All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is a series of films about how this culture itself has been colonised by the machines it has has built. The series explores and connects together some of the myriad ways in which the emergence of cybernetics—a mechanistic perspective of the natural world that particularly emerged in the 1970s along with emerging computer technologies—intersects with various historical events and visa-versa. The series variously details the interplay between the mechanistic perspective and the catastrophic consequences it has in the real world.
To many in both business and government, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power is truly moved into the hands of the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How is the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interest?
1:07:43This experimental film recounts the histories of plane hijackings and bombings throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, and pits them against the media reporting of such events and the real-politick of the time to show the interplay between terrorism, political narratives and control of society. We see how aspects of the interplay have changed over time, and how the media culture has turned acts of terror into apolitical carnage-seeking voyeurism. Also presented by taking this view, is a commentary on how this culture has a hyperactive focus on terrorism while other much more deathly tragedies are ignored merely because they are mundane and non-threatening to political power. For example, more people die painful deaths every year by slipping in bathtubs than by any terrorist attack. This reveals the priorities of those in power, with the cultural focus on fearmomgering as a means for social control, and a disillusionment of the public in the age of decline.
If one steps back and looks at what freedom actually means in the West today, it's a strange and limited kind of freedom. The United States and its empire self-describe fighting the Cold War for "individual freedom," yet it is still something that the leaders of our so-called democracies continually promise to give us. Abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempt to force "freedom" on to other people has led to more than just bloody mayhem, and this, in turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain and elsewhere. In response, the government has dismantled long-standing laws that were designed to protect individual freedom and civil liberties.
Is the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction—specifically in the form of al-Qaeda—a myth perpetrated by politicians across the globe, but particularly the American neo-conservatives, in order to unite and justify empire? This series of films charts the rise of both groups and movements, drawing comparisons between them and their origins, to provide much-needed and missing context to the War of Terror.
The Living Dead: Three Films About the Power of the Past is a series of films that investigate the way that history and memory (both national and individual) have been manipulated and distorted by politicians and others for various means of control...
The Mayfair Set is a four part series that studies how capitalists overtly and surreptitiously came to prolifically shape governments during the 1980s, epitomised by the Thatcher government in Britain at the time. But the corporate influence of political power doesn't simply arrive, it rather culminates after decades of engineering rooted in the economic collapse from the aftermath of the Second World War. This series focuses on the unreported and almost unseen approach that capitalists have taken since the 1940s to gradually take control of the political systems of not only the United States and Britain, but elsewhere around the world—exemplified by the boom of globalisation.
Pandora's Box -- A fable from the age of science, is a six part series examining the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism, tying together communism in the Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah's leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s and the history of nuclear power.
1:42:41America's largest domestic natural gas drilling boom is in full swing and the Halliburton corporation claims it has refined a technique called 'hydraulic fracturing' that extracts natural gas in a "safe and environmentally friendly way". But upon examination, film-maker Josh Fox uncovers a trail of secrets, lies and first-hand evidence of intense water contamination and devastating environmental destruction...
1:14:02The film is a video essay by Professor Albert Bartlett essentially serving as an introduction to the concept of steady growth and doubling time, by taking us through the impacts and consequences of exponential growth on a finite planet. By making good observations of this impossible growth as applied to fossil-fuel consumption, population and the endless growth of which the global economy requires, this presentation gives us the basic tools to fundamentally understand that we've got a real problem on our hands.
1:22:09The 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?
4:59This short film uses the history and figure of the Murdoch media empire as a vast invasive machine, to draw parallels to new media machines such as Google that are not only more invasive, but more pervasive than anything the Murdoch media empire has managed. Why are we not more concerned about this?
Counter-Intelligence is a 5 part series that explores in-depth, the vast, sprawling and secret National Security State that operates throughout the United States--and indeed the world. The series examines the foundations of the Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex, charting through to the myriad consequences in today's world where secret intelligence organisations continue to hijack governments, manipulate elections and commit heinous crimes against humanity--all under the cloak of "National Security". In the wake of the continued revelations of the NSA PRISM program, this series is now more important than ever to provide a solid historical context to the workings of the rapacious and ever-expanding National Security State...
2:05:02Gasland Part II follows on three years later, to continue documenting how the stakes have been raised on all sides in one of the most devastating environmental issues rapidly spreading the globe. This sequel further enriches the argument that the gas industry's portrayal of natural gas as a clean and safe alternative to oil is a lie, where in fact fracked wells inevitably leak over time, and vent exuberantly more potent greenhouse gasses such as methane in cumulative effect, not to mention the continued string of cases of severe water contamination across the United States and even cases as far away as Australia. Gasland Part II follows deeper into these happenings, revealing yet more of an entrenched corporate collusion in the pursuit of exploiting dwindling 'natural resources'...
1:31:20The Miami model was the name given to a set of tactics employed by police during protests in Miami, Florida relating to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) trade agreement meetings in November 2003. State Attorney Kathy Fernandez Rundle responded to allegations of police brutality by saying, "The police were very professional, very controlled... I think we have a model here for the rest of the world to emulate in the future when these sort of events take place." This film documents these tactics from the perspective of the protesters, to show what really happened to them and to document their work opposing the FTAA, countering the mainstream media narratives of the event and the tropes espoused by those in power.
