The global village Videos

We feed the world

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:46:00 +0100

Directed by Erwin Wagenhofer
Playing time: 96 min
Every day in Vienna the amount of unsold bread sent back to be disposed of is enough to supply Austria's second-largest city, Graz. Around 350,000 hectares of agricultural land, above all in Latin America, are dedicated to the cultivation of soybeans to feed Austria's livestock while one quarter of the local population starves. Every European eats ten kilograms a year of artificially irrigated greenhouse vegetables from southern Spain, with water shortages the result.

In WE FEED THE WORLD, Austrian filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer traces the origins of the food we eat. His journey takes him to France, Spain, Romania, Switzerland, Brazil and back to Austria.

Leading us through the film is an interview with Jean Ziegler, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

WE FEED THE WORLD is a film about food and globalisation, fishermen and farmers, long-distance lorry drivers and high-powered corporate executives, the flow of goods and cash flow–a film about scarcity amid plenty. With its unforgettable images, the film provides insight into the production of our food and answers the question what world hunger has to do with us .

Interviewed are not only fishermen, farmers, agronomists, biologists and the UN's Jean Ziegler, but also the director of production at Pioneer, the world's largest seed company, as well as Peter Brabeck, Chairman and CEO of Nestlé International, the largest food company in the world.

English / Spanish version:

The Trap (Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Sun, 9 Nov 2008 22:32:00 +0100

Directed by Adam Curtis
Playing time: 60 min
The final program of Curtis' 2007 series focuses on the concepts of positive and negative liberty introduced in the 1950s by Isaiah Berlin. Curtis briefly explains how negative liberty could be defined as freedom from coercion and positive liberty as the opportunity to strive to fulfill one's potential. Tony Blair read Berlin's essays on the topic and wrote to him in the late 1990s, arguing that positive and negative liberty could be mutually compatible. He never received a reply, as Berlin was on his death bed.

The program begins with a description of the Two Concepts of Liberty, reviewing Berlin's opinion that, since it lacked coercion, negative liberty was the 'safer' of the two. Curtis then explains how many political groups who sought their vision of freedom ended up using violence to achieve it.

Curtis looks at the neo-conservative agenda of the 1980s which argued that violence would sometimes be necessary to achieve their goals, except they wished to spread what they described as democracy. Curtis argued, although the version of society espoused by the neo-conservatives made some concessions towards freedom, it did not offer true freedom.

The neo-conservatives took a strong line against the Sandinistas—a political group in Nicaragua—who Reagan argued were accepting help from the Soviets and posed a real threat to American security. The truth was that the Sandinistas posed no real military threat to the U.S., and a disinformation campaign was started against them painting them as accessories of the Soviets. The Contras, who were a proxy army fighting against the Sandinistas, were—according to U.S. propaganda—valiantly fighting against the evil of Communism. In reality, argues Curtis, they were using all manner of techniques, including the torture, rape and murder of civilians. Contras were known to use CIA planes for drug runnings and the CIA also helped fund the Contras by illegally selling arms to the Iranians. Reagan´s policies of promoting democracy did aust U.S. friendly dictators Augusto Pinochet and Ferdinand Marcos via elections.

However such policies did not always result in the achievement of neo-conservative aims and occasionally threw up genuine surprises. Curtis examined the Western-backed government of the Shah in Iran, and how the mixing of Sartre's positive libertarian ideals with Shia religious philosophy led to the revolution which overthrew it. Having previously been a meek philosophy of acceptance of the social order, in the minds of revolutionaries such as Ali Shariati and Ayatollah Khomeini, Revolutionary Shia Islam became a meaningful force to overthrow tyranny.

The program reviews the Blair government and its role in achieving its vision of a stable society. Curtis argues that the Blair government created the opposite of freedom, in that the type of liberty it had engendered wholly lacked any kind of meaning. Its military intervention in Iraq had provoked terrorist actions in the UK and these terrorist actions were in turn used to justify restrictions of liberty.

English version:

The Trap (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Sun, 9 Nov 2008 22:27:00 +0100

Directed by Adam Curtis
Playing time: 60 min
The second episode reiterates many of the ideas of the first, but develops the theme that the drugs such as Prozac and lists of psychological symptoms which might indicate anxiety or depression were being used to normalize behavior and make humans behave more predictably, like machines. This was not presented as a conspiracy theory, but as a logical (although unpredicted) outcome of market-driven self-diagnosis by checklist, discussed in the previous program.

The program shows that people with standard mood fluctuations diagnose themselves as abnormal. They then present themselves at psychiatrist's offices, fulfilled the diagnostic criteria without offering personal histories, and were medicated. The alleged result was that vast numbers of Western people have had their behavior modified by SSRI drugs without any strict medical necessity.

