46:18Inside The Rage Machine highlights new whistleblowers, engineers, and managers from inside tech corporations to show how algorithms that spread disinformation, social harms, and contribute to violence erupting in the real world are knowingly deployed by the companies to have these harms and incentives built-in. Through the lived experience and documents obtained from employees such as Matt Motyl from Facebook, Ruofan Ding from TikTok, and Lisa Jennings Young from Twitter, Inside The Rage Machine exposes the system itself that thrives on outrage and division as part of its business model, with radicalisation, real-world violence and fractured societies as just some of the consequences of the system that has been built to manipulate how users think, feel and perceive the world.
44:09Taser Tactics
Police have embraced handheld "conducted energy devices" over the past two decades. The largest manufacturer is Axon, a corporate giant in the United States, with its renowned product the Taser. Axon has captured police forces throughout Australia and the world, supplying police with their Taser guns, body worn cameras, drones, evidence tracking tools, and data analysis. The weapons are claimed to be a "safer way to stop dangerous situations", but people are dying. It's also being covered up. Taser Tactics examines Axon, its role in 'high-tech' policing, and its secretive tactics to obfuscate and eliminate investigations into controversial deaths from their technologies. Case studies include 95-year-old Clare Nowland, who died after being tasered in a nursing home in 2023, as well as footage of a farmer being tasered within seconds of a police encounter on his own property for "non-compliance". The multi-billion-dollar tech giant has made itself indispensable to police in every state and territory, but when someone is killed with a Taser, what happens?
1:29:49Through the voices of survivors, journalists, and excerpts of legal depositions, Diabolical dips its toes into the world of the Epstein Files--a partially released collection of millions of documents, images, videos, e-mails, and other records pertaining to criminal investigations undertaken by the FBI of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The records were reluctantly released after much political pressure, and millions of files are still yet to be made public. Many of the world's billionaires, and most powerful figures in politics and mainstream culture appear in the files, as persons in the orbit of Epstein and his life trafficking teenage girls for sex. The film lays bare how the rich evade the legal and justice system with their wealth and power, and raises some conspiratorial questions about just who Epstein was, along with his connection to power and influence in the United States.
Five women come together for the first time on camera to reveal their experiences of being deceived into decades-long intimate relationships with undercover police officers as part of the Spycops scandal in the United Kingdom. The series examines the secret unit of UK undercover police who undertook these extensive spying operations on the public for over 40 years, including deceiving over 60 women into intimate relationships. Undercover police used false personas, including the identities of dead children to the relationships with members of targeted groups, and in some cases proposed marriage or got protesters pregnant, conceiving children with them.
Shifty
Shifty is a series of films that traverse the past 40 years in Britain, showing how the shift of political power to finance and hyper-individualism came together in powerful ways, to undermine one of the fundamental structures of mass democracy--the shared idea of what is real. As that fell apart, with it went the language and the ideas that people had turned to for the last 150 years to make sense of the world they lived in. As a result, life in Britain and the current and former colonies of its empire, has become strange--a hazy dream-like flux, where distrust in politicians keeps growing, and the political class seems to have lost control. Through archive footage, news reels, and on-screen-text in video essay format, Shifty documents the shapes of how this happened, using the vast ranges of footage to evoke what if felt like to live through an epic transformation during the 1980s.
2:22:34Democracy on Trial presents the foundations of the multiple criminal cases against former United States President Donald Trump, stemming from his 2020 election loss. With the presidential race for 2024 underway, veteran filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team examine the evidence of the January 6 committee--a government panel formed to investigate the attack on the United States Capitol building in 2021. The result highlights federal criminal charges stemming from these inquiries, and explores what unprecedented legal actions mean for the integrity of democracy in the United States.
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.
1:53:04Lies, Politics, and Democracy investigates the current era of United States politicking through the lens of recent political leaders and the choices they’ve made that have undermined and threatened democracy in the United States, and the reverberations of those choices around the world. At the core of it is how officials fed the public lies about the 2020 presidential election and embraced rhetoric that led to bitter social division and then political violence.