54:00Based on the immersive theatre production and experimental work by Adam Curtis, It Felt Like A Kiss is a visual exploration of the story of an enchanted world that was built by the rise of the United States as supreme power after the Second World War, and how those living in that dream world responded to this. Using extensive archive footage from throughout the 1960s, this experimental film sets out to explore the themes and consequences of how power really works in the world since the beginning of the post-world-war era, and how the perspective of the way society is organised since that time is a political product of the ideas of that time.
42:46People from industrial civilisation are fast to defend it, saying that they depend on this way of life for survival. It's an addiction. But what if civilisation is the very thing that is killing us and everyone else around? How could we survive then? The Fuck-It Point is about this pervasive disabling mindset of civilisation, its true cost, why and how we need to stop it from killing the planet, and why most people from civilisation don't want to do this. Will you do what is necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet?
The latest findings in genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics and nanotechnology appear in the media frequently, but almost no analysis is found of their common aim which is to "exceed human 'limitations' and capability"—literally to 'transcend' humanity: transhumanism. This three part series covers the notion of transhumanism, the desire of technologists to become physical machines in totality, prompting serious physical, ethical, philosophical and practical questions. Will the transhumanists achieve their sacred so-called singularity? And what will that mean in the real world?
1:28:29In 2002, quietly and behind closed doors, the Internet giant Google began to scan millions of books in an effort to create a privatised giant global library, containing every book in existence. Not only this, but they claimed they had an even greater purpose--to create a higher form of intelligence, something that HG Wells had predicted in his 1937 essay "World Brain". Working with the world’s most prestigious libraries, Google was said to be reinventing the limits of copyright in the name of free access to anyone, anywhere. But what can possibly be wrong with this picture? As Google and the World Brain reveals, a whole lot...
1:15:50By examining the modern culture of industrial civilisation and the persistent widespread violence and environmental exploitation it requires, END:CIV details the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations, while further delving into the history of resistance and the prospect of fighting back against such abuse. Detailed is an overview of the environmental movement analogous with the historical whitewashings of the supposedly 'pacifist' social struggles in India with Gandhi and Martin Luther King in the United States; the rise of greenwashing and the fallacy that all can be repaired by personal consumer choices. Based in part on 'Endgame,' the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen, END:CIV asks: If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the trees, poisoned the water, the air, contaminated the food supply and occupied the land by force, would you fight back?
1:53:12In January 2013, film-maker Laura Poitras received an encrypted e-mail from a stranger who called himself Citizen Four. In it, he offered her inside information about illegal wiretapping practices of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Poitras had already been working for several years on a film about mass surveillance programs in the United States, and so in June 2013, she went to Hong Kong with her camera for the first meeting with the stranger, who identified himself as Edward Snowden. She was met there by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill. Several other meetings followed. Citizenfour is based on the recordings from these meetings. What follows is the largest confirmations of mass surveillance using official documents themselves, the world has never seen...
1:33:34What does the corporate-controlled food industry look like? Film-maker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on today's food industry, exposing the underbelly that has been hidden from view of the consumer with the cooperation of government regulatory agencies such as the USDA and FDA. The food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the farmer, the safety of workers and of course, the environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad. But we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually; are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children; and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. And the whole mess is exacerbated by opportunistic politics—the tools of Big Agriculture running the very regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect the public—and consumers who have become accustomed to eating whatever they want whenever they want, in quantities they don't need...
48:11Google or Wikipedia? Those of us who search online are getting referred more and more to Wikipedia. For the past two years, this free online “encyclopaedia of the people” has been topping the lists of the world’s most popular websites. But do we really know what we’re using? The Truth According To Wikipedia plunges into the story behind Wikipedia and explores the powerful world of ‘Web 2.0’ -- Is it a revolution, or pure hype?
45:44Author and activist Jean Kilbourne analyses the depiction of women in advertising and media by decoding a large array of print and television ads. What is revealed is a torrent of stereotypes; sexist and misogynistic images and messages; laying bare a world of frighteningly thin women in positions of subservience; collectively, the restrictive code of femininity that works to undermine girls and women in the real world. By examining these messages, Killing Us Softly asks us to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, violence against women, popular culture, and contemporary politics.
The Dark Side of Porn is a six part series of films that each examine an aspect of the modern porn industry. Using specific examples of films, and by speaking directly with former performers, filmmakers and families themselves; the series of films journey through the firsthand and often unseen issues that are pervasive to modern pornography--such as STIs, the use and abuse of relationships, rape, human trafficking, the recruitment process, and the seen and unseen cultural impacts of films such as Deep Throat and Emmanuelle, to name a few. Consequently, this series offers a disturbing account of the tip of the iceberg of modern mainstream pornography...
1:12:37Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, The Codes of Gender examines the commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Presenter Sut Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.
6:16As the mainstream media attempts to create a simple narrative from hugely complex events, much is obviously lost in the translation—most often purposefully. This short film attempts to contrast the character of this narrative in the 1990s, where events were almost universally portrayed as 'the little guy versus the big guy' to the post Rwanda narrative of 'scattered terrible things happening everywhere, Oh Dear.' It is not that we can't actually do anything about these events, it is only that mainstream media presents these events within a framework that makes it seem that way and that in itself is a very powerful way to control society.
53:05With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, Cuba's economy collapsed. Imports of oil were cut by more than half and food by 80 percent. The Power Of Community tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the response during the collapse, explaining how the country transitioned from a highly mechanised, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens...