1:49:56In 1992, Bhanwari Devi, an Indian social worker hailing from the Kumhar caste in rural Rajasthan, was gang-raped by upper caste men for having the temerity to intervene and stop the child-marriage of an infant. The subsequent acquittal of the accused in connivance with the State machinery outraged India and galvanized women’s activism that led to the Vishaka Guidelines, and subsequently, the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act in 2013. In this feature-length documentary shot by an all-women crew, Director Vaishnavi Sundar juxtaposes the law on paper with the ground realities, through this first-of-its-kind log of stories and experiences of over two dozen Indian women; tales of sexual violence that they face--from opulent corporate offices, to construction sites, to manual scavenging--and their fight for justice against an obstinate patriarchal State. But What Was She Wearing? attempts to portray the impotence of this law and the impossible odds Indian women are up against in pursuit of justice.
1:45:00In the United States, during the first year of Donald Trump's presidency, the rise of a white supremacist movement has returned, as political energy is injected into neo-confederate, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi, Klansmen, and various right-wing militia groups. More broadly, civil rights organisations such as Antifa (Anti-Fascist) and social justice groups are fighting back. Alt-Right: Age of Rage follows the development the Alt-Right, by following social justice activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins, and renowned Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer. Each movement is juxtaposed, as tensions boil over to the horrific events in Charlottesville where a young woman is killed, and 30 others injured by a self-identified neo-Nazi. Through these narratives and events, the film surveys the workings of Free Speech, deplatforming by the Left, the role of the Internet, and the consequences of fractured politics playing out in the real physical world.
1:31:37Hundreds of thousands of mobile phones, LCD screens, TVs, notebooks, tablets, and computers become useless or quickly "out-of-date" and end up in Ghana every year, where children and adolescents dismantle them for "recycling." Welcome to Sodom profiles the life of those who work in the brutal conditions, handling the world's electronic waste, and what they endure to barely make enough money to survive. Many years before the wasteland, Ghana was a beautiful savanna with greenery and animals, now it's a hell of fire, toxins, acrid smoke, plastic, and pollution, at the behest of the global economy and the technoculture that drives it.
This Is Neoliberalism is a series of video essays that explore the origins and makings of neoliberalism--the dominant ideology of capitalism. The series explains what neoliberalism is and where it came from. Economic liberalisation, privatisation of the public sphere, deregulation of corporations, tax cuts for the rich, "free trade," "austerity," and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in society are just some of the many themes of neoliberalism, which as an ideology, fundamentally seeks to increase the power of corporations and ensure wealth remains shifted to the upper class. The series begins in 1918, and takes us up to modern politics, through globalisation, and to the modern ruling economy.
1:37:20Dark Money tracks the influence of corporate money in contemporary politics in the United States. Using Montana as a case study, the film engages with the complex history that Montana state politics has with corporate influence. Starting with the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, Dark Money shows how the influence of mining corporations caused state legislators to relax mining regulations, which resulted in an environmental catastrophe in Butte, with problems that persist today. John S. Adams of the Montana Free Press plays a central role in the film as an investigative journalist who has been tracking state politics and following the money for several years. Adams has reported on everything from the role of the American Tradition Partnership (formerly known as Western Tradition Partnership) funds in the shaping of state election laws, to the illegal political activities of a "right to work" PAC in Montana. The film follows Adams's work as a reporter, but it also includes interviews from other prominent figures in Montana state politics and those involved in the movement to examine and limit the influence of dark money in politics.
1:14:46Over 18
Over 18: The Question is Not Enough is a broad examination of modern pornography. For just a generation ago, porn was on the fringe in glossy magazines. Today, porn is mainstream and even celebrated. But as softcore imagery migrated into popular culture through advertising and became normalised, today's mainstream porn is hardcore and explicit in order to distinguish itself. Now too, with the pervasiveness of the Internet, graphic video is also increasingly exposed to young people. Over 18 tells the story of Joseph, a 13-year-old boy who is recovering from a porn addiction that he fell into when he was just 9 years old--a case that is not unexceptional. By exploring what today's mainstream porn is and how it captures people through candid interviews with porn producers and ex-porn stars themselves, Over 18 also provides research from academics, and life experience from recovering addicts, to take aim at the content of modern pornography and its existence as an industry.
49:38The 'MeToo' movement has brought the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and harassment in this culture to the mainstream, creating an unprecedented demand for sexual violence prevention models that actually work. The Bystander Moment tells the story of one of the most prominent and proven of these models developed by activist and writer Jackson Katz and his colleagues. Illustrated through archival footage and clips from news, sports, and entertainment media, Katz explores the role of bystanders--especially friends, teammates, classmates, and co-workers--in perpetuating sexual harassment and sexual assault. Katz also gives attention to peer culture dynamics--in particular the male peer culture dynamics across race and ethnicity--that help normalise sexism and misogyny while silencing other men in the face of abuse. The Bystander Moment qualifies the crucial importance of appealing to people not as potential perpetrators or passive spectators, but as active bystanders and allies who have a positive role to play in challenging and changing sexist cultural norms, to stopping abuse and violence.
1:28:04The Devil We Know investigates the toxicity of perfluorooctanoic acid--PFOA/PFA, also known as C8--the key ingredient found in non-stick cookware, stain resistant furniture and carpets, wrinkle free and water repellent clothing, cosmetics, lubricants, paint, pizza boxes, popcorn bags, and many other everyday products. The film centres on Parkersburg, West Virginia, in the United States, at the DuPont facility that manufactured Teflon, and dumped at least 1.7 million pounds of PFOA into rivers and streams between 1951 and 2003, knowing that it was a carcinogen. The film follows the personal stories of several people who worked at the facility that experienced cancers and birth defects, and also reveals the detection of PFOA in the blood of more than 98% of the general US population in the low and sub-parts per billion (ppb) range, with levels much higher in chemical plant employees and surrounding subpopulations.
1:45:45Generation Wealth is a visual history of the materialistic, image, and celebrity-obsessed culture, explored through the work of photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield. Part historical essay, part autobiographical, Greenfield puts the pieces of her life's work together to reveal the pathologies that have created the richest and most unequal society the world has ever seen. Spanning consumerism, beauty, gender, body commodification, aging, and sex, Generation Wealth unpacks the global boom-bust economy, the corrupt American Dream and the human costs of capitalism, narcissism and greed.
51:58The Wall Street bombing occurred on September 16, 1920, when a horse-drawn wagon filled with dynamite exploded in front of J.P. Morgan & Co., killing 38 people and injuring hundreds. The attack was never solved, but it is believed to have been carried out by anarchists as a form of political violence against capitalism. The bombing helped launch the career of a young J. Edgar Hoover and sparked a bitter national debate about how far the government should go to protect the nation from acts of political violence.
44:57YouTube, owned by Google, has become one of the most powerful online media platforms in the world, fast to be replacing the viewership of television with over 30 billion hours watched per month in 2017. Young people flock to the platform in the hopes of fame and fortune, which comes for a select few, but not all, hence the allure to 'make it.' YouTube celebrities are now mainstream celebrities. The result is troves competing to live their lives as monetised open-wounds for the corporate platform, constantly pleading for subscribers, attention and engagement, all at the hands of Google, its secret algorithms, and the screen culture of spectacle, pornography, and targeted advertising. On both sides of the screen, the treadmill is all about keeping the ad dollars constantly rolling. YouTube, YouTubers and You offers a glimpse into this new media and advertising world, pondering how this culture may continue to undermine our future media and informational landscape. What sort of people and world is this culture creating and perpetuating?
1:34:57RiverBlue shows the toxic effects of textile production and jeans manufacturing on some of the world's largest rivers. Travelling from tanneries along rivers in India, to some of the largest jeans manufacturing factories in China, renowned river advocate Mark Angelo guides the viewer through the declining health of waterways around the world.
2:08:21We live in a world of screens. The average adult spends the majority of their waking hours in front of some sort of screen or device. We're enthralled, we're addicted to these machines. How did we get here? Who benefits? What are the cumulative impacts on people, society and the environment? What may come next if this culture is left unchecked, to its end trajectory, and is that what we want? Stare Into The Lights My Pretties investigates these questions with an urge to return to the real physical world, to form a critical view of technological escalation driven rapacious and pervasive corporate interest. Covering themes of addiction, privacy, surveillance, information manipulation, behaviour modification and social control, the film lays the foundations as to why we may feel like we're sleeprunning into some dystopian nightmare with the machines at the helm. Because we are, if we don't seriously avert our eyes to stop this culture from destroying what is left of the real world.
1:31:50In 2015, peaceful protests and destructive riots erupted when Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American, died in police custody in Baltimore, United States. While the city waited to see the fate of the six police officers involved in the incident, who were all ultimately not punished, Baltimore Rising shows activists, police officers, community leaders, and gang affiliates, who struggled to hold the city together, as the homicide rate hit record levels. The death of Gray by police catalysed the longstanding fault lines in a distraught community, damaged by corruption and inequality. Baltimore Rising chronicles the determined efforts of people on all sides who are working to make their community better, sometimes coming together in unexpected ways.
57:45How can we make political change if peaceful demonstration is not effective and violence only brings more violence? War/Peace posits this question by reintroducing two surviving figures from the Weather Underground movement of the late 1960s, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Coming from the hippy counterculture, the Weather Underground was a radical militant organisation, with revolutionary positions characterised by the Black Power and civil rights movements, as well as opposition to the Vietnam War. In 1970, the group issued a "Declaration of a State of War" against the United States government, with the goal to overthrow the government and end United States' imperialism, culminating in a bombing campaign targeting government buildings along with several banks. War/Peace rewinds to the past to draw out the complexity of these political struggles, and what went wrong, while drawing parallels to the struggles of today, where a lot has changed, but a lot has also remained the same.
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier deeply influenced by the literature and ideas of the radical right, parked a truck with a five-ton fertiliser bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. Moments later, 168 people were killed and 675 were injured in the blast. Oklahoma City traces the events that led McVeigh to that day from the perspective of the survivors, first-responders, investigators, and journalists who covered the events. The film provides an exploration of the convergence of various conservative religious movements and white supremacist militias that rose to prominence in the early 1990s, and were catalysed by the actions of government during that time.
1:11:57Do Not Resist documents, from the perspective of the police, their view of the social unrest following the shooting and killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, 2014, against a backdrop of the routine and escalating use of military tactics and high-powered weaponry by local police forces throughout the United States in the past two decades. Military equipment deployed throughout the Middle East returns home to be used against the citizenry. Local police recruitment and training is awash in military commandments backed by views of escalating 'righteous' violence and sadism. Meanwhile curfews are imposed, along with frivolous drug raids and incessant racial profiling. The voices of concerned citizens ignored. What is the cultural and technological trajectory here?
41:57Governments all around the world are using high-tech mass surveillance tools to monitor their citizens. Western corporations, including Britain's largest weapons manufacturer, BAE, are among those which are creating and selling mass surveillance infrastructures all across the globe, but especially to particularly repressive regimes. Weapons of Mass Surveillance makes example of what is happening throughout the Middle East where journalists, human rights advocates and activists are being targeted with surveillance tools developed by western corporations with extreme real-world consequences. Political opponents to tyrannical power are targeted, jailed, and in some cases, tortured or "disappeared." This shows the power of mass surveillance tools for great harm, and how the west is culpable in perpetuating systemic repression both at home and abroad.
1:12:47The Great White Hoax contextualises the current day politicking in the United States, with a primary focus on Donald Trump's race-baiting 2016 campaign for president. The film also widens scope however to show how Trump’s charged rhetoric fits into a long-standing historical pattern in politics in the United States, offering a stunning survey of how racism and racial scapegoating have shaped American politics for centuries. The film becomes a solid resource for a basis on race relations, white privilege, the intersectionality of race, class, and gender identities, presidential politics, and political propaganda in the age of "social media."
1:18:01The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire shows how Britain transformed from a colonial power into a global financial power. At the demise of empire, the City of London's financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures, and webs of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth may be hidden in British offshore jurisdictions, and these are now the largest players in the world of international finance. Based in part on the book Treasure Islands by expert Nicholas Shaxson, and through contributions from former-insiders, academics, and campaigners for justice, The Spider's Web reveals how, in the world of international finance, corruption and secrecy have prevailed over regulation and transparency, and how the United Kingdom is a pioneer of the modern corrupt global economy.
1:29:50Complicit
Filmed over 3 years, Complicit is an undercover investigation into the lives and conditions of workers that assemble iPhones, tablets, and other electronics in factories such as Foxconn in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, China. The film reveals the global economy's factory floors, showing the conditions under which China's youth have migrated by the millions in search of the espoused "better life" working for big corporations. But the reality is working long hours with toxic chemicals that cause many cumulative detrimental health conditions, including cancers. As such, a focal point of the story is Yi Yeting, who takes his fight against the global electronic industry from his hospital bed to the international stage. While battling his own work-induced leukemia, Yi Yeting teaches himself labour law in order to prepare a legal challenge against his former employers. As the struggle to defend the lives of millions of Chinese people from becoming terminally ill from work necessitates confrontation with some of the world’s largest corporations, including Apple and Samsung, Complicit turns to become a powerful portrait of courage and resistance against screens and rapacious corporate power in a toxic culture.
