49:51We Are Traffic chronicles the history and development of the "Critical Mass" bicycle movement -- one of the most dynamic social political movements of the apathetic 90s. In over 200 cities in 14 different countries, Critical Mass has now become a monthly ritual of reclaiming the streets by bicycle activists riding en masse...
1:33:56On 20th April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the Gulf of Mexico in the United States, killing eleven workers, and spewing millions of barrels of oil into the ocean for weeks. Dirty Energy brings to light the personal stories of the Louisiana fishermen and local residents directly impacted by one of the worst environmental disasters in recent history, as they struggle to rebuild their lives and contend with emerging health crises related to the toxic dispersants used to clean up the explosion.
52:18Exempt from environmental protection laws, the oil and gas industry has left idyllic landscapes and rural communities throughout the United States pockmarked with abandoned homes, polluted waterways and aquifers, as well as plenty of sick people. Split Estate zeroes in on Garfield County in Colorado, and the San Juan Basin where more demonstrations of water that can be set on fire are found, but industry isn't just stopping there -- fracking is spreading across the United States, with plans to even drill in the New York City watershed, as well as elsewhere around the globe. As the appetite for fossil fuels increases, Split Estate debunks claims by an industry that assures the public that it is a good neighbour, driving home the need to stop fracking, both here and abroad...
1:17:02The suburbs are an unsustainable way of living. Developed in the post-war era of cheap oil and the car, the lifestyle was spruiked as the 'escape' from the industrial city to a more pastoral and rural way of life. However, they quickly evolved into a place that had neither of these qualities. Now, part of the problem of getting out of the suburban mentality is that a generation has grown up believing it to be a 'normal way of life' and even a life of entitlement, something which they will not give up without a fight...
47:33The small town of Fort Chipewyan in northern Alberta, Canada, is facing up for the fight against The Alberta oil sands, which is arguably now the world's largest construction project. Its expansion will have an estimated $1.7 trillion impact on the Canadian economy over the coming decades. An area of boreal forest the size of Greece will be affected by industrial activity. Once again the issue is water, but this time it is not just the flow of the river, but the chemicals the current may be carrying downstream from the strip mines and bitumen upgraders. In recent years, Fort Chipewyan has experienced an unusually high rate of cancer. Local fishermen are finding growing numbers of deformed fish in their nets. Residents and the community doctor, worry there could be a connection to the oil sands...
1:26:15From styrofoam cups to artificial organs, plastic is perhaps the most ubiquitous and versatile material ever invented -- no product in the past 100 years has had more a profound influence and presence than synthetics. But such 'progress' has a cost -- no ecosystem or segment of human activity has escaped the strangling grasp of plastic. Addicted To Plastic investigates what we really know--and don't know--about this material. Talking to manufacturers, recyclers, cleaners, scientists and others, Addicted To Plastic shows plastic's toxic legacy and devastating ecological impact, provoking serious questions about health, food and the environment...
57:14On 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.
15:27Fracking Hell -- The Untold Story looks at the risks of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale throughout the United States. From toxic chemicals in drinking water to interstate dumping of radioactive waste that cataclysmically contaminates water supplies, to fracking plans in major population centres including New York City -- are the health consequences worth the supposed economic gains?
1:20:34Collapse is a documentary film exploring the theories, writings and life story of controversial author Michael Ruppert, a former Los Angeles police officer turned investigative reporter who has authored books on the events of the September 11 attacks, documented widespread drug trafficking and other secret operations by the CIA, and written on the issue of peak oil and other energy issues. Using archival footage interspersed as illustration, Collapse explores Ruppert's conclusions that unsustainable energy and financial policies have led to an ongoing collapse of modern industrial civilisation...
51:59In the early hours of March 24th 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil supertanker runs aground in Alaska. The ship discharges several tens of millions of gallons of crude oil. The incident becomes the biggest environmental assault in North American history, and in a flash, the news shoots across the planet along with footage of thousands of dead seabirds, sea otters and other marine life covered in oil, devastated. Thick black tides rise and cover the beaches of the once-pristine reefs of Alaska. Black Wave recalls this event, a generation later, by speaking with renowned marine toxicologist Riki Ott and the fishermen of the little town of Cordova, Alaska. They tell us all about the environmental and social consequences of the black wave that changed their lives forever—the legacy of the Exxon Valdez that still lingers today.
1:34:41Following up from The End Of Suburbia, this film examines the rich interplay on the subtle relationships between the energy crisis, neighbourhood gardens and the collapse of the 'American dream'. Escape From Suburbia outlines potential solutions with interviews from individuals across the world who are brave enough to challenge their communities toward change...
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.
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?
1:42:41America's largest domestic natural gas drilling boom is in full swing and the Halliburton corporation claims it has refined a technique called 'hydraulic fracturing' that extracts natural gas in a "safe and environmentally friendly way". But upon examination, film-maker Josh Fox uncovers a trail of secrets, lies and first-hand evidence of intense water contamination and devastating environmental destruction...
For the past four years Submedia has been visiting a camp of the Unist'ot'en of the Wet'suet'en Nation in so-called British Columbia in Canada. The Unist'ot'en continue to fend off intrusions to their land by rapacious oil and gas companies. The threats are large and systemic and involve the very base of life itself. This two-part series of short films document the direct actions that are effective in keeping the threats of oil and gas out. Stopping the corporations physically is paramount, as they'll stop at nothing...
1:44:33As one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet, Crude takes a look inside the $27 billion "Amazon Chernobyl" case, viewing the real-life high stakes legal drama set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, globalisation, hackneyed celebrity 'activism', human rights, multinational corporate power and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures...
1:59:29The 1953 Iranian coup d'état was the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah for the purposes of foreign access to Iran's oil. BP was at the heart of this story. The operation was orchestrated by the United States under the name TPAJAX Project (Operation Ajax) and the United Kingdom under the name Operation Boot. While making a documentary about this CIA/MI6 coup, Iranian director Taghi Amirani and editor Walter Murch discover never seen before archive material hidden for decades. The 16mm footage and documents not only allow the filmmakers to tell the story of the overthrow of the Iranian government in unprecedented detail, but also leads to explosive revelations about dark secrets buried for 67 years. Working with Ralph Fiennes to help bring the lost material to life, what begins as a historical documentary about four days in August 1953 turns into a live investigation, taking the film-makers into uncharted cinematic territory.
23:28With the United Nations laying out a deadline for 2013 on claims to the Arctic seabed to be exploited for oil, minerals and gas; countries such as Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway and Greenland are all attempting to stake a claim. As the beginning battle for territory intensifies, the rapid disappearance of the Polar ice caps opens up potential shipping routes, which further fuels the blood lust by those in power to exploit the region. The Battle For The Arctic heads to the Far North to see first-hand who and what is threatened, and exactly what is at stake with these final grabs for energy, territory, and power.
1:25:48Blind Spot investigates the convergence of causes behind the current crisis of global industrial civilisation. By establishing the links between fossil fuels and the falsehood of perpetual exponential economic growth, Blind Spot explains the draw down of the natural environment, and how this globalised culture is systematically killing the world in its path. The energy depletion scenario known as Peak Oil—which came to pass around 2006—requires this culture to change drastically, with dire consequences either way. By whatever measure of greed, wishful thinking, neglect or ignorance, this current way of life cannot continue and the clock is ticking fast for change.
51:47Oil Rocks--otherwise known as Neft Daşları--is one of the first and largest offshore oil-platforms ever built. The location is a vast industrial city in the middle of the Caspian Sea, ordered by the Stalin regime in 1949. 60 years on, Oil Rocks is still operational and the first western film crew in its history receives access. The result is this film which documents 200 kilometers of bridges, thousands of oil workers, hundreds of platforms, up to nine-story buildings, a park and a sports field--nothing less then an oil-rig 'Atlantis.' By combining archive footage from the Soviet era and interviews with workers, this film tells the story of the oil fields and the extremely hard work by those involved to this day.
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...
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.
23:33Fracking In America takes a look at the continuing instances of water contamination and environmental damage occurring throughout the United States as a result of hydraulic fracturing--an industrial process used to fracture rock in the search to exploit natural gas deposits. As the frantic effort to extract gas accelerates, the impact of fracking expands also, with increasing pressures on fresh water supplies, continuing threats to health and wider ecosystems...
2:03:17What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire covers the current situation facing humanity globally. It discusses issues such as peak oil, climate change, population overshoot and species extinction, as well as how this situation has developed...
1:33:02Sweet Crude is the story of how large oil corporations such as Shell and Chevron have absolutely decimated the Niger Delta, but the people are fighting back. The film shows the human and environmental consequences of 50 years of oil extraction against an insurgency of people who, in the three years after the filmmakers met them as college students, became the young of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The movement is born after series of non-violent protests, and what the corporations and colonisers don't understand is that these people will fight for their land and emancipation until the end. Sweet Crude is their story of survival and armed resistance against corrupt governments and rapacious corporate power, amongst a complicit and collusive mainstream media.