Curtis explains how, with the "robotic" description of humankind apparently validated by geneticists, the game theory systems gained even more hold over society's engineers.

Game theory worked its way into civil service and the belief came about that those stating they are working in government to help public good should be fired as they must be lying. Only those who worked based on meeting targets with incentives should be rewarded. But people cheated the faulty system sometimes at the expense of safety of others as in the case of hospitals.

The program describes how the Clinton administration gave in to market theorists in the U.S. and how New Labour in the UK decided to measure and provide targets for everything it could including several things that are unmeasurable. This created a government that was sacrificing the greater good to appease immediate and often trivial desires of focus groups.

English version:

The Trap (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Sun, 9 Nov 2008 22:01:00 +0100

Directed by Adam Curtis
Playing time: 60 min
In this episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory used during the Cold War and the way in which its mathematical models of human behavior filtered into economic thought.

The program traces the development of game theory with particular reference to the work of John Nash (famous from "Beautiful Mind"), who believed that all humans were inherently suspicious and selfish creatures that strategized constantly. Using this as his first premise, Nash constructed logically consistent and mathematically verifiable models, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Economics. He invented system games reflecting his beliefs about human behavior, including one called "So Long Sucker---F*ck Your Buddy", in which the only way to win was to betray your playing partner, and it is from this game that the episode's title is taken. These games were internally coherent and worked correctly as long as the players obeyed the ground rules that they should behave selfishly and try to outwit their opponents, but when RAND's analysts tried the games on their own secretaries, they instead chose not to betray each other, but to cooperate every time. This did not, in the eyes of the analysts, discredit the models, but instead proved that the secretaries were unfit subjects.

What was not known at the time was that Nash was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and, as a result, was deeply suspicious of everyone around him—including his colleagues—and was convinced that many were involved in conspiracies against him. It was this mistaken belief that led to his view of people as a whole that formed the basis for his theories. Footage of an older and wiser Nash was shown in which he acknowledges that his paranoid views of other people at the time were false.

Curtis examines how game theory was used to create the USA's nuclear strategy during the Cold War. Because no nuclear war occurred, it was believed that game theory had been correct in dictating the creation and maintenance of a massive American nuclear arsenal—because the Soviet Union had not attacked America with its nuclear weapons, the supposed deterrent must have worked and the theories would later be propagated through other segments of society.

English version:

La Hora de los Hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces)

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Wed, 5 Nov 2008 14:03:00 +0100

Directed by Fernando E. Solanas

Playing time: 260 min
The liberation struggles of the 1960s were a fertile seedbed for La hora de los hornos. Independence movements in the colonies and neo-colonies of the Third World, student revolts in the United States and Western Europe, and the brief protest by Czechoslovakians against the dull grey bureaucracy of the Soviet Union were the world context in which Fernando E. Solanas and Octavio Getino's film exploded. Argentina moved closer to a social revolution than it ever had before (or since), and Hora was an important expression of that movement, as well as a pivotal example for cineastes involved in national liberation movements throughout the world.

English version:

Spanish version:

Nablus: Ciudad fantasma

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Tue, 4 Nov 2008 00:35:00 +0100

Directeed by Alberto Arce
Playing time: 30 min
Una visión desde dentro y a pie de calle de lo sucedido en esa ciudad Palestina a lo largo de una semana del mes de agosto del año 2004. La cámara se acerca a la realidad de niños que juegan a ser soldados de un ejército tan solo armado de piedras y razones. En medio de las bombas y los disparos del ejército israelí se establece un diálogo con soldados que parecen a veces más asustados que sus propias víctimas. La cámara, junto a un grupo de paramédicos y activistas internacionales, sigue los pasos del ejército en su registro de la ciudad casa por casa. Al mismo tiempo la presencia internacional actúa como "testigo ocupante" del espacio de impunidad en el que Israel se comporta habitualmente.

Spanish version:

Argentina, The take (La Toma)

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:35:00 +0100

Directed by Avis Lewis y Naomi Klein.
Playing time: 146 min
La película describe el proceso de recuperación de empresas en Argentina por parte de los trabajadores. Con voluntad "subversiva" y "de emocionar" gracias a "una historia humana" en los antípodas del reality show, Klein y Lewis pretenden que La toma dé "un giro de 180 grados al debate sobre la globalización". ¿Cómo? "Presentando alternativas" a una problemática, la de la fuga de capitales y la deslocalización de empresas, capaz de "arrasar un país fronterizo entre el primer y el tercer mundo como Argentina pero que amenaza por igual a Barcelona, Toronto y Caracas".
Lewis admite que se han ocupado fábricas en otros lugares y momentos de la historia, pero destaca del caso argentino "un énfasis nuevo en la democracia de base asamblearia" y el ejemplo de una lucha obrera que sustituye "la tradición de la huelga" por la "insistencia en el derecho y la necesidad de trabajar con dignidad".
Klein puntualiza: "Si en los años 70 la ocupación de fábricas fue fruto de una ideología que iba de la cabeza a los pies, hoy se ha invertido el proceso y la política nace y crece en acciones como la de ocupar no sólo una fábrica, sino una casa, un centro social o --tomados de internet-- un programa de software libre o una canción"

English & Spanish version:

Le monde selon monsanto

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:49:00 +0100

Implantée dans quarante-six pays, Monsanto est devenue le leader mondial des OGM, mais aussi l’une des entreprises les plus controversées de l’histoire industrielle. Depuis sa création en 1901, la firme a accumulé des procès en raison de la toxicité de ses produits, mais se présente aujourd’hui comme une entreprise des « sciences de la vie » convertie aux vertus du développement durable.

A partir de documents inédits, de témoignages de victimes, de scientifiques et d’hommes politiques, « Le monde selon Monsanto » reconstitue la genèse d’un empire industriel qui à grand renfort de mensonges, de collusion avec l’administration américaine, de pressions et de tentatives de corruption est devenu le premier semencier du monde, permettant l’extension planétaire des cultures OGM sans aucun contrôle sérieux de leurs effets sur la nature et la santé humaine !

French version:

The code Linux

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:01:00 +0100

Directed by Hannu Puttonen
Playing time: 60 min
The Code is a Finnish made documentary about Linux from 2001 featuring some of the most influential people of the free software movement.

English version:

Oil smoke and mirrors

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:49:00 +0100

Directed by Ronan Doyle
Playing time: 50 min
"Oil Smoke & Mirrors" offers a sobering critique of our perceived recent history, of our present global circumstances, and of our shared future in light of imminent, under-reported and mis-represented energy production constraints.

Through a series of impressively candid, informed and articulate interviews, this film argues that the bizzare events surrounding the 9/11 attacks, and the equally bizzare prosecution of the so-called "war on terror", can be more credibly understood in the wider context of an imminent and critical divergence between available global oil aupply and and global oil demand.

The picture "Oil, Smoke & Mirrors" paints is one of a tragically hyper-mediated global-political culture, which, for whatever reason, demonstrably disassociates itself from the values it claims to represent.

While the ideas presented in this film can at first seem daunting, it's ultimate assertion is that these challenges can indeed be met and surpassed, if, but only if, we can find the courage to perceive them.

English version:

French version:

Spanish version:

Google, the machine

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 17:51:00 +0100

Directed by Ijsbrand Van Veelen

Playing time: 47 min
A look inside Google, The Machine

English version:

The Elephant Emperor and Butterfly Tree

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:40:00 +0200

Directed by BBC.
Playing time: 48 min

A startling look at the two most destructive animals in South Africa and how their habits are a story of life, death and cooperation.

The elephant, the Emperor Moth and the Mopane tree form the backbone of life on the African plains. This delicate ecological triangle determines the livelihood of all the other creatures in its system.

The Mopane tree is under attack from rampaging elephants, but even more damaging is the Mopane worm, the caterpillar of the beautiful Emperor Moth. They gather in hoards and strip the trees of their leaves in minutes. But the worms are food for a host of animals - even humans - and the trees are home to a number of unpleasant creatures. What holds the delicate balance in check?

English version:

Super rich: The greed game

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:17:00 +0200

Directed by Robert Peston.
Playing time: 58 min
As the credit crunch bites and a global economic crisis threatens, Robert Peston reveals how the super-rich have made their fortunes, and the rest of us are picking up the bill.

English version:

Face to Face

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:27:00 +0200

Directed by Thomas Aubry and Adria Fernandez.
Playing time: 28 min

“Face to Face” it is a documentary talking about the comun unknowledge of the two cultures, the arab and the jewish who, even if they share the same land, have almost any contact.

Trough the Givat Haviva association who promote peace between Palestiniens and Israelies in Israel, Face to Face try to open mind of people about knowing the others moving further the stereotypes made by medias, nationalities, races or religions.

English / Spanish version:

Grizzly Man

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:48:00 +0200

Directed by Werner Herzog.

Timothy Treadwell spent thirteen summers in Katmai National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Over time, he believed he was trusted by the bears, who would allow him to approach them, and sometimes even touch them. Treadwell was repeatedly warned by park officials that his interaction with the bears was unsafe to both him and to the bears.
"At best he's misguided," Deb Liggett, superintendent at Katmai and Lake Clark national parks, told the Anchorage Daily News in 2001.
"At worst, he's dangerous. If Timothy models unsafe behavior, that ultimately puts bears and other visitors at risk." Treadwell filmed his exploits, and used the films to raise public awareness of the problems faced by bears in North America. In 2003, at the end of his thirteenth visit, he and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were attacked, killed, and eaten by a bear.

Spanish version:

Looking for the Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:13:00 +0200

Directed by Rodrigo Vazquez.
Che Guevara died in Southern Bolivia while trying to ignite the sparks of revolution throughout South America. His death at the hands of Bolivian Rangers trained and financed by the US Government, marked the beginning of the cocaine era in Bolivia. Forty years later and under pressure from the masses who gave him a clear mandate, the first indigenous President Evo Morales (an ex-coca leaf farmer) is promising to continue the revolution. He has nationalised the oil industry and passed laws on Agrarian reform. Despite the revolutionary-sounding election speeches and campaign iconography that accompanied his landslide victory, on closer inspection it emerges that the old system is pretty much alive inside the new one. Corruption, nepotism and old-fashioned populism are at the core of this movement.
The more Morales does to create employment, the more the landowners conspire against him and paralyse Bolivia’s economy. As a result, no jobs are created and the pressure from the poor increases. The cycle of tension threatens to crush both the country and the indigenous revolution. Looking for the Revolution is about the dynamics of that tension as witnessed by the characters of the film - the struggle for power between landowners and the indigenous movement, and the continuation of a revolution Morales-style, started so long ago.

English version:

Rize

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:25:00 +0200

Directed by David LaChapelle.
Playing time: 87 min

Rize is a documentary which follows an interview schedule of two related dancing sub-cultures of Los Angeles: clowning and krumping. The first series of interviews develop the idea of clowning, the second series the idea of krumping, the third section of the film depicts a dance battle between clowns and krumpers. An atypical sequence in the film uses montage to compare 1960s era anthropological films of African dance ritual with contemporary clowning and krumping dance maneuvers.

English version:

Bloody Cartoons

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:42:00 +0200

Bloody Cartoons is a documentary about how and why 12 drawings in a Danish provincial paper could whirl a small country into a confrontation with Muslims all over the world. He asks whether respect for Islam combined with the heated response to the cartoons is now leading us towards self-censorship. How tolerant should we be, he wonders, of the intolerant. And what limits should there be, if any, to freedom of speech in a democracy.

The director films in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Qatar, France, Turkey and Denmark, talking to some of the people that played key roles during the cartoon crisis.

English version:

Zeitgeist 2: Addendum

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Wed, 8 Oct 2008 20:12:00 +0200

Directed by Peter Joseph
Playing time: 123 min
'Zeitgeist, The Movie' and 'Zeitgeist: Addendum' were created as Not-for-Profit expressions to communicate what the author felt were highly important social understandings which most humans are generally not aware of. The first film focuses on suppressed historical & modern information about currently dominant social institutions, while also exploring what could be in store for humanity if the power structures at large continue their patterns of self-interest, corruption, and consolidation.

The second film, Zeitgeist: Addendum, attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution. This solution is not based on politics, morality, laws, or any other "establishment" notions of human affairs, but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are and how we align with nature, to which we are a part. The work advocates a new social system which is updated to present day knowledge, highly influenced by the life long work of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project.

English version:

Ring of Power

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Tue, 7 Oct 2008 16:38:00 +0200

Directed by AmenStop Productions
Playing time: 144 min
From the mystery religions of ancient Egypt to the Zionist role in 9/11, "Ring Of Power" unrevises 4000 years of revisionist human history with never - before - seen revelations. "Ring Of Power" puzzles together the pieces of a giant puzzle into one BIG PICTURE documentary series. The Producer is an experienced, award winning documentary filmmaker who, as a child, learned that her father was a member of the secretive cult of Freemasonry. She recalls many arguments between her parents over her father's secret meetings and the exclusion of women from the brotherhood.
The Masonic ring that her father wore had been passed down from father to son over the generations. When she asked her father about the meaning of the letter "G" and the compass and square on his ring, she got no response. As an adult, she decided to investigate. That investigation grew into four years of intensive research into the identity and history of the diabolical globalists who she calls the "Ring Of Power". Their goal is one World Empire and one world ruler.

English version:

The oil factor: Behind the war on terror

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Mon, 6 Oct 2008 15:16:00 +0200

Directed by Free-Will Productions
Playing time: 89 min
After assessing today's dwindling oil reserves and skyrocketing use of oil for fuels, plastics and chemicals, "The Oil Factor" questions the motives for the U.S. wars in the Middle-East and Central Asia where 3/4 of the world's oil and natural gas is located. With exclusive footage shot on location in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the film documents the spiraling violence now engulfing both Iraq and Afghanistan, a country conspicuously absent from the commercial media's news segments. Interviews gathered throughout the Middle-East, Europe and the United States, including a Bechtel executive in Baghdad, also expose who is cashing in on the tens of billions of dollars requested from congress by the current administration of G. W. Bush.

With detailed maps and graphics, The Oil Factor features many experts and personalities such as former Defense Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky, the Project for the New American Century Executive Director Gary Schmitt, Coalition Provisional Authority Chairman Paul Bremer, former Pentagon analyst Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, current Iraqi government official Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim and authors Ahmed Rashid and Michael C. Ruppert.

English version:

The forbidden book

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Sun, 5 Oct 2008 19:00:00 +0200

Directed by Dr. Craig Lampe
Playing time: 61 min
This documentary traces the history of the brave revolutionaries who defied authority to procure and translate "the Forbidden Book": the Bible. Long held in secret by the religious hierarchy, the Bible was used by religious leaders to control ordinary people who could not read it. The video recounts the stories of heroes who risked -- and often lost -- their lives to wrest the Bible from tyranny and make it available to all. Narrated by Biblical scholar Dr. Craig Lampe, the film presents the courageous stories of John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Johannes Gutenberg, and Martin Luther.

English version:

End day

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Sat, 4 Oct 2008 14:45:00 +0200

Directed by BBC
Playing time: 56 min
End Day is a 2005 docu-drama produced by the BBC and aired on the National Geographic Channel, on the TV series, National Geographic Channel Presents, that depicts various doomsday scenarios. The documentary follows the fictional scientist Dr. Howell, played by Glenn Conroy, as he travels from his London hotel room to his laboratory in New York City, and shows how each scenario affects his journey as well as those around him, with various experts providing commentary on that specific disaster as it unfolds.

The following descriptions of the program were released by the BBC:

"Imagine waking up to the last day on Earth..."

"Inspired by the predictions of scientists, End Day creates apocalyptic scenarios that go beyond reality. In a single hour, explore five different fictional disasters, from a giant tsunami hitting New York to a deadly meteorite strike on Berlin."

English version:

Memoria del saqueo

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Thu, 2 Oct 2008 19:18:00 +0200

Directed by Fernando E. Solanas
Playing time: 120 min
Desde los comienzos de la dictadura militar, hace ya veinticinco años, Argentina y su pue-blo han tenido que hacer frente a una de las peores crisis económicas y sociales vividas ja-más por un país en período de paz. Argentina, un país que fue próspero, ha tenido que enfrentarse de forma perió-dica a todos y cada uno de los traumas estigmatizados por la mili-tancia anticapitalista: exorbitantes deudas nacionales, el desalma-do ultraliberalismo, la desenfrenada corrupción política y financiera y el expolio regular de los bienes públicos. Todo ello, con la ayuda de las compañías multinacionales occidentales y la complicidad de los organismos internacionales.
La política de la tierra abrasada, re-presentada por tipos como Carlos Menem, ha conducido al país a un increíble cataclismo de hambre, enfermedad y sacrificio de vidas humanas: un genocidio social.
"Memoria del saqueo" saca a relucir los mecanismos que han provocado esta catástrofe. Esta película está dedicada a todos aquellos que resisten con dignidad y coraje. Es inaceptable dejar que un pueblo vaya sumiéndose poco a poco en la pobreza. Pero todavía es más inaceptable dejar que la pobre-za se establezca, cuando dicho proceso ya se había vaticinado. Y lo que es peor aún, permitir que la pobreza se instale en una tierra tan rica en recursos.

Spanish version (Part 1):

Spanish version (Part 2): Here

Zeitgeist

noreply@blogger.com (Thom) — Thu, 2 Oct 2008 16:09:00 +0200

Produced by Peter Joseph
Playing time: 120 min
Zeitgeist, the Movie is a 2007 documentary film, about the Jesus myth hypothesis, the attacks of 9/11, and the Federal Reserve Bank as well as a number of conspiracy theories related to those three main topics. It was released free online via Google Video in June of 2007. A remastered version was presented as a global premiere on November 10, 2007 at the 4th Annual Artivist Film Festival & Artivist Awards. The film has attracted significant public interest.

English & Spanish version:

French version: