46:18Inside The Rage Machine highlights new whistleblowers, engineers, and managers from inside tech corporations to show how algorithms that spread disinformation, social harms, and contribute to violence erupting in the real world are knowingly deployed by the companies to have these harms and incentives built-in. Through the lived experience and documents obtained from employees such as Matt Motyl from Facebook, Ruofan Ding from TikTok, and Lisa Jennings Young from Twitter, Inside The Rage Machine exposes the system itself that thrives on outrage and division as part of its business model, with radicalisation, real-world violence and fractured societies as just some of the consequences of the system that has been built to manipulate how users think, feel and perceive the world.
The Trap
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.
1:23:32Flow—For The Love Of Water builds a case against the growing privatisation of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with a specific focus on human rights, pollution, the politic of corporate influence in the emergence of a domineering global water cartel. The film names and clearly documents many of the culprits, while asking the question—can anyone really 'own' water?
58:32Over six desperate days in October 1929, the New York Stock Exchange crashed leading to the collapse of three thousand banks, taking people's savings with them. In a matter of days, the United States economy was obliterated. The crash was followed by a devastating worldwide depression that lasted until the Second World War. Finances did not regain their pre-crash values until 1954. This film recounts the story of a financial disaster that we hoped could never happen again, revealing the familiar tune of cheap credit, consumerism, greed, corruption and cronyism in the current-day financial crisis...
1:19:51By examining the people and practices of the media and entertainment industries, The Fourth Estate illuminates not only specific incidences of corruption by press groups, but how the wider model of mainstream journalism itself as a for-profit entity has a huge amount to answer for in terms of democracy and the state of politics throughout the world. Filmed over two years throughout the UK on no budget, the filmmakers profile journalists, organisers and critics of industrial media practices, stemming from the Leveson Inquiry in 2011 which was set up to examine the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandals of the Murdoch media empire. While the phone hacking scandal illuminated the depth and breadth of the culture of British journalism, the media's focus at the time quickly diverted from a brief period of self-examination, back to business as usual. This film instead continues the analysis by looking at the larger implications of a for-profit media model and its connections to ideology, entertainment, and hence the resulting political framework that's in crisis.
1:26:39In recent years, nature conservation has become a booming business where huge sums of money change hands, and endangered species become exotic financial products. Banking Nature, delves into this hidden world of so-called environmental banking, where huge corporations such as Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase buy up the land and habitat of endangered species, and then sell them in the form of shares. Companies that inevitably harm the environment are then obliged to buy credits to offset the damage that they have caused. In Uganda, we meet men who measure trees to determine how much carbon they store and then a banker from the German firm that sells the resulting carbon credits. In Brazil, the steel giant Vale destroys the rainforest, replaces it with a monocrop tree plantation, and reaps the benefits of environmental credits as if the rainforest was still standing. Banking Nature posits that we disallow the same corporate criminals responsible for the global financial crisis from turning what's left of the natural world into their final corrupt commodities market.
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...
48:21One year after BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded spewed a massive 170 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP claims victory -- that most of the oil is gone. Investigative journalist Greg Palast sets off to test this claim in person and digs into the history of BP and similar incidents. Revealed is the corporations collusion with government, its strong political influence worldwide, along with the massive ecological impact of the BP explosion, set to last for decades...
1:20:02Admit it--you don't really read the endless pages of terms and conditions connected to every website you visit or phone call that you make do you? Of course not. But every day billion-dollar corporations are learning more about your interests, your friends and family, your finances, and your secrets--precisely because of this; and are not only selling the information to the highest bidder, but freely sharing it with the government. And you agreed to all of it. With plenty of recent real-world examples, Terms And Conditions May Apply covers just a little of what governments and corporations are legally taking from Internet users every day--turning the future of both privacy and civil liberties into serious question. From whistleblowers and investigative journalists to zombie fan clubs and Egyptian dissidents, this film demonstrates how all of us online have incrementally opted-in to a real-time surveillance state, click by click.
2:07:01How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change travels the globe, from New York City to the Marshall Islands and China, to meet with people who are committed to reversing the tide of global warming. The film examines the intricately woven forces that threaten the stability of the climate and the lives of the world's inhabitants.