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.
1:54:03LA ’92
Consisting entirely of archival footage, LA '92 chronicles the 1992 Los Angeles riots, 25 years after they have passed. It includes film and video from the 1965 Watts Riots, the 1973 election of Tom Bradley, the 1978 promotion of Daryl Gates to Chief of LA Police, the shooting of Latasha Harlins, the Rodney King videotape, and the subsequent riots and violence that erupted after the acquittal of the officers involved in King's beating.
2:23:49Let It Fall
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982–1992 is a deep examination of a tumultuous decade in the city of Los Angeles, United States, leading up to the events of April 29, 1992, when the verdict was announced in the Rodney King case. The film traverses the conflicts between law enforcement and the black community to look at tensions across the city as a whole, and traces the roots of civil unrest to a decade before uprisings, as told through interviews with eyewitnesses and people directly involved in the events from diverse neighbourhoods across the city, including black, white, Hispanic, Korean, and Japanese Americans.
1:41:20Told by the activists and leaders who live and breathe for justice, Whose Streets? is an unflinching look at the uprising in Ferguson in the United States after unarmed teenager Michael Brown is killed by police and left lying in the street. Grief, long-standing racial tensions, and renewed anger bring residents together to hold vigil, and protest the latest tragedy in a long history of police brutality. Empowered parents, artists, and teachers from around the country come together to act and support. As the national guard descends on Ferguson with military grade weaponry, young community members become the torch-bearers of a new generation of resistance. Whose Streets? is a powerful battle cry from a generation fighting, not only for their civil rights, but for the right to live.
1:28:10Sea of Life
Young filmmaker Julia Barnes embarks on a journey around the world to investigate the causes and solutions to some of the most pressing threats facing the oceans, such as the decimation of the world's fish populations and ocean acidification. Through interviews with scientists, researchers, and activists, the film reveals the interconnections of all life on earth, positing that the current mass extinction in the oceans will have devastating impacts on terrestrial life too, including humans. Sea of Life becomes a call to action, with the view that once more people know what's happening in the ocean, they'll want to fight for its protection. Barnes then documents some of the largest environmental rallies, including the People's Climate March in New York and protests at COP21 in Paris, but concludes that these actions will not be enough to save our future. Sea of Life calls for a revolution in the way we approach activism.
53:10Shortly before dawn on August 21, 1992, United States Marshals initiated actions to apprehend and arrest Randy Weaver, a former US Army engineer, when he failed to appear in court on firearms charges after being coaxed by undercover agents to sell them sawed-off shotguns after hanging out with nazis and white supremacists. Given three conflicting dates for his court appearance, and suspecting a conspiracy against him, Weaver refused to surrender, and members of his immediate family and family friend Kevin Harris resisted as well, isolating themselves in their mountaintop home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. When federal agents surveilling the property got close to members of the family, they also initiated a gunfight that mesmerised the nation, leaving Weaver injured, his son killed, and Striker the family dog dead. In the subsequent siege led by the FBI, Weaver's wife Vicki was also killed, while holding her baby, by a shot in the head from a FBI sniper. Drawing upon eyewitness accounts, including interviews with Weaver's daughter, Sara, and federal agents involved in the confrontation, Ruby Ridge is an overview of a tragic catalysing event that helped fuel conspiracy theories and give rise to the modern American militia movement.
1:38:40Copwatch
Copwatch depicts WeCopWatch, an organisation dedicated to video recording the police in the United States. For example, Cop Watch members capture original video of the deaths of Eric Garner in Staten Island and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Its members legally record and document police arrests as part of a movement for police accountability and transparency, but often find themselves to be the victims of chaos and police brutality as a result of the culture of extreme police misconduct and violence. The stories are told through Ramsey Orta, Kevin Moore, who filmed the police abuse of Freddie Gray, and David Whitt who lived in the apartment complex where Michael Brown was killed, as well as Jacob Crawford, who co-founded Copwatch groups inspired by the Berkeley Copwatch group. The film shows how Cop Watchers are dedicated to bringing awareness to their community, by exposing police brutality and harassment.