53:51For the people of Vietnam, war is not over. Three generations on from 1975, babies are still being born with serious birth defects and genetic abnormalities -- the legacy of the United States intensive use of chemical weapons. To this day, it is still unknown just how many have been affected. In 2005, on the eve of a historic lawsuit to determine the culpability of the United States, this film directly portrays the powerful effects of Agent Orange.
1:29:27During the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, after 6 months of ongoing actions, and with protesters facing escalating stakes from police shootings and other violent repression, students began to fortify a number of the city's major universities and occupy vital roads nearby. This lead to a peak moment in the protest movement--the siege of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Protesters gathered at the university to defend their roadblocks, while the police shot tear gas and used water cannons to shower the protesters with water containing blue colouring and chemical irritants. 1,458 canisters of tear gas were fired at protesters, as well as 1,391 rubber bullets, 325 bean bag rounds, and 256 sponge grenades. The city's hospitals were overwhelmed by the number of protesters needing urgent medical attention. Burn with Us documents a first-hand view of the conflict, and its results, in a fly-on-the-wall style.
51:20John Pilger travels to Cambodia to investigate how the United Nations has allowed the Khmer Rouge regime to grow stronger. Why has Pol Pot's organisation grown stronger and more menacing since the arrival of the UN? Cambodia -- Return To Year Zero looks behind the façade of the so-called 'peace process' and asks: Has the unthinkable for Cambodia at last been made acceptable for the rest of the world?
1:20:09American Anarchist is the story of The Anarchist Cookbook, and the role it's played in the life of its author, William Powell. Written as a teenager--and first published at the apex of the counterculture of the 1970s to protest the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War--part manifesto, part bomb-making manual, The Anarchist Cookbook went on to sell over 2 million copies and has been associated with decades of anti-government attacks, abortion clinic bombings, school shootings, and domestic terrorism. Powell, now 65 and haunted by his creation, confronts his work and its consequences. We see how in 1976, 5 years after writing the book, he left the United States, leading an itinerant life and later becoming a teacher for emotionally disturbed children, the same sorts of kids that carried the Columbine High School massacre, the Colorado high school shooting and the 2012 Aurora shooting. American Anarchist is a cautionary tale of youthful rebellion, unforeseen consequences, and a universal story of an older person wrestling with their younger past.
1:19:03When the United States devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons in 1945, the bombs dropped were code-named 'Fat Man' and 'Little Boy' -- as part of the new propaganda campaign to create acceptable images of war, propagating the illusion that the world should live securely with nuclear weapons, and that it is the only way to 'enable peace'. By using reassuring and even soothing language, this new kind of propaganda spread all over the world...
1:25:09Mirage Men examines evidence of a conspiracy by the United States military to fabricate UFO folklore over decades in order to deflect attention away from classified military projects. The film profiles a retired Special Agent, Richard Doty, who worked for the United States Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigation, and speaks about his role in special operations that targeted both individual people, and the public at large for many years. The film also weaves in the viewpoints of others, either in the sphere of the myths, or working to uncover their origins.
26:42After the 1973 Paris Agreement and military ceasefire, more than 70,000 soldiers and civilians had been killed in Vietnam. Vietnam -- Still America's War investigates how the Vietnamese populace still have to contend with mines and other legacies of the war, even after the ceasefire, and after the war...
52:29As the United States developed the world's first nuclear weapons in secret, it was surprised at the speed in which the USSR was able to also develop such weapons, and that such developments would lead to an unprecedented arms race. The USSR was able to obtain all the nuclear discoveries made by scientists who worked on the top-secret Manhattan Project through a very unusual spy, Elizabeth Zaroubin. She managed to gain the trust of great researchers, such as Einstein, in a story comparable to some of the best spy novels ever written.
55:46Between 1964 and 1973 the United States conducted a secret war in Laos -- dropping over 2 million tons of bombs, making it the most heavily bombed country in history. Millions of 'cluster bombs' did not explode when dropped, leaving the country massively contaminated with "bombies" which are as dangerous now from when they fell over 30 years ago. Bombies documents unexploded cluster bombs through the personal experiences of a group of Laotians and foreigners who go about dismantling the bombs. These weapons are still a standard part of the United States military arsenal and were recently dropped in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq...
52:35Documenting Police Use of Force investigates deaths that occurred after police used tactics like 'prone restraint' (which is a method of restraining a person by placing them face down on the ground which can pose serious risks including difficulty breathing and psychological trauma), forced-sedation, and the use of weapons such as tasers, batons, and other physical violence such as punching, kicking, and pressure-holds. The film also investigates other so-called "less-lethal force" methods used on citizens during police encounters and arrests. The documentary and accompanying reporting draw on police records, autopsy reports and police body-camera footage, offering the most expansive tally of deaths in the United States.
24:26Over the past decade, the United States military has shifted the way it fights its wars, deploying more technological systems in the battlefield than human forces. Today there are more than 7,000 drones and 12,000 ground robots in use by all branches of the military. These systems mean less deaths for US troops, but increased killings and precision elsewhere for the United States war machine. With lethal drone strikes being carried out in secret by the CIA and occurring outside of officially declared war zones such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the secret use of robots and drones in this way evokes serious questions about the operations of the United States and what this means for the rest of the world as more and more autonomy is developed for these technologies.