The Power of Big Oil is a three-part series that investigates the decades-long failure to confront the threat of climate change and the role of the fossil fuel industry. The series presents a parade of former oil company scientists, lobbyists, and public relations strategists who lay bare how the biggest petroleum firm in the United States, Exxon, and then the broader petroleum industry globally, moved from attempting to understand the causes of a global heating to a concerted campaign to hide the making of an environmental catastrophe. Over three episodes--Denial, Doubt, Delay--the series documents the corporate cooptation of science, the manipulation of public opinion, and political figureheads that mirror conduct by other industries--from big tobacco to the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the opioid epidemic.
1:22:13McLibel
McDonald's loved using the UK libel laws to suppress criticism. Major media organisations like the BBC and The Guardian crumbled and apologised. But then they sued environmental activists Helen Steel and Dave Morris. In what then became the longest trial in English legal history, McLibel documents the two activists who represent themselves against McDonald's £10 million legal team with the marathon battle finally concluding at the European Court of Human Rights. The result takes everyone by surprise -- especially the British Government...
53:51For the people of Vietnam, war is not over. Three generations on from 1975, babies are still being born with serious birth defects and genetic abnormalities -- the legacy of the United States intensive use of chemical weapons. To this day, it is still unknown just how many have been affected. In 2005, on the eve of a historic lawsuit to determine the culpability of the United States, this film directly portrays the powerful effects of Agent Orange.
51:29Denied a sense of nationalism since the second World War, Japanese society slowly re-established itself as a 'corporate' society in the eyes of the west, with hi-tech industry and mass manufacturing. Japan, Behind The Mask reports on the contrast between this popular image and the stereotypes of Japanese culture, revealing the reality of the lives of ordinary people who do not fit the image; the extraordinary part played by women; and the subtle, yet forceful way the Japanese establishment is today reclaiming its nationalism...
1:30:07King Corn follows two college friends curious about the food system, as they decide to have a shot at farming an acre of corn. In the process, the two examine the role that the increasing production of corn has had across not only on the concepts of industrial food, but the health of the land, the health of the environment, and the health of people. The film spotlights the role of government subsidies which make huge monocrops of corn possible, which itself has—as industrial agriculture—a catastrophic ecological impact, but in-turn drives factory-farming of animals and other atrocities such as the production of high-fructose corn syrup which is saturated throughout industrial food, not least, fast-food. We see how this industrialisation has eliminated the family farm and local food production—things which are increasingly impossible in this brutal arrangement of corporate power.
The Facebook Dilemma aims to open an in-depth investigation into the impact Facebook has had on privacy and democracy in the United States and throughout the world, by revealing how the decisions made by the company as it sought increased wealth and new users, transformed it into a vast surveillance machine, a media company, and a 'hidden hand' in elections and political discourse. Drawing on original interviews from those inside the company, this two part series catalogues some of the ignored warning signs, both inside and outside the company, of Facebook's negative impact, growing from Zuckerberg's dorm-room project and into a powerful global empire.
52:11Who profits when disaster strikes? Business of Disaster investigates the United States in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, where thousands of people lost their homes while insurance corporations made millions.
49:56The Carlyle Group is one of the largest investment banks in the world. Based in Washington, it has accumulated its wealth mainly by investments in defence--a lucrative market in the continued tradition of American war, imperialism and militarism. A strange coincidence? Their list of private investors include George Soros, the Saudi Royal Family and the Bin Laden Family. How does the Carlyle Group really operate and who are the people behind it?
1:12:57h2Oil
Canada is now the biggest supplier of oil to the United States, thanks to the Alberta tar sands—a controversial billion-dollar project to extract crude oil from bitumen sands, using a very toxic process that has generated international cause for concern. Four barrels of glacier-fed spring water are used to process each barrel of oil, along with vast amounts of electricity. The waste water is dumped, filled with carcinogens and other chemicals, into leaky tailings ponds so huge that the piles can be seen from space. Downstream, people and communities are already paying the price with contaminated water supplies and clusters of rare cancers. Evidence mounts for industry and government cover-ups. In a time when wars are fought over dwindling oil and a crisis looms over access to fresh water, which will we allow to turn out to be more precious to us?
51:47Obey
Obey is a video essay based on the book "Death of the Liberal Class" by author and journalist Chris Hedges. The film charts the rise of corporatocracy and examines the trending possible futures of obedience in a world of unfettered capitalism, globalisation, staggering inequality and environmental crisis -- posing the question, do we resist or obey?
