter of the local population starves. Every European eats ten kilograms a year of artificially irrigated greenhouse vegetables from southern Spain, with water shortages as the result. We Feed The World is a film about food and globalisation, fishermen and farmers, long-distance truck drivers and high-powered corporate executives, the flow of goods and cash flow, a film about scarcity amongst plenty.
An Act of Conscience documents the story of two couples Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner who refused to pay income tax throughout the 1980s in an act of defiance against military spending and war. The film captures the support community that formed in response to the seizure of their home by the IRS, and the conflict with the young couple with a newborn who bought the home at a government auction. Was this an effective protest?
The dominant culture measures itself by the speed of "progress." But what if this so-called progress is actually driving the physical world towards full-force 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 the total destruction of the environment accelerates and those in power cling to their power ever more tightly in denial, can this globally-entwined civilisation escape a final, catastrophic progress trap?
9/11 -- Beyond A Reasonable Doubt provides a summary of evidence from various sources against the official account of what happened on September 11, 2001. The film is assembled using clips from several other documentaries, news reels and archive footage to provide an example of the overwhelming evidence that contradicts statements made by official sources.
The Battle Of Chernobyl recounts the most significant and catastrophic nuclear explosion in history -- an incident that was kept secret for twenty years by the Soviet Union and United States alike. More than 200 people died or were seriously injured by radiation exposure immediately after the explosion and many generations later, the impacts are still felt in cancers, birth defects and toxic ecology, with millions of people still suffering from radiation related health problems such as leukaemia and thyroid cancer...
Several lawsuits have been brought against McDonald's corporation in that they are knowingly selling food that is unhealthy. Some of the court decisions have stated that consumers would have a claim if they could prove that eating the food every day for every meal is dangerous. So with that, Super Size Me follows film-maker Morgan Spurlock conducting the experiment -- he eats only McDonald's for thirty days, three meals a day, and if asked to super size a meal, he has to say yes. By the end of the thirty days, he will have eaten every single menu item at least once. The film documents the drastic effect on Spurlock's health, while exploring the fast food industry's corporate influence, advertising and how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit...
The 2008 'financial crisis' was a systemic fraud in which wealthy finance capitalists stole trillions of public dollars all over the world. No one was jailed for this massive crime, the largest theft of public money in history. Instead, the rich forced working people across the globe to pay for their 'crisis' through punitive austerity programs that gutted public services and repealed workers' rights. Capitalism Is The Crisis shows and explains this fundamental functioning of the global economy, while visiting protests from around the world against it, revealing revolutionary paths for the future. Special attention is devoted to the current situation in Greece, the 2010 G20 Summit protest in Toronto Canada, and the remarkable surge of solidarity in Madison, Wisconsin.
Catastroïka follows the global trend of privatisations in the past two decades, extrapolating the forthcoming results of the current sell-off in Greece, which has been demanded in order to face the country's enormous debts. Turning to the examples of London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Rome, Catastroïka predicts what will happen, if the model imposed in these areas is imported in a country under international financial tutelage...
Using government documents, archive footage and direct interviews with activists and former FBI/CIA officers, All Power to the People documents the history of race relations and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 1960s and 70s. Covering the history of slavery, civil-rights activists, political assassinations and exploring the methods used to divide and destroy key figures of movements by government forces, the film then contrasts into Reagan-Era events, privacy threats from new technologies and the failure of the "War on Drugs", forming a comprehensive view of the goals, aspirations and ultimate demise of the Civil Rights Movement...
The Net explores the 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 travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting counter-cultural responses to the so-called 'cybernetic' revolution of the 1970s. For some whom resist the pervasive systems of digital technology, the Unabomber can come to symbolise an ultimate figure of refusal. But for those that embrace the technologies, as did and do the champions of so-called 'media art', such as Marshall McLuhan, Nam June Paik and Stewart Brand, the promises of worldwide networking and instantaneous communication outweigh any and all of the concerns. The Net links these multiple nodes of cultural and political history, analogous to the Internet itself. Circling through themes of utopianism, anarchism, terrorism, the CIA, LSD, MKULTRA, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Net exposes the conspiracies and upheavals, secrets and cover-ups as part of the forgotten subversive history of the Internet.
Plastic Planet is an up close and detailed examination of one of the most ubiquitous materials of our age, the plastic age. This controversial and fascinating material has found its way into every facet of our lives, literally. Plastic Planet takes us on a journey around the world, showing that plastics are a threat for human health and the ecosystems of the planet...
Self published by the press arm of the autonomous activist group called the Earth Liberation Front, Igniting The Revolution is an introductory guide to the activities of the ELF. The film goes through some examples of ELF actions and calls to resist against the forces destroying the natural world by using real direct-action tactics and economic sabotage...
In October 2003, an extraordinary uprising challenged the United States empire and kicked out President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada -- a representative of the United States administration and transnational corporate interests. The people are calling for new forms of representation and organisation that question the portrayed notions of democracy and traditional political parties. In February 2003, a mutiny by the police against the imposition of income taxation on the poor to fulfil IMF demands, provoked the withdrawal of tax measures; throughout 2002, peasants revolted against the US-imposed 'coca war' -- the coca-eradication plan -- that would've destroyed the only possible source of survival for thousands of people. In 2001, the people of Cochabamba fought successfully against the a most outrageous form of privatisation -- of the water supply -- forcing the government to cancel the agreement with Bethell, a US-based company...
Going from classroom to real world, Establishing A Food Forest The Permaculture Way explains the patterns of a Food Forest and the essential principles of building a self-sufficient, sustainable way to eat. The film ends up at Tagari Farm which was abandoned years ago, but planted according to permaculture design principles. Did the Food Forest survive on its own?
Introduction To Permaculture provides an overview of some practical examples of permaculture design, while following the interwoven themes of ethics, community, planning and ecology. The film follows Geoff Lawton who is a permaculture consultant, designer and teacher in Australia and throughout the world, demonstrating some of the possibilities of permaculture design and how it can transform the way we eat and live...
"Permaculture is a practical approach to the problems facing modern society, based on a philosophy of 'think global, act local'. This video documents the transformation of a bare suburban house in Perth, showing practical examples from start to finish of how to grow organic food sustainably, how to reduce and incorporate household waste, evaluate energy consumption, and recreate habitat for other life."
Film maker David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world -- Britain. When David receives a letter stating that both he and his daughter are amongst the 25 million residents whose details have been lost by the government in a massive data breach, David sets out to investigate some potential impacts of such data being lost in a society of mass surveillance. Erasing David documents the test where David hires two private detectives to track him down as he chooses to 'disappear' for 30 days to see if he can avoid being caught amongst the vast data trails generated by modern society...
Centred around the concept of open computer networks that contradictorily end up running closed corporate-controlled communication portals like Facebook and Twitter, Free The Network follows two young men who camp out at Zuccotti Park building wireless access points to connect their devices as part of the 'Occupy movement.' Through interviews along the way, Free The Network examines the current state of the Internet in the midst of the protest, and shows how the myth of the 'democratisation of technology,' along with the widespread emergence of clicktivism, is a flawed framework for driving social and political change...
In June 2010, leaders from the twenty largest economies met in Toronto, Canada with representatives of corporate interests to discuss the policies that shape globalisation. With exclusion zones, overlapping layers of security fencing and an estimated 25,000 police and military personnel, the city was transformed into an armed grid. Over 1.3 billion dollars were spent on security measures -- more than all previous G8 or G20 meetings combined. Tales From The G20 shows some sides of the Summit, from unmarked vans with snatch squads of plainclothes police to the pre-emptive arrest of people now facing years in prison for organising demonstrations or simply being on the street...
From the front-lines of conflicts in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, and the North; from Seattle to Genova and the "War on Terror" in New York, Afghanistan, and Iraq, The Fourth World War documents the stories of women and men all around the world who resist being annihilated in this war. Centred around economics and systems such as NAFTA, GATT, the G20, APEC and others, this is a war which plays along with the spread of rapacious globalisation, a feat that has pervasive consequences in the real world...
As an emergency short film following up Gasland, film maker Josh Fox returns to the urgent crisis of drilling and fracking throughout the United States and the world. Induced hydraulic fracturing or 'hydrofracking', commonly just known as 'fracking', is a technique used to release petroleum, natural gas, shale gas, tight gas, coal seam gas, and other substances for extraction. The Sky Is Pink returns to the issues of water contamination and the cataclysmic environmental impacts caused by fracking to show again first hand evidence of widespread ecological damage and the threat of more to come unless we stop it...
My Public Space is a short film following a local artist in New York City, documenting the effort to reformat the visual pollution of advertising into public artwork spaces...
It's been described as the boom that keeps on giving -- an export bonanza that will help Australia ride through a world-wide economic downturn. All across Australia, workers have left their jobs to make big money in the mining industry. In the rush to exploit vast natural resources, employers have all but set aside the idea of building and supporting communities, instead they pay big wages to fly-in, fly-out; drive-in, drive-out workers, encouraging them to work long shifts, leaving them with little reason to become part of a local community...
With access to undercover filming, The Gas Rush reports on a group of farmers and local townspeople in Queensland, Australia who want to halt the rapacious rush for coal seam gas. With scenes similar to that in Gasland -- corporate deceptions, contaminated water supplies, toxic fracking chemicals, leaky wells and people setting their water on fire -- The Gas Rush illustrates the fact that the drive to extract gas is not only happening in the United States...
Permaculture In Practice shows how the design of ecologically sustainable ways of living can be practised in four very different settings around the UK: A Hampshire back garden including fruit trees, vegetables, bees, chickens and ducks; in the city at Bradford close to a housing estate with 10,000 residents; a community co-op in Devon, which involves a café, allotments and local composting scheme; and a small farm in the Forest of Dean where local distribution schemes ensure a close link between grower and eater, including meat production, a vegetable box scheme and locally produced charcoal.
Greening The Desert follows permaculturalist Geoff Lawton and his team to the Jordan desert where they transform 10 acres of the arid desert into a lush, thriving, food producing garden. In a massive transformation, the team develops a system to harvest rainwater, creates swells with over a foot of mulch and designs the system to reduce salt levels in the soil dramatically—only a few miles from the Dead Sea.