Documentaries

This section contains posts featuring interesting full-length documentaries available online. The views expressed in these documentaries, as well as the credit and copyright, in each case belongs exclusively to the filmmaker(s) and/or producer(s).

Do the Math (documentary)

July 20, 2013
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Bill McKibben is one of the greatest environmental writers and activists of our time. In 1989 he wrote The End of Nature, which is considered by many to be the first book on global warming written for a general audience. Since then he has written countless articles, given hundreds if not thousands of public lectures, and is the main organizer of the 350.org movement to solve the climate crisis. One year ago McKibben published an influential article in Rolling Stone magazine entitled “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” The thesis of the article is that there are three significant numbers that everyone needs…

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Propaganda (documentary)

July 6, 2013
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The film “Propaganda” purports to be a film smuggled out of North Korea. The narrator claims that she was approached, while on holiday in South Korea, by two alleged North Korean defectors, who presented her with a DVD originating from North Korea, asking her to translate it and upload it to the internet. The film features a surprisingly accurate analysis of contemporary western media and society. It features quotes from many well-respected intellectuals and manages to connect the dots in a very clear fashion. It does not falsify information or statistics or take any text, audio, or video material out of…

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HOME (documentary)

May 18, 2013
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HOME is a documentary that highlights how human activities are altering planet earth. It’s a direct, and at times emotional, appeal to viewers to wake up and pay attention to what is going on around them. It is filled with stunning  and disturbing footage from around the globe. But it’s not all doom and globe. The film ends with uplifting scenes and information on some of the positive changes that are taking place all around the world today and ways in which individuals can act, as citizens and consumers, to avert catastrophe.  Video embedding has been disabled by request, but…

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Born Rich (documentary)

May 17, 2013
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As the rich get richer, their children live lives of abundance. One wealthy American family decided to make this point perfectly clear by naming their son “Lavish.”  Considering his behavior, though, perhaps the parents should have named him “Obnoxious” instead: he  openly boasts about his wealth on his instagram account (eloquently named “itslavishbitch“), he uses gold-plated staples, and shows off flying around the world with his family’s private jet. Lavish is just one of a growing number of insanely wealthy teenagers who are, contrary to their rather secretive plutocrat parents, not shy to show off their assets. These kids grow…

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Garbage Warrior (documentary)

October 12, 2012
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Michael Reynolds is a true maverick; he sees humanity marching toward the edge of a cliff and he’s not willing to go along with the crowd. Instead he uses his skills as a trained architect to show people that there is another, better way of living, one which is sustainable, ecologically beneficial, and 100 percent self-supporting. He builds homes–even entire communities–that are completely off the energy grid, collect water from rainfall, recycle waste, and are made from mostly garbage and recycled materials. It’s called “Earthship Biotecture” and it may very well be the most profound and practical solution to the pressing environmental challenges…

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American Radical: the trials of Norman Finkelstein (documentary)

October 9, 2012
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The official description of this 2009 documentary reads as follows: A devoted son of Holocaust survivors and ardent critic of Israeli foreign policy, the polarizing American political scientist and author Norman Finkelstein has been called a lunatic and self-hating Jew by some, and an inspirational revolutionary by others. Uncompromising even in the face of his denial of tenure at DePaul University, Finkelstein is revealed as a complex, politically isolated figure who puts the pursuit of justice above the security of his academic career. Exploring the difficult and deeply-felt issues at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, American Radical is the…

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Sex, Lies and Julian Assange (documentary)

October 6, 2012
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Julian Assange and Wikileaks continue to be popular topics for the media, although  most of the media coverage is either biased or superficial. Sex, Lies and Julian Assange, reported by Andrew Fowler and presented by Kerry O’Brien, is an exception to this trend. In the brief space of 43 minutes, the investigative documentary revisits the advent of Wikileaks and the controversy surrounding its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Through well-selected interviews and detailed research, especially on the sexual offence allegations in Sweden, the documentary presents the story of Wikileaks and Julian Assange in a remarkably clear, unbiased way. It states what the mainstream…

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Catastroika: privatization goes public (documentary)

May 27, 2012
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With its on-going “debt crisis” Greece has emerged as a target for economic “solutions testing.” So far austerity and large-scale privatization seem to be the favored  treatment, as prescribed by the putative economic experts–the IMF and the EU banking sector.  In June 2011 Democracy Now hosted a debate with Hara Kouki and Costas Panayotakis, discussing the imposed economic measurements that triggered widespread protest throughout Greece and led to ridiculous new levels of privatization, such as the Greek police force renting out their officers and helicopters to private individuals. And a related documentary, “Catastroika: privatization goes public,” was recently released, analyzing the transfer…

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I am Fishead (Documentary)

March 23, 2012
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Official movie description:  how psychopaths and antidepressants influence our society: a provocative snapshot of the world we live in. It is a well-known fact that our society is structured like a pyramid. The very few people at the top create conditions for the majority below. Who are these people? Can we blame them for the problems our society faces today? Guided by the saying “A fish rots from the head,” the movie sets out to follow that fishy odor. What they found out is that people at the top are more likely to be psychopaths than the rest of us.…

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The Crisis of Civilization (documentary)

March 21, 2012
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The Crisis of Civilization is a documentary feature film investigating how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system. Weaving together archival film footage and animations, film-maker Dean Puckett, animator Lucca Benney and international security analyst Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, offer a stunning wake-up call proving that ‘another world’ is not merely possible, but on its way. The film consists of seven parts which explore the interconnected dynamic of global crises of Climate Catastrophe; Peak Energy; Peak Food; Economic Instability; International Terrorism; and the Militarization…

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KONY 2012

March 7, 2012
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KONY 2012 is a short, powerful, and highly controversial film allegedly made to draw attention to the heinous crimes of Joseph Kony and to mobilize people around the world to do what they can to help bring this monster of a human to justice. For a brief moment, the film became an internet sensation and catapulted its director, Jason Russell to fame, until articles like this one from Adam Branch surfaced, accusing Russell of dangerous ignorance and turning his fame into global notoriety.   

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Video: Everything is a Remix

February 24, 2012
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The documentary Everything is a Remix, produced by Kirby Ferguson, explores the idea that no idea is original. Ferguson argues that essentially all forms of creativity just remix existing ideas. In his words: Remixing is a folk art but the techniques are the same ones used at any level of creation: copy, transform, and combine.  He defines “remix” as “social evolution.” It’s similar to standard evolutionary theory, but instead of genes, it’s memes that are being “copied, transformed and combined.” This cultural development occurs through ideas, behaviors and skills being constantly used and reused. Just like the evolution of beings and species,…

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Video: Poor America

February 17, 2012
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While it is by some criteria the richest country on the planet, the US now has 1.5 million children without a home, 50 million people without health insurance, and growing communities of people living in the sewers underneath its glittering cities. This short documentary called Poor America, produced by the BBC, is a revealing, disturbing, but refreshingly frank look at just how bad times are in the US.  

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Video: The Story of Broke

February 16, 2012
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Annie Leonard has done it again. The Story of Broke is a nice follow-up video to her massive hit the Story of Stuff. It focuses on the economic choices that sustain the dinosaur economy and the political choices people have to create a sustainable future. She has a real talent for taking a complex issue, boiling it down to its essentials, and presenting it in a lively and entertaining fashion. You can watch the Story of Broke either on her website or here.  

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Video: Meat the Truth

February 3, 2012
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Meat the Truth is a documentary that connects global warming with animal rights and vegetarianism. This from the website for the film: Did you know that transport makes up 13% of global greenhouse gases? No wonder we’re encouraged to drive less! So what about animal agriculture? It turns out livestock production makes up a whopping 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s right — livestock production is responsible for more greenhouse gases than every single car, bus, train, plane, tractor and scooter put together! So why didn’t Gore ask us to eat less meat..? Enter ‘Meat The Truth’, a new documentary revealing the startling…

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Video: Capitalism is the Crisis

February 2, 2012
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This description for Capitalism is the Crisis comes from the website for the film: The 2008 “financial crisis” in the United States was a systemic fraud in which the wealthy finance capitalists stole trillions of public dollars. No one was jailed for this crime, the largest theft of public money in history. Instead, the rich forced working people across the globe to pay for their “crisis” through punitive “austerity” programs that gutted public services and repealed workers’ rights. Austerity was named “Word of the Year” for 2010. This documentary explains the nature of capitalist crisis, visits the protests against austerity measures, and…

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Video: Earthlings

February 1, 2012
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Earthlings is considered by many to be the best animal rights film ever made. The website for the film contains quotes of praise from a number of animal rights activists, including the god-father of the movement, Peter Singer, who has apparently said “If I could make everyone in the world see one film, I’d make them see Earthlings.” The film can be viewed on-line for free here.

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Video: A Farm for the Future

August 9, 2011
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The BBC describes the documentary A Farm for the Future as follows: Wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family’s farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future, and discovers that nature holds the key. With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family’s wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land. But last year’s high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just…

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