42:53S11 documents protest actions in Melbourne, Australia, 2000 against the World Economic Forum meeting. Specific accounts of police brutality and ferocious attacks on people protesting national and international issues are captured, in direct contradiction with mainstream media coverage, portraying activists as violent protesters.
1:17:57We tend to think of slavery as one of the points in Colonial History's dark past—an offence against humanity that was abolished in the 18th century. But slavery is rampant like never before. It's just that today the slaves are well hidden in plain sight. The global economy has enabled the immense wealth of the West, giving rise to strengthening a sinister market in slaves throughout Africa, Asia, South America, Britain and the United States. This film sets out to discover where slavery is flourishing, why it's touching all of our lives, and how we can challenge 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?
1:49:13In post-industrial United States, the Chinese company Fuyao opens a car-glass factory in an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring thousands of blue-collar American and Chinese workers. Through an an observational format, American Factory presents the two distinct cultures, comparing and contrasting each other, as well as weaving subtle commentary revealed from the workers' themselves about the nature of manufacturing work; their differing cultural and generational attitudes on labour rights and unionising; as well as observing upper management methods and corporate politics. The film is a collage of self-revealing messages about the cultures of high-tech China and post-industrial United States, shown through the lens of capitalism and the changing status of each country in the global economy.
For millions of people, the global economic collapse has generated curiosity about how money systems actually work, as opposed to how they're portrayed, especially when so many financial pundits seem to be baffled. In The Ascent of Money, economist Niall Ferguson works through some history that created today's money system, visiting the locations where key events took place and poring over actual ledgers and documents, such as the first publicly traded share of a company. Viewed with a critical eye, this series aims to show how the history of money is indeed at the core of civilisation, with economic strength determining political dominance, wars fought to create wealth and individual financial barons determining the fates of millions.
1:17:29The Crisis of Civilization draws on archive footage and essentially monologue by author Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed to detail how global problems like environmental collapse, financial crisis, peak energy, terrorism and food shortages are all symptoms of a single, failed global system...
1:31:49The True Cost is a global investigation into the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on the world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown catastrophically. The True Cost pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider, who really pays the price for our clothing?
52:09Consumed -- The Human Experience explores the impacts of consumerism across the globe. The film visits consumed landscapes, looking at the personal, social and community implications of consumption along the way...
59:01Clothes to Die For documents the worst industrial disaster of the 21st century--the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, in which more than 1,100 people died and 2,400 were injured. The eight-storey building housed factories that were making clothes for many western companies--Prada, Gucci, Primark, Walmart, H&M, Gap, and others. Through a series of compelling interviews and footage from the scene, this film gives a voice to those directly affected, and highlights the greed and high-level corruption that led to the tragedy. It also provides an insight into how the incredible growth in the garment industry has transformed Bangladesh, in particular the lives of women. Clothes to Die For raises fundamental questions about the global fashion industry and the responsibilities of all those involved.
1:33:27Up the Yangtze focuses on the people affected by the building of the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze river in Hubei, China. Countless ancient villages and historic locales will be submerged, and 2 million people will lose their homes and livelihoods. The theme of the film is the rapacious transition towards consumer capitalism from a traditional farming and peasant-based society...
54:33Shot clandestinely at a blue jeans factory in southern China where a young girl and her friends work around the clock for pennies a day, China Blue reveals what international retail companies don't want us to see: how the clothes are actually made...
53:50The Illusionists examines how global advertising firms, mass media, and the beauty, fashion, and cosmetic-surgery industries have together colonised the way people all around the world define beauty and see themselves. Taking us from Harvard to the halls of the Louvre, from a cosmetic surgeon's office in Beirut to the heart of Tokyo's Electric Town, The Illusionists shows how these industries saturate our lives with narrow, Westernised, consumer-driven images of so-called beauty that show little to no respect for biological realities or cultural differences. Featuring voices from prominent sociologists, magazine editors, scientists, artists, and activists, The Illusionists documents a truly global phenomenon, with hegemonic results.
1:35:39Every day in Vienna the amount of unsold bread that is sent back and thrown away is enough to supply Austria's second-largest city, Graz. Around 350,000 hectares of agricultural land, above all in Latin America, are dedicated to the cultivation of soybeans to feed Austria’s livestock, while one quarter of the local population starves. Every European eats ten kilograms a year of artificially irrigated greenhouse vegetables from southern Spain, with water shortages as the result. We Feed The World is a film about food and globalisation, fishermen and farmers, long-distance truck drivers and high-powered corporate executives, the flow of goods and cash flow, a film about scarcity amongst plenty.
45:23Controlling Interest is one of the first documentary films to provide a critical analysis on the growth of multinational corporations, and their impacts on people and the environment. Upon its release, Controlling Interest quickly became a standard audio-visual text for those concerned about the growing impact of multinational corporations, examining how the ever-increasing concentration of money and power affects employment in the United States, shapes patterns of development across the world, and influences foreign policy. This is the film that helped kick-off the anti-globalisation movement. Remarkably candid interviews with business executives provide a rare glimpse of the reasoning behind corporate global strategy, and the never-ending search for resources, ever-cheaper labour, and the commodification of life. The film documents the impact of corporate decisions on people around the world, including how "freedom" has come increasingly to mean the freedom of global corporations to operate without restriction. Some of the case studies include Massachusetts' declining machine tool industry, Brazil's "economic miracle," and Chile before and after the 1973 coup.
