57:14Ecocide
On April 20th 2010, a massive oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. It was called the Deepwater Horizon rig, operated by the BP corporation. The resulting fire claimed the lives of eleven workers, while the exploding oil well spewed over 4.2 million barrels of oil into the sea over 82 straight days, killing the ocean and millions of animals. The disaster is considered the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States. Ecocide profiles the disaster through the residents of Grand Isle, the last inhabited barrier island off the coast of Louisiana, United States, who thought they were living in paradise until the BP oil explosion hit their shores. Through the lived experiences of this island community, we see the devastating repercussions of the explosion, several years later, that continue to this day.
39:40Filmed in Thailand and the Philippines in July 2007, Squeezed tells the story of how free trade agreements and globalisation are changing the lives of millions of people living in the Asia-Pacific region with APEC. Featuring interviews with farmers, workers and slum-dwellers, the film travels across the landscapes of Asia, from the lush rice paddies of Thailand to squatter settlements perched on a rubbish dump in urban Manila. Documenting these contrasts and contradictions, Squeezed accounts the impact of globalisation...
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?
48:56Deep Trouble covers the concerns of commercial fishing from a global perspective. Many species of fish that are eaten every day all around the world are now seriously threatened or are critically endangered. The Southern Bluefin Tuna for one. Mainstream awareness of where market fish come from let alone how endangered they might be is minimal. As fish stocks dry up, supermarkets are now offering new and strange species from the deep sea. Bizarre-looking creatures are being dragged up in vast fishing nets from depths of 1,000 metres or more, and the methods used to catch them are horrifying. How sustainable is this?
18:43The microbeads of plastic contained in cosmetics, shower gels, soaps, toothpastes, and many other products, of course directly end up in rivers and oceans, fish and birds, as well as other creatures of the sea and indeed land. But if that isn't problematic enough, these tiny plastics are only part of the bigger problem of plastic prolifically choking the ocean to death. For all plastics, big or small, break down and fail into smaller plastic particles, having cumulative biological and toxicological effects. This short television report takes a quick look into how marine life is effected by all this, and why we should do something about it before it's too late.
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.
2:24:01Did you know that the legal system recognises a corporation as a person? What kind of 'person' is it then? What would happen if it sat down with a psychologist to discuss its behaviour and attitude towards society and the environment? Explored through specific examples, this film shows how and why the modern-day corporation has rapaciously pressed itself into the dominant institution of our time, posing big questions about what must be done if we want a equitable and sustainable world. What must we do when corporations are psychopaths?
1:18:37The Gleaners and I explores gleaning -- the act of collecting food from farmers' leftover crops after they have been commercially harvested. Travelling along the French countryside, the film-maker follows a series of gleaners as they hunt for food, knicknacks, and personal connection; capturing the many aspects of gleaning and the many people who glean to survive -- finding not only field gleaners, but also urban gleaners and those connected to the gleaners, including a wealthy restaurant owner, an urban gleaner with a master's degree who teaches French to immigrants, and artists who incorporate recycled materials into their works...
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...
14:04Atomic Footprints uses archival footage and new material from the outback of Australia to examine the nuclear fuel chain, and the current push to expand uranium mines throughout Australia. This film speaks with local indigenous communities about the impact of already-existing uranium mining and refinement, and shows in clear examples some of the reasons why we should continue to oppose it around the world.
1:15:45Blue
Half of all marine life has been lost in the last 40 years. By 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish. The way the ocean is different to how we thought 100 years ago. We can no longer think of it as a place of resources, a dumping ground, immune to change or decline. Blue takes us on a journey into the ocean realm, witnessing the critical moment of our time when the marine world is on the precipice. Passionate advocates for ocean preservation take us into their world where the story of the changing ocean unfolds. We meet those who are defending habitats, campaigning against exploitative commercial fishing, combating marine pollution, and fighting for the protection of keystone species. Blue comes at a time where decisions made today will pave the legacy for what we leave behind for generations to come.
58:49Bees are the number one insect pollinator on the planet, helping the reproduction of many species of plants—apples, berries, cucumbers, nuts, cabbages, cotton—all of which industrial agriculture blindly relies on. But the bees are dying in their millions. Empty hives have been reported across the globe. In England, the matter has caused bee-keepers to march on parliament to call for research. But perhaps we can know what's going on already. Who Killed The Honey Bee? is a mainstream-media investigation into the collapse of bee populations from a tragic anthropocentric perspective, travelling across the farms of California to the flatlands of East Anglia to the outback of Australia. The film-makers talk to bee-keepers whose livelihoods are threatened by colony collapse disorder, to scientists that are looking at the problem, to Australian bee-keepers who are making a fortune replacing dying bees in other countries for industrial agriculture. Is the reason for declining bee populations due to some kind of plague, pesticides, malnutrition or combination of these? Or is the real underlying answer something more fundamental?
1:27:51Bees have been mysteriously disappearing, literally vanishing from their hives. Known as 'Colony Collapse', the phenomenon has brought the commercial food industry to crisis. Commercial honeybee operations pollinate monocrops that make up one out of every three bites of food in the western world. Vanishing Of The Bees follows beekeepers David Hackenberg and Dave Mendes as they strive to keep their bees healthy and fulfil pollination contracts across the United States; examining the alarming disappearance of honeybees and the greater meaning it holds about the relationship between industrial culture and ecology...
1:45:01The End of Poverty? traces the growth of global poverty back to colonisation in the 15th century to reveal why it's not an accident or simple bad luck that there is a growing underclass around the world. Featuring interviews with a number of economists, sociologists, and historians, the film details how poverty is the clear consequence of free-market economic policy which has allowed powerful nations to exploit poorer ones for their assets, turning the money back to the hands of the concentrated few. This also follows on to how wealthy nations--especially the United States--thereby exert massive debts, seize a much disproportionate exploit of the natural world, and how this deep imbalance has dire consequences on the environment and on people...
1:20:32One generation from now, most people in the United States will have spent more time in the virtual world than in the natural world. New media technologies have changed lives in countless ways. Streams of information now appears in a click. Overseas friends are contactable in an instant. Engulfing video games and streams of endless entertainment to stimulate the senses, dazzle the mind and pander to the acculturated desire to be in control. Even grandma loves Wii. But what are people missing when they're behind screens? How is it already impacting our children, our society, and the planet? At a time when people are at screens more than they are outside, Play Again explores the challenge in dealing with the addiction and returning to the real world...
The Dust Bowl is a four part series that chronicles the worst human-induced environmental disaster in history. A frenzied wheat boom, followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, destroyed much of the American and Canadian prairies through wind erosion. Blizzards killed agricultural crops and animals, threatened many other lives and forced thousands of people to pack up and move somewhere else. The series shows vivid interviews with twenty-six survivors from the dust storms, combined with dramatic photographs and footage from the era, recounting the stories of incredible human suffering at the hands of industrial agriculture--a linear system that destroys top-soil and exploits the land for quick surplus. The series also reveals a morality tale about how this culture exploits the land that sustains us--a lesson we ignore at our peril.