1:34:00Set in Latin America and the US, War on Democracy explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. John Pilger examines the role of Washington in America's manipulation of Latin America during the last 50 years leading up to the struggle by ordinary people to free themselves from poverty and racism...
1:39:06Plastic 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...
23:33Fracking In America takes a look at the continuing instances of water contamination and environmental damage occurring throughout the United States as a result of hydraulic fracturing--an industrial process used to fracture rock in the search to exploit natural gas deposits. As the frantic effort to extract gas accelerates, the impact of fracking expands also, with increasing pressures on fresh water supplies, continuing threats to health and wider ecosystems...
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...
1:42:17Fabled Enemies examines the US government's intelligence apparatus and its involvement in the events of September 11, 2001. Many questions surround the proceedings of that day. What were the precise actions of a shadow government operating in an underground bunker with Dick Cheney? Why did the FBI have their investigations into Bin Laden obstructed and shut down by George Bush before the attacks? Were the alledged hijackers trained at US military bases? Why was the military running exactly the same situation as 'war games' at exactly the same time of the attack?
59:44Most people who know that the mainstream media manipulates stories, manufactures illusions, and exploits fears can realise that the reason is more than just bias or sloppy reporting. Behind The Big News shows the ideological agenda that originates outside the media that defines today's headlines, using examines of some of the biggest news stories in recent decades to illustrate how this agenda is rigorously promoted and protected.
1:20:48The Yes Men are a culture-jamming activist-duo from the United States that are known for their impersonations of entities that they dislike as a form of protest. Using spoofed personas, they spread awareness of problematic social issues through the mainstream media. The two have also created and maintained fake websites, which have even led to numerous interviews, conferences, and TV invitations for their spoofed personas to espouse the truth about just how corporations and governmental organisations often act in dehumanising ways toward the unwitting public. In this film, we see how the two Yes Men take on the World Trade Organisation and confront the brutal realities of globalisation using satire and tactical media to get their message across, culture-jamming the corporate interest.
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...
1:16:07From 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...
1:18:26Golden Rule presents a picture of today's political economy interpreted through the framework of the "Investment Theory of political Parties". The theory, first articulated in 1983 by Thomas Ferguson, is largely based on quantitative analysis of activity in the stock market and its relationship to politics--that is to say that "elections are moments when groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state." The film takes this theory and tests it against developments in the political and social spheres of recent decades, right up to the election of Barack Obama in the United States in 2008...
1:17:43The global growth of Rupert Murdoch's media enterprise is cause for concern. The concentration of media ownership on a global scale in the hands of one man infringes on the freedom of the press by definition at the very least. But the real life example here is Fox News and it's own claim of being "Fair and Balanced" -- one only has to look at the coverage of the invasion of Iraq for example, or "commentators" such as Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity and the interactions they have with their "guests"; the vast political connections between Fox News, the Whitehouse and the Pentagon propaganda unit; the suppressed news stories, the censorship, the manipulation and control over the "news" by Murdoch and the president Roger Ailes themselves, not to mention the control over reporters, with former journalists alleging that Fox News asked them to lie and when they refused they were fired. Even lawsuits entailed from this with the court ruling that it is not against the law to lie on a news program...
52:51Pepsi vs. Coke in The Ice Cold War traces the history of the worldwide struggle for soft drink supremacy by the Coca Cola Company, against the backdrop of World War II. The war was the perfect vehicle for Coca-Cola distribution, including to the Nazis. Bottling plants on front lines were paid for by the US war department. Nixon got Kremlin supremo, Khrushchev, to pose drinking Pepsi, which became the first US product made in the Soviet Union. In 1949, Mao kicked Coca-Cola out of China. President Carter got it back in 1978. In Chile, Pepsi Cola's boss ran a daily paper which was used by the CIA to help Pinochet's bloody coup...
25:04How To Stop A Multinational follows three women in Argentina as they put themselves in harms way to stop a gold mining company from entering their town. With the activists having defeated a Canadian mining company, the campaign is now against a Chinese one that wishes to extend the operation, making use of large quantities of fresh water--up to 45,000,000 litres per day--a plan that seriously threatens the future viability of the town and the environment. This short film documents the campaign which is still in its early days, where activists carry out a series of direct-actions to stop the mining company from physically entering the town; training villagers, informing others and filming the outcomes along the way...
2:03:17What 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...
26:58Spreading beneath Southlake in Texas, and a chain of other areas throughout, is an oil and gas rich Eldorado called the Barnett Shale field. Mining and energy companies are literally stampeding for a piece of the action with gas drilling and wells sweeping across the United States. Meet The Frackers travels through North America's suburban heartland to show the impact of a process called fracking, which is taking place on a panoramic scale. The parallels apply to Australia and elsewhere, where fracking is also spreading rapaciously with the drive to exploit sources such as coal seam gas. There's many warnings to be heeded from the ecological impact that's already been catastrophic throughout the United States, as one can see...
