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.
1:08:5030 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...
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...
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...
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...
1:26:24A new gold rush is sweeping through the Amazon rainforest where scores of people are bustling in to hunt for the last nuggets and specks of gold. This insatiable rush is perpetuating the further destruction of one of the largest remaining tropical forests in the world; bringing with it weapons, mercury, crime and alcoholism, and turning once pristine creeks and rivers into dumping grounds for mining. In the forest also lies the story of the Wayanas, a Native American tribe from Guiana, who are being poisoned by the mercury releases from the mining. Their communities are enduring one of the world's worst globalisation disasters, fighting back against all odds.
51:58Globalisation has gone to great lengths to coerce many countries around the world to open 'free trade zones' for Western markets, where businesses receive special tax benefits and other rewards for operating factories and exploiting cheap labour. The argument, as is always cited, is for growth of the global economy. Free Trade Slaves sets out to examine these ideas by looking at the realities of such practice. Told from the perspective of the workers in Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Mexico and Morocco; the film exposes systemic human rights abuses, harrowing environmental destruction, birth defects and other long lasting health problems and social issues. The filmmakers suggest that workers around the world need to assert the right to unionise and organise together to demand and retain decent conditions, and that consumers should do their part by boycotting companies that continue to abuse people and the environment.
23:48For more then twenty years, many hundreds of tons of electronic waste--or e-waste--from all around the world has been transported to an infamous Chinese town called Fengjang, just south of Shanghai, for disposal and so-called 'recycling.' Around 50,000 migrant workers constitute part of the massive workforce necessary to dispose of e-waste, with the downcycling component of the operations involving cutting, splitting, and salvage--most-often with rudimentary equipment. The workers toil endlessly to process almost 2 million tons of garbage every year, bearing incredible precariousness, and even putting in danger their own health due to the simply unacceptable working conditions and also the toxic characteristics of the metals, chemicals and materials they're handling. As the recognisable heaps of waste continue to pile up, Heavy Metal provides a moving image of a worldwide consumer society and the stark direct impacts of an 'invisible' waste.
19:54A group of graduate journalism students from the University of British Columbia travel to the outskirts of Ghana as part of a global investigation tracking the shadowy industry of e-waste that's causing big environmental problems around the world. Their guide is a 13-year-old boy named Alex. He shows them his home, a small room in a mass of shanty dwellings, and offers to take them across the dead river--which is literally dead--to a notorious area called Agbogbloshie which is one of the world's unseen e-waste dumping grounds. Hundreds of millions of tons of waste are funnelled here each year, with more to come as the consumer boom of computers and gadgets increases across the globe--unless drastic action changes the flow of waste and addresses the terrible conditions many have to endure for the technocracy of the West.
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.