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...
1:16:15A World Without Water investigates the future of the world's water supply as it currently stands and travels to Bolivia to show just one example in many of the privatisation of the water supply and the turning over of water to corporations such as Coca Cola...
44:10A group of conservation photographers travel to British Columbia, Canada, to capture the region in response to plans by several oil companies who want to build a pipeline for export from the Alberta tar sands, across British Columbia to the coast of the Great Bear Rainforest. The tar sands in northern Alberta are the largest, most destructive industrial projects in human history. The proposed pipeline not only threatens this area, but many others across Canada and indeed the world. Spoil follows several renowned photographers and videographers who show the Great Bear Rainforest's landscapes, wildlife, and indigenous culture; calling to act before it's too late...
1:48:02Poisoned Waters investigates some of the root causes of what we see worldwide with ecological collapse, dead-zones and pollution effecting oceans, rivers and watersheds. With a focus on major waterways in the United States such as the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, the film follows the culmination of decades of evidence that today's systemic and growing environmental collapse comes not only from the toxic activities of industry, agriculture and massive suburban development; but also from the permeated satiety of chemicals in prolific consumer products such as face-creams, deodorants, prescription medicines and household cleaners. This is a startling reminder of the compounding threat facing our world and the need to act imperatively.
1:14:45Chasing Ice follows acclaimed nature photographer James Balog and his team on a bold assignment for National Geographic: to capture images of the arctic that reveal the extent of the Earth’s changing climate. The result is the Extreme Ice Survey. Spanning years of work and technical challenges, EIS shows the breathtaking icescapes of Alaska, Iceland and Greenland, providing undeniable evidence of a changing planet. Hauntingly beautiful images compress years into seconds, and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. Chasing Ice also tells Balog's personal story of transformation, from climate change skeptic to activist, putting his own body on the line to tell the world what is happening through his and his team's imagery.
1:37:56Crude Impact examines the interconnections of human economic activity, the use of fossil fuels and the effects that these have on the environment, the climate and humanity. What is peak oil? And what does this mean of the issue of global warming? The film also investigates the questionable practices of oil companies, to which there are plenty of examples...
48:00Focusing specifically on mines in Canada, Uranium examines the hazards of uranium mining, the toxic and radioactive waste involved at every stage of the process, as well as the wholistic way that indigenous communities have been violated and destroyed by mining and refining practices throughout the country and the world...
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...
1:33:02Sweet Crude is the story of how large oil corporations such as Shell and Chevron have absolutely decimated the Niger Delta, but the people are fighting back. The film shows the human and environmental consequences of 50 years of oil extraction against an insurgency of people who, in the three years after the filmmakers met them as college students, became the young of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The movement is born after series of non-violent protests, and what the corporations and colonisers don't understand is that these people will fight for their land and emancipation until the end. Sweet Crude is their story of survival and armed resistance against corrupt governments and rapacious corporate power, amongst a complicit and collusive mainstream media.
1:39:26The central thesis of Planet of the Humans is that various people and organisations in the United States claiming to promote 'green energy' are actually promoting biomass energy--largely a euphemism for cutting down and burning forests--a practice which is not carbon neutral nor renewable nor sustainable. The film reveals the destruction of environments first-hand, and also explores how wind power and solar power don't fare much better than fossil fuels in terms of impacts once all the inputs for construction and maintenance are considered and compared. In most cases, the additional demands for resources and construction simply invoke more environmental degradation and pollution. The film examines this push for more industry through key figures in the modern environmental movement that are funded by entities connected to fossil fuels, or have established profit motives, revealing how the environmental movement has been essentially co-opted into a de-facto lobbying arm of 'green' industries. The film also posits that regardless of energy systems, overpopulation is a central problem of industrial civilisation, and that this current way of life is unsustainable no matter how it is powered or 're-imagined' by technology.
1:29:40Across the globe, this culture is polluting, diverting, pumping and wasting fresh water at a crazy rate, as population grows and technology escalates. The rampant expansion of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the limited supply, resulting in the desertification of the Earth. Corporate giants force developing countries to privatise their water supply for profit, Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk-water export schemes, while governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for global conflict over fresh water. Blue Gold follows numerous worldwide examples of people fighting for their basic right to water, from court cases to United Nations conventions, to revised constitutions, to local protests at grade schools, to complete revolutions. A line is crossed when water is a commodity. Will you fight to stop it and protect it?