26:48The United States proudly self-identifies as the major purveyor of peace and democracy across the world. But does this perception of self match up to the actual policies and history of military actions throughout recent decades? Are the United States' seemingly constant wars of aggression befitting to achieving peace? These are some of the central dichotomies addressed in this short film In Whose Interest? We see internal documentation of the US involvement in countries like Vietnam or Guatemala which indicate that the main factors motivating American foreign policy are clearly economic concerns. In Guatemala, the United States overthrows a democratically elected government to install a military-backed dictatorship that is suitable to the American United Fruit corporation. A similar pattern emerges in Vietnam, El Salvador and East Timor. Perhaps most oppressive yet is US policy in the Middle East, where the US provides Israel with more than $3 billion per year in military assistance—more aid than they give to the entire continent of Africa. We see how American policy is determined by the corporate sector, tightly linked to the state, which makes decisions in their own self-interest—in stark opposition to the rhetoric of democracy...
58:29In a quarter of a century, the Amazon corporation has propelled Jeff Bezos from 'online bookseller' to technology behemoth. He is the richest man on the planet, and the company he founded is one of the most powerful in the world. This documentary investigates Amazon's rise to corporate rein, revealing the problematic inside-operations that have the public tethered to its services. Former high-level insiders describe Amazon's obsessive data-gathering operations, that enable the company to use what it knows about us to shape not only the future of retail, but the workplace and technology in synergy. On both sides of the world, politicians and regulators are tardily beginning to question Amazon's power. But can the public rein in this corporate empire and break its addiction before even more damage is done to the structure of society and the environment?
58:46Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances. Featuring interviews with many people with various perspectives on copyright, including copyright lawyers, producers and artists, Good Copy Bad Copy documents that "creativity itself is on the line" and that a balance needs to be struck, or that there is a conflict, between protecting the right of those who own intellectual property and the rights of future generations to create...
1:06:05In 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...
31:50During the summer of 2013, a new area of occupied Sápmi (the northern parts of Fennoscandia in Europe) were under attack from the mining industry. If it were not for groups of brave resisters, the test blasting outside Jokkmokk in Lapland, Sweden, would have gone by without incident. The local Sámi people would have once again been exploited, and future generations poisoned without even a debate. But this time, something happened. The Gállok Rebellion tells the story of the resisters in Gállok, and shines a light on views which are not often televised. The film collates the efforts of many groups working together and serves as a call to action, to continue to protect the natural world which is under siege.
1:35:44Above All Else
Above All Else is an intimate portrait of a group of activists and landowners in East Texas, United States, who undertook a series of direct actions and put their bodies in the way to stop construction of the Keystone pipeline in 2012. The film follows David Daniel, a quiet, affable carpenter, whose backyard became the epicenter of a tree-sit that physically blocked the path of the controversial pipeline. This was the birthplace of the Tar Sands Blockade, an activist group that would go on to oppose the pipeline's construction all along its route. David's stance against Keystone brought together an unlikely coalition of allies, from Texan farmers to student environmentalists to fire-cracker great-grandmothers like Eleanor Fairchild. Above All Else is the story of David and his allies, their struggles, and what happened when they stood in the way of the most powerful industry in the world.
54:31The Power of the Fed investigates how the United States central bank's actions have played out over the years on Wall Street versus Main Street, since the last financial crash of 2008. The film traces how the experiment the Fed began in 2008 has been dramatically ratcheting up, peaking with the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. But, of course, rather than help correct from the huge corruption and financial abstractions that caused the 2008 crash, the fed has doubled down on its policies of "quantitative easing" which have gone on to help widen the greatest inequality of wealth in history, pushing financial products even further removed from the economy, driving inflation, automation, and worsening the impending cycles of boom and bust. The rise of speculative cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has only fueled the mania, as economic volatility increases.
53:54The myths of globalisation have been incorporated into much of our everyday language. "Thinking globally" and "the global economy" are part of a jargon that assumes we are all part of one big global village, where national borders and national identities no longer matter. But what is globalisation? And where is this global village? In some respects you are already living in it. The clothes in your local store were probably stitched together in the factories of Asia. Much of the food in your local supermarket will have been grown in Africa...