1:08:5030 Frames A Second is an immersive first-person account of the events that unfolded during the week the World Trade Organisation came to Seattle in the United States, November 1999. The film is assembled from the perspective of 15-year veteran network-news cameraman Rustin Thompson, who became disillusioned with mainstream media and hence covered the WTO as an independent journalist. As such, even with press credentials for the event, Thompson is swept into the retribution of the state and police power which hit at the protests with tear gas, pepper spray, and police abuse. For him and the protesters alike, it begs the question about the functioning of the so-called democracies we live in, where civil liberties and human rights are curtailed in favour of facilitating the vast corporatocracy and global economic empire—precisely one of the points that sparked protests in the first place...
32:44Santa's Workshop -- Inside China's Slave Labour Toy Factories shows the long working hours, low wages, and the dangerous work and conditions inside these toy factories. Workers who protest or try to organise unions risk imprisonment. Low labour costs and government protections for multinational corporations attract more and more companies to China. Figureheads blame the Chinese suppliers, but they say in the same sentence that increasing competition gives them no option. What and whom to believe?
40:37By addressing the question of violence and the media from a number of different angles, The Killing Screens presents a comprehensive view on how to think about the effects of the media environment in new and complex ways. In contrast to the relatively simplistic behaviourist model, that "media violence causes real-world violence," renowned media scholar and researcher George Gerbner shows us how to think about the psychological, political, social, and developmental impacts of growing up and living within a cultural environment of pervasive violent imagery and narratives. What are some of the impacts of this culture and what can be done about it?
1:18:28Energy War considers the continuing geopolitical consequences of the dependency on fossil fuels into the future. In the struggle for the last of the resources, countries all over the world are forced to further strategise and make strange alliances. Using the gas conflict between Georgia and Russia and the position of Saudi Arabia, Energy War travels through international markets for energy and asks: If oil and gas are scarce and expensive, where will countries turn to keep their economy going and their population warm and happy?
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.
1:32:29Is the human population going to outstrip the Earth's food supply? The effects of modern agriculture not only lead to a short term food surplus which quickly slipped as population boomed, but agriculture itself causes huge environmental problems such as soil erosion, salinity and chemical pollution—all further illustrating an impossible system in perpetuity. Food or Famine looks at projects in North America, Chile, Indonesia, Africa and India which are participating in a worldwide movement to return to local food growing methods based on the land and healthy ecological principles. The film also examines the worldwide imbalance between food consumption and production, stoking the need to confront the mounting challenges ahead...
54:55Blood Coltan travels to eastern Congo, where a bloody war is happening over a precious metal called Coltan—a raw material used in electronic devices such as computers, televisions and mobile phones. The demand for Coltan is driven by the west, funding the war in Congo between rebel militias and children as young as ten who work the mines hunting for this precious material of the technocratic age...
46:48For more than three decades, transnational corporations have been busy buying up what used to be thought of and known as unbuyable--forests, oceans, public broadcast airwaves, important intellectual and cultural works. Before their commodification, these commons were recognised as things in common to all people, for the benefit of all people. In This Land is Our Land, author David Bollier confronts the free-market extremism of our age to show how commercial interests have been undermining the public interest for years, and how it's become so normalised that we don't even notice it anymore. By revealing the commons within the tradition of community engagement and the free exchange of ideas and information, This Land is Our Land shows how a bold new international movement is trying to reclaim the commons for the public good by modelling practical alternatives to the restrictive monopoly powers of corporate elites.
1:03:49We is a visual essay exploring the politics of empire, war, corporate globalisation, imperialism and history; using the words of Indian author and political activist Arundhati Roy, from her speech Come September given in Santa Fe, New Mexico one year after the September 11th attacks--not long after the invasion of Afghanistan. The result is a mix of archive footage illustrating specific historical events throughout South America, the Middle East and elsewhere, in context with the September 11th attacks; placed alongside the themes of empire, global economics and a short history of neo-collonialism...
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?
1:08:17In Mexico, 'maquiladoras' is a word used to describe the sort of factories that have become commonplace with globalisation—mass assembly and manufacturing plants primarily staffed by women for low wage and long hours in unsafe and toxic conditions. Tijuana has attracted so many such factories that it has gained the nickname Maquilapolis. Delving into the landscape of this, this film asks the question: What is the human price of globalisation? Maquilapolis brings American and Mexican-American filmmakers together with Tijuana factory workers and community organisers to answer that question and tell the story of globalisation through the eyes and voices of the workers themselves. The result is a film to inform and inspire, as each day the workers confront labor violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos...
23:46Coca Or Death delves into Bolivia -- a country torn apart by the demands of the western world for coca. This film investigates why bloody battles have broken out between farmers and armed troops on the streets of La Paz, and what the impact of privatisation is having through the country. Coca has become a symbol of national resistance in Bolivia...
1:00:58Ten years on from his previous film, Advertising & the End of the World, renowned media scholar Sut Jhally follows up by exploring the since-escalating devastating personal and environmental fallouts of advertising and the near-totalising commercial culture. The film tracks the emergence of the advertising industry in the early 20th century to the full-scale commercialisation of the culture today, identifying the myth running throughout all of advertising: the idea that corporate brands and consumer goods are the keys to human happiness and fulfilment. We see how this powerful narrative, backed by billions of dollars a year and propagated by clever manipulative minds, has blinded us to the catastrophic costs of ever-accelerating rates of consumption. The result is a powerful film that unpacks fundamental issues surrounding commercialism, media culture, social well-being, environmental degradation, and the dichotomy between capitalism and democracy.
27:01John Pilger travels to Bangladesh to report on the horrors of the famine in the country, its causes and tragedies, circa 1975. With people passing away on the street on a daily basis from starvation and US foreign policy continually ignored, An Unfashionable Tragedy documents the plight that continues to this day, showing that food is a powerful weapon, more powerful than oil...