The Power of Big Oil is a three-part series that investigates the decades-long failure to confront the threat of climate change and the role of the fossil fuel industry. The series presents a parade of former oil company scientists, lobbyists, and public relations strategists who lay bare how the biggest petroleum firm in the United States, Exxon, and then the broader petroleum industry globally, moved from attempting to understand the causes of a global heating to a concerted campaign to hide the making of an environmental catastrophe. Over three episodes--Denial, Doubt, Delay--the series documents the corporate cooptation of science, the manipulation of public opinion, and political figureheads that mirror conduct by other industries--from big tobacco to the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the opioid epidemic.
44:12Split Screen tells the story of January 6, 2021, where an estimated 2,000 people stormed the United States Capitol building, attempting to stop the certification of votes from the 2020 election. What started as a protest became violent chaos, killing several people and injuring over 140. The event was the culmination of years of angst, anger, violence, and confusion, that began stirring years or even decades earlier in the thick of growing polarisation in the United States. Certain media outlets and social media influencers spread content fuelling division and angst in the months leading up to and following the election. Allegations of voter fraud--rejected by state and federal officials in both parties, as well then-Attorney General William Barr--were amplified and emboldened by conservative media, ultimately igniting the rage and frustration of an undeniable portion of people in the United States who get their news and information through big tech, and the slurry of social media echo-chambers.
1:31:38Skandal!
Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard is a thriller documentary of one of the largest world-wide financial crimes. It follows journalist Dan McCrum, who reveals the inside story of a 6-year investigation into the German corporation Wirecard and the dirty tricks that were deployed against him and the Financial Times, as they battle to expose a multi-billion euro fraud at the centre of one of Germany's most successful online payment corporations of the time. The film traverses the colourful characters of the scam, such as the mafia, porn barons, gambling outfits, Libyan and Russian intelligence agencies, corporate spies, private investigators, hired thugs and surveillance operatives, demanding answers of the chief executive officer, Markus Braun, awaiting trial in Munich, and its mysterious chief operating officer, Jan Marsalek, who vanishes.
1:28:02Millions of people around the world are finding work by-the-job online. The "gig economy" is worth more than $5 trillion worldwide, and seemingly growing. But who are these workers? Seduced by the promise of independence, and control over their working hours and income, people around the world that are lured into the gig economy now face the harsh reality of it algorithmically-driven market place: dangerous working conditions, instability, and the precariousness of their work that can stop overnight in the case of deactivation or a bad review. Through committed characters, The Gig is Up shows that the so-called 'freedom' that is espoused by this technological economy is only an illusion.
Epstein's Shadow is a short series that investigates the powerful, connected, and mysterious Ghislaine Maxwell, who was once the heiress to the media proprietor Robert Maxwell's fortune, but whose life takes a sordid turn after when her father dies and she meets Jeffrey Epstein, the serial sex offender. The series reveal a complicated story of power, sex, money, and corruption, which leads to Ghislaine Maxwell's arrest, and mounds of destruction in her wake, and that of Epstein and his co-conspirators.
Can't Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World is a six-part series that explores how modern society has arrived to the strange place it is today. The series traverses themes of love, power, money, corruption, the ghosts of empire, the history of China, opium and opioids, the strange roots of modern conspiracy theories, and the history of Artificial Intelligence and surveillance. The series deals with the rise of individualism and populism throughout history, and the failures of a wide range of resistance movements throughout time and various countries, pointing to how revolution has been subsumed in various ways by spectacle and culture, because of the way power has been forgotten or given away.
In the United States and elsewhere, both sides of politics have revelled in spectacle and image for many decades. But when Donald Trump, the billionaire reality-television host became president, a new escalation of image and spectacle engulfed dominant culture. The Trump Show is a series that explores the beguiling spectacle of the Trump years, through interviews with former White House staffers, media managers, campaign directors, and other personalities that were close to Trump during his presidency. The series documents how image has now replaced substance in politics in a totalising way, and how false constructions seek to pave over reality through a culture that is deeply rooted in hyper-individualism, fierce and corrupt competition, ideological dogmatism, and post-modern delusions.
1:34:33After Truth
After Truth is about the growing proliferation of modern disinformation, where almost anybody with a computer and social media access can have a powerful platform without oversight, influencing the information experiences of billions of people. The melting pot is catalysed by Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, 4chan, and other websites that spread disinformation to huge audiences with a profit incentive, competing to capture everyone's attention. After Truth asks the question about where all this is heading, by exemplifying events such as Jade Helm, Seth Rich, and Pizzagate, but also profiling some major and minor personalities involved in spreading disinformation, conspiracy theories, fear, and uncertainty. With an empire in collapse, and physical reality being increasingly replaced by popular postmodern theories of "there is only subjective truth," this film not only presents the challenge of returning to what is real, but the task of stopping disinformation from continuing to divide, confuse, distract, and destroy.
Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich is a miniseries about convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein based on the 2016 book of the same name by James Patterson, and co-written by John Connolly and Tim Malloy. The four-part documentary features interviews with several survivors including Virginia Giuffre and Maria Farmer, along with former staff members and former police chief Michael Reiter, a key individual from the first criminal case against Epstein. The series provides insight into the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, and how he used his wealth and power to commit his crimes.
Surviving Jeffrey Epstein is a four-part series that investigates the convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein who used his power, influence, and finances to not only shield his predatory sexual behaviour over several decades, but successfully manipulated the justice system to avoid true penalty. Deals made in secret. Investigations suppressed. Connections to the rich and powerful, participating in the web of trafficking across the globe. Eight survivors share their stories across the series, including the testimony of Courtney Wild, Rachel Kay Benavides, and Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Through the strength of their resolve and other survivors, the series shines a light on Epstein's tentacles, and the pursuit for real justice.
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?
1:52:43Jeff Bezos is not only one of the richest men in the world, the vast corporate empire he has built is unprecedented in the history of capitalism. The corporate power to shape everything from the future of work to the future of commerce to the future of technology is unrivaled. The company's reach into the everyday life of citizens, manipulating their experience and extracting extreme profits, is profound. It's extraction of labour and giant streams of data is cataclysmic. It's reach into culture, media, law enforcement, even a deal with the CIA, is indicative. But despite all of this, the company contradictorily claims it is "just a speck." As regulators around the world tardily start to consider the global impact of Amazon and how to rein in its extreme corporate power, filmmakers Anya Bourg and James Jacoby reveal how Bezos's plan to build one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world has already transpired, and how the job of reining in this pervasive corporate power will be testing in the extreme.
1:50:13McCarthy chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the United States senator who came to power after a stunning victory in an election that no one thought he could win. Once in office, he declared that there was a vast conspiracy threatening the United States--not emanating from a rival superpower, but from within. Then, without restraint or oversight, he conducted a vast crusade against those he accused of being "enemies of the state," a chilling campaign marked by groundless accusations, bullying, intimidation, grandiose showmanship, and cruel victimisation. With lawyer Roy Cohn at his side, McCarthy belittled critics, spinning a web of lies and distortions while spreading fear and confusion. After years in the headlines, he was brought down by his own excesses and overreach.
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.
1:35:29Behind the Curve documents the resurgence of believers of a flat Earth, as made popular through YouTube videos. The film is a personal exploration of how people became exposed to flat Earth theories (the YouTube algorithm), and how those ideas were reinforced in an echo chamber of social media, rejecting empirical evidence, at a time of increasing countercultural distrust in authority figures and the epistemology of science. The narrative at the core of the film reveals how the screen bubble can envelop a person's informational exposure, and change their relationships and perceptions in the real world, where confirmation bias is reinforced, making alternative views threatening, and individualism sacrosanct. Information that is contrary to a deeply held belief then becomes increasingly impossible to accept, especially if it has changed your life and circle of friends. So with empathy and a playful warmth, Behind the Curve becomes a warning light to the importance of honest discourse and critical analysis, falsifiability and dogma, but above all, to empathy and understanding of a person's desire to create meaning and acceptance in a lonely, fragmented culture.
1:28:30At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal reveals a dangerous athletic culture that prioritised winning over everything else, including protecting young female athletes. For more than 30 years, Larry Nassar worked with gymnasts, as a respected trainer and doctor. He was charming, taught at church, volunteered in the community, and was seemingly well-liked throughout. He treated girls' aches and pains, becoming a friend and confidant to many along the way, while also sexually abusing them during sessions for many years. When some girls began to speak up about their experiences, they were silenced, gaslighted or denied, all the way up to the highest levels of management, across multiple sporting institutions. After many complaints and eventually a cumulative legal investigation, Nassar ends up exposed as a serial sex offender. This film unpacks the scandal, its cover-up, and aftermath, through interviews with dozens of survivors, as well as coaches, lawyers and journalists, as one of the most high-profile paedophile trials in recent years. It documents the grooming, methods, and psychology of a charismatic sexual abuser, as well as the culture that enables and perpetuates it.
1:53:07The Great Hack is an inside account of the company Cambridge Analytica, which used vast amounts of personal data scraped from portals such as Facebook to manipulate elections throughout India, Kenya, Malta, Mexico, the United Kingdom and United States over the past decade. The company, owned by SCL Group--a British firm that has a background in military disinformation campaigns and psychological warfare--came to public attention after the Brexit campaign in the UK, and soon after, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, both closely worked on by Cambridge Analytica and its billionaire backer, Robert Mercer. This resulted in inquires and investigations into both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, but the company liquidated, along with its internal documents. Two former employees instead step forward to offer an inside account into the dark world of data mining and personalised propagandising, having some regret for what they have done. The film tracks these characters, as Cambridge Analytica lives on as Emerdata Limited, in the same London office. The Great Hack exemplifies big questions about democracy in the age of targeted information manipulation via the screen, and just how much power over our awareness has been ceded to giant corporations.
As one half of the satirical duo, The Rubber Bandits, Blindboy is renown for wearing a plastic bag on his head while dishing out sharp social commentary. In this series, using his unique mix of irreverent commentary, a band of undercover reporters, and playful humour, Blindboy sets out to investigate some of the most important issues of our time.
The Facebook Dilemma aims to open an in-depth investigation into the impact Facebook has had on privacy and democracy in the United States and throughout the world, by revealing how the decisions made by the company as it sought increased wealth and new users, transformed it into a vast surveillance machine, a media company, and a 'hidden hand' in elections and political discourse. Drawing on original interviews from those inside the company, this two part series catalogues some of the ignored warning signs, both inside and outside the company, of Facebook's negative impact, growing from Zuckerberg's dorm-room project and into a powerful global empire.
1:03:59Tracing the Internet's history as a publicly-funded government project in the 1960s, to its full-scale commercialisation today, Digital Disconnect shows how the Internet's so-called "democratising potential" has been radically compromised by the logic of capitalism, and the unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies. Based on the acclaimed book by media scholar Robert McChesney, the film examines the ongoing attack on the concept of net neutrality by telecom monopolies such as Comcast and Verizon, explores how internet giants like Facebook and Google have amassed huge profits by surreptitiously collecting our personal data and selling it to advertisers, and shows how these monopolies have routinely colluded with the national security state to advance covert mass surveillance programs. We also see how the rise of social media as a leading information source is working to isolate people into ideological information bubbles and elevate propaganda at the expense of real journalism. But while most debates about the Internet focus on issues like the personal impact of Internet-addiction or the rampant data-mining practices of companies like Facebook, Digital Disconnect digs deeper to show how capitalism itself turns the Internet against democracy. The result is an indispensable resource for helping viewers make sense of a technological revolution that has radically transformed virtually aspect of human communication.