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?
47:33The small town of Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta, Canada, is facing up for the fight against The Alberta oil sands, which is arguably now the world's largest construction project. Its expansion will have an estimated $1.7 trillion impact on the Canadian economy over the coming decades. An area of boreal forest the size of Greece will be affected by industrial activity. Once again the issue is water, but this time it is not just the flow of the river, but the chemicals the current may be carrying downstream from the strip mines and bitumen upgraders. In recent years, Fort Chipewyan has experienced an unusually high rate of cancer. Local fishermen are finding growing numbers of deformed fish in their nets. Residents and the community doctor, worry there could be a connection to the oil sands...
51:35Are we willfully trashing the planet in the pursuit of endless things? What's the source of the frenetic consumer energy and desire? In a fast-paced tour of the ecological and psychological terrain of consumer culture, Shop 'Til You Drop challenges the viewer to confront these questions head-on. Taking aim at the high-stress, high-octane pace of materialism, the film moves beneath the seductive surfaces of the commercial world to show how the other side of consumerism is depletion--the slow, steady erosion of not only the natural world, but basic human and community values. Shop 'Til You Drop contextualises the turbulence of this moment, providing an unflinching critique of the limits of consumerism and the so-called "pursuit of happiness."
46:12Some political leaders have labelled climate change the next big issue facing the coming millennium, while others staunchly deny that such a problem even exists. Emission Impossible sets out to view the landscape of rhetoric against the urgent need for action. What is Australia's role in the symptoms of a warming climate, and what needs to be done to change?
1:12:57Canada 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?
48:01Once advertised as the birthplace of a bright new future for the American Dream, Salton City, California is now crumbling into an apocalyptic landscape of pollution and desolate land. As farmers burn their fields, and the honey bee population dwindles, scum floats down the most polluted river in North America, which carries raw sewage, pesticides and factory waste from Mexico into the once-beautiful Salton Sea. Toxic Imperial Valley travels through these landscapes, meeting the squatters and other occupiers left, in what looks like the end of the world...
43:15Following on from previous reports about the numerous threats from industry facing the Great Barrier Reef, investigative journalist Marian Wilkinson returns to Queensland, Australia some years later to not only review the continued declining state of the reef, but to unfortunately investigate a new string of threats. This year, the government agency tasked with protecting the reef has approved a plan to expand the Abbot Point coal port which has serious cumulative effects on the already stressed reef and surrounding ecology. This in conjunction with the realities caused by anthropogenic climate change means the health of the reef has arguably past tipping point. Do we care enough to shift our perception of viewing everything through the lens of the economy? And not only that—do we care enough to act?
1:35:34Frackman introduces us to Dayne Pratzky, who is looking to build a simple home on his block of land in central Queensland, Australia. But one day the gas company comes and demands access to his land for gas mining. Dayne doesn't want that, but is told he has no right to refuse access to his land, and so begins his transformation into a reluctant activist on a journey that takes him around the world. Through his efforts, we see other people drawn into the battle of fending off rapacious coal-seam gas miners. Frackman presents this story, crossing ideological divides, bringing together an alliance of farmers, conservationists, political conservatives, and a cast of colourful Aussie bush characters, determined in different ways to stop fracking from destroying the land.
1:17:02The suburbs are an unsustainable way of living. Developed in the post-war era of cheap oil and the car, the lifestyle was spruiked as the 'escape' from the industrial city to a more pastoral and rural way of life. However, they quickly evolved into a place that had neither of these qualities. Now, part of the problem of getting out of the suburban mentality is that a generation has grown up believing it to be a 'normal way of life' and even a life of entitlement, something which they will not give up without a fight...
53:12The Nuclear Comeback embarks on a tour of the nuclear industry, documenting some of the most 'famous' nuclear facilities worldwide -- the control room of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the UK's Calder Hall, a nuclear waste repository under the Baltic Sea, the Ranger uranium mine in Australia, and one of only two nuclear waste "recycling plants" in the world. In addition of the links to nuclear weapons, the nuclear industry has a reputation for accidents and cover-ups. What are the 'risks'? What to do with the 100,000+ year legacy of dangerous radioactive waste? Is this insane?