46:21With the recent global financial crisis, governments across the world promised decisive action -- the biggest financial stimulus packages in history, along with gargantuan bail-outs of corporations and floods of money into private banks and investment firms. But what crazed logic is this: propping up bad debt with…more bad debt? Overdose reviews the happenings of the bail-outs over these years, showing how dangerous the situation continues as a burst bubble is re-inflated globally. What happens next?
1:15:49Dirty Oil looks into the strip-mined regions of Alberta, Canada, where the vast and toxic Tar Sands currently supply the United States with the majority of its oil. Through the eyes of corporate officials, politicians, scientists, doctors, environmentalists and communities directly impacted by the largest industrial project on the planet today, Dirty Oil travels to both sides of Canada to document the irreversible toll the tar sands take, further fuelled by the western world's addiction to oil...
50:15On September 11, 2001 and for approximately nineteen years prior, William Rodriguez was employed as a maintenance worker at the World Trade Center. On the day of the attacks, Rodriguez initially rescued fifteen persons from the World Trade Center, and as the only person at the site with the master key to the North Tower stairwells, he led fire-fighters up the towers unlocking doors, aiding in the successful evacuation of unknown hundreds of those who survived. This is the account of his version of events...
1:52:05Freedom Riders follows the story of hundreds of civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States during the 1960s to challenge local laws enforcing segregation in seating. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement. They called national attention to the disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. This is the story of the numerous waves of people who challenged the mores of a racially segregated society by performing a disarmingly simple act.
53:53Through a secret program called the Counter Intelligence Program or 'COINTELPRO', the United States government set out to "disrupt dissident political organisations using infiltration, psychological warfare, harassment through the legal system and extralegal force and violence". Groups such as the Black Panther Party and others throughout the civil rights movement were targets of the program. COINTELPRO -- The FBI's War On Black America establishes a historical perspective on the measures initiated by the FBI which aimed to discredit black political figures and forces of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Combining declassified documents, interviews, rare footage and exhaustive research, it investigates the government's role in the assassinations of Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and Martin Luther King...
44:50While advertising is clearly a visible component of the corporate system, perhaps even more important and pervasive is the often-invisible partner—the public relations industry. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You illuminates this hidden sphere of the corporatocracy, examining the way in which the management of public discourse has become central to how society has been usurped and is controlled by political and economic elites. The film tracks the development of the PR industry from its early efforts to win popular support for World War I, to the role of crisis management in controlling damage to the corporate image, while analysing the tools PR people use to manipulate public perceptions.
47:16In March 2003 thousands of Australian troops and others were sent to fight a 'war' as part of a pre-emptive strike on the sovereign nation of Iraq, a country from whom there was no threat. Two years on, in the wake of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties, the Australian military reports its first casualty in the conflict while the American death toll stands at nearly two thousand. This being the a result of an invasion which has all but destroyed a foreign nation and seen millions made homeless, families destroyed, hundreds of thousands of deaths, leaving a legacy of destruction and religious division instilled in its wake. How did the Australian government come to play a part in this terror?
Corporations On Trial is a five-part series following just some of the many lawsuits being brought against multinational corporations for war crimes, conspiracy, corruption, assassinations, environmental devastation and payments to terrorists. Such serious charges have forced some of the world's largest companies to hire high-profile defence lawyers to protect public relations in cases often brought by plaintiffs who are barely literate. These five films reveal a growing anxiety about the power and influence of big business, as many multinational corporations have annual revenues greater than some countries' national budgets and indeed increasingly hold governments to ransom by their economic power. Around the world, ordinary people are fighting back and asking how many more times their interests should be sacrificed for corporate greed and shareholder profit...
1:30:36The Cove analyses and questions Japan's dolphin hunting culture, being a call to action to halt mass dolphin kills, to change commercial fishing practices and to inform and educate the public about the risks and ever increasing hazard of mercury poisoning from dolphin meat. Told from ocean conservationist Richard O'Barry's point of view, The Cove documents a group of Taiji fishermen who engage in mass dolphin kills, which in large part, are motivated by the tremendous revenue generated for the town by selling some of the captured dolphins to aquariums and marine parks. The dolphins that are not sold into captivity are then slaughtered in the cove and the meat is sold in supermarkets...
43:46Australian journalist, author and film maker John Pilger speaks about global media consolidation, war by journalism, the US military and its quest for domination/hegemony in the post 9-11 era and the false history that is presented in the guise of 'objective' journalism...
47:39Robert Beckford visits Ghana to investigate the hidden costs of rice, chocolate and gold and why, 50 years after independence, a country so rich in 'natural resources' is one of the poorest in the world. He discovers child labourers farming cocoa instead of attending school and asks if the activities of multinationals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have actually made the country’s problems worse...
46:47In the "race to feed the planet", scientists have discovered how to manipulate DNA and produce what they claim are stronger, more disease-resistant crops. However, fears that Genetically Modified Food may not be safe for humans or the environment has sparked intense protest. Are we participating in a dangerous global nutritional experiment? This film asks is the question -- is the production of genetically modified food a panacea for world hunger or a mass poisoning of the worlds food supply?
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.