1:27:32Marion Stokes was secretly recording television twenty-four hours a day for thirty years. It started in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis at the dawn of the twenty-four hour news cycle, and ended in 2012 while the Sandy Hook massacre played on television as Marion passed away. In between, Marion recorded on 70,000 VHS tapes, capturing revolutions, lies, wars, triumphs, catastrophes, bloopers, talk shows, advertising--all of which deeply show how television has shaped the world of today. Remarkably prescient, Marion knew this, and saved it as a form of activism, knowing that archiving everything that was said and shown on television was part of the fight for the truth and historical memory, keeping those in power accountable. At the time, the public didn’t know it, but TV networks themselves were not keeping archives of their material, with huge swathes of recorded history lost. If it wasn't for Marion, and the Internet Archive that will soon digitise her tapes for prosperity and free public access, these records would be lost forever. This film is about a radical Communist activist, who became a fabulously wealthy recluse archivist, and whose work was unorthodox, but also genius, even though she would pay a profound price for dedicating her life to such a visionary project.
A documentary series that explores an investigation led by freelance writer Danny Casolaro on what he called "The Octopus," an elaborate conspiracy network involving the United States government and its covert operations. The series stems from the circumstances around Casolaro eventually being found dead in a hotel room. Researcher Christian Hansen revisits Casolaro's work and questions whether Casolaro actually died by suicide. The series tracks Casolaro investigating the circumstances around Inslaw's PROMIS software, a database system built to to aid law enforcement and legal prosecutors in tracking court cases, which the Department of Justice began using, stopped paying for, and then was later accused of stealing. The Iran-Contra affair also features, and the 1980 'October Surprise', where Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign covertly negotiated with Iran to delay the release of American hostages until after the election to influence its outcome. Through a cast of shady characters, the corporate world, spies, and interesting real and theorised information, The Octopus Murders is a murder mystery wrapped in major 20th-century scandals.
1:26:30The Secret Government, as its title suggests, is essentially an investigation into the processes, plans, operations and persons responsible for systemic abuses of power at senior levels of the United States government during the 1980s. The film covers multiple covert operations and secret projects, but takes a particular focus on the Iran–Contra affair of 1986, where Ronald Regan secretly facilitated the illegal sale of arms to Iran—which was the subject of an arms embargo at the time—to support a right-wing terrorist group called "The Contras," and also make obscene profits from the sale of such weapons. Transported to the political happenings of today, The Secret Government is a call to remember history, and see that mass profits from weapons dealing running covert/secret wars were a reality then, and now, as well as to reveal just how far institutionalised propaganda and obfuscation works to conceal these home truths, still generations later.