1:30:19On April 22, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig, run by oil giant BP, sunk into the Gulf of Mexico--creating the world's biggest and most catastrophic environmental crime in history. After over 750 million litres of crude oil and millions of litres of the chemical dispersant Corexit dumped into the sea, the disaster was deemed over and all damage repaired. This is bullshit however. Film-makers Josh and Rebecca Tickell travel to the Gulf of Mexico to document first-hand the extent of environmental and community damage, continuing many years after the explosion. Beginning by tracing BP’s origins and fingerprints across decades of US manipulation in Iran, The Big Fix assembles an indictment of this monumental disaster by unpacking the workings of the complex oligarchies that put pursuit of profit over all other ends...
1:21:49In 2006, newspapers around the United States began to publicise a unnerving phenomenon. Honeybees were a mysteriously disappearing from beehives all around the nation. Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us? investigates the multiple angles of this epidemic. It also explores the historical and contemporary relationship between bees and humans, showing alternative and inspiring beekeepers from all around the globe as they keep bees in natural and holistic ways. From Gunther Hauk in the United States to Massimo Carpinteri in Italy, each has unique philosophical and spiritual insights into their bees and are striving to keep their bees safe from pesticides, and the other causes behind colony collapse.
1:52:58This biography documents the life of Rachel Louise Carson who was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist. Her book Silent Spring, and other writings, are widely recognised to be responsible for advancing the global environmental movement. Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the United States Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s, turning her attention to conservation, especially some problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring, published in 1962, which brought environmental concerns to the public at large. Although the book was met with vicious attacks from chemical companies, Carson spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides, and also inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. This film is an intimate portrait of the woman whose groundbreaking work revolutionised our relationship with the natural world.
1:18:32Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste is placed in interim storages which are vulnerable to natural disasters, human-caused disasters, and societal changes. In Finland, the world's first 'permanent' repository is being hewn out of solid rock--a huge system of underground tunnels that must last hundreds of thousands of years. Once the waste has been dumped and the ground is full of this waste, the land is to be sealed off with concrete and "never be opened again." Or so the builders of this dump can hope. But can they ensure that? How is it possible to warn future generations of the deadly waste that's left behind by this culture? How do we prevent future generations from thinking they have found the 'pyramids' of our time, mystical burial grounds, or hidden treasures? Into Eternity is a film about the insanity of nuclear power and the consequences that have impacts for hundreds of thousands of years.
49:53Fight For Country tells the story of one of Australia's largest ever land rights and environmental campaigns, to stop the building of a second uranium mine within the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, Australia. In 1998 the issue came to a head when Indigenous elders and activists called on people to come from around Australia and the world to blockade the construction of the mine and proposed 'uranium deposits', collectively called Jabiluka. The film follows activists and speaks with Aboriginal people about the impacts of the mine, following the community response and protest actions against the mines development, where over 500 people were arrested in the course of the eight-month blockade.
1:19:59All over the world, species are going extinct at an extraordinary rate--currently around 250 per day--a scale never before seen. Call of Life investigates the growing threat to Earth’s life support systems from this unprecedented loss of biodiversity by exploring the causes, scope, and potential effects of this mass extinction. The film also looks beyond the immediate causes of the crisis to consider how our cultural and economic systems, along with deep-seated psychological and behavioral patterns, have allowed this situation to develop and be reinforced, and even determine our response to it. Call of Life tells the story of a crisis not only of nature, but also of human nature; a crisis more threatening than anything human beings have ever faced...
11:03Adrift is a short film that explores the phenomenon of space junk, where human-made objects launched into space and are now defunct orbit the Earth literally as garbage. The film makes visible some of the immediate impacts and dangers of the technological escalation of this culture, where old satellites, spent rocket stages, and other items orbit the Earth, only to collide with one another at high velocities, generating smaller fragments that collide with other items, and so on. The end point is a cascading complex of junk that engulfs the entire space around the Earth. Adrift aims to make this phenomenon visible, putting a big question mark against the claims made by many futurists and technologists that future space colonisation would even be possible, if only it were a tenable or sensible idea in the first place...