Skint: The Truth About Britain's Broken Economy (2024)

Roger & Me

A documentary about the closure of General Motors' plant at Flint, Michigan, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs. Details the attempts of filmmaker Michael Moore to get an interview with GM CEO Roger Smith.

Master of the Universe

He was one of Germany's leading investment experts with an income of several million Euros per day. Now, he sits on one of the upper floors of an empty bank building in the middle of Frankfurt, overlooking a skyline of glass and steel. And talks. In an extended mix of a monologue and an in-depth interview, which is as frightening as it is fascinating, he shares his inside knowledge from a megalomaniac parallel world where illusions are the market's hardest currency. Marc Bauder's 'Master of the Universe' is based on meticulous research and provides us with geniune insight into the notoriously secretive and self-protective 'universe' of which our nameless protagonist experiences himself a master. Where other films on the financial meltdown have focused on the epic nature of larger-than-life business, Bauder probes the mentality that made it possible in the first place. A tense drama where psychology meets finance - two things that are more closely linked than you would like to believe.

Enterprise: A Documentary Film

Film sponsored by the Troy, New York–based manufacturer of Arrow shirts to explain its reasons for moving its business down south. The true story of how two World War II veterans invited the company to occupy an industrial plant that they had built in the hope of revitalizing Buchanan, Georgia. Five hundred residents signed a pledge stating that they were willing to work in the new factory. Cluett, Peabody & Co. eventually employed one-third of the townspeople.

Collapse

From the acclaimed director of American Movie, the documentary follows former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter Michael Ruppert. He recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out his apocalyptic vision of the future, spanning the crises in economics, energy, environment and more.

Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world).

From the Kill Pen

Horse slaughter is more than inhumane. It's big business.

La saga du rail

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Maxed Out

Maxed Out takes us on a journey deep inside the American debt-style, where everything seems okay as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. Sure, most of us may have that sinking feeling that something isn't quite right, but we're told not to worry. After all, there's always more credit!

The Shock Doctrine

An investigation of "disaster capitalism", based on Naomi Klein's proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.

Česká cesta

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Manufactured Landscapes

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.

In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts

Emmy-winning journalist Danny Schechter investigates America's mounting debt crisis in this latest hard-hitting expose. The film reveals the unknown cabal of credit card companies, lobbyists, media conglomerates and the Bush administration itself who have colluded to deregulate the lending industry, ensuring that a culture of credit dependency can flourish. Schechter exposes the hidden financial and political complex that allows the lowest wage earners to indebt themselves so heavily that even house repossessions are commonplace.

General Hercules

In June 1893, European prospectors unlawfully took claim to ‘The Golden Mile’ on Aboriginal land. In little over a hundred years the natural landscape has been transformed into the industrial hellscape of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. As incumbent Mayor John Bowler starts to campaign for a second term, independent prospector John ‘General Hercules’ Katahanas decides to run against him on an anti-corruption ticket. What starts out as a quirky David-vs-Goliath political battle, unravels into a portrait of a man, a town and a country sent mad by the timeless cycles of exploitation, racism and greed.

TGV, la réussite française

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Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

A documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to its fall.

The Corporation

Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.

Freakonomics

Some of the world's most innovative documentary filmmakers will explore the hidden side of everything.

Why Plastic: Coca Cola/American Plastic

Whales beached after ingesting plastic, oceans soiled: a quarter of marine waste today comes from cans and plastic bottles. The drinks industry produces 470 billion single-use bottles each year, 25% of which come from Coca-Cola. Although the world's largest soft drink producer has set ambitious targets to prevent this environmental pollution, it has often failed to do so. In the 1950s, the company sold its drink exclusively in returnable glass bottles, which it washed and refilled. Two decades later, these were replaced by disposable bottles - a decision whose devastating effects still linger.

The Cost of Cobalt

In the cobalt mining areas of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), babies are being born with horrific birth defects. Scientists and doctors are finding increasing evidence of environmental pollution from industrial mining which, they believe, may be the cause of a range of malformations from cleft palate to some so serious the baby is stillborn. More than 60% of the world’s reserves of cobalt are in the DRC and this mineral is essential for the production of electric car batteries, which may be the key to reducing carbon emissions and to slowing climate change. In The Cost of Cobalt we meet the doctors treating the children affected and the scientists who are measuring the pollution. Cobalt may be part of the global solution to climate change, but is it right that Congo’s next generation pay the price with their health? Many are hoping that the more the world understands their plight, the more pressure will be put on the industry here to clean up its act.

Inside Job

A film that exposes the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, Inside Job traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.

Plunder: The Crime of Our Time

Plunder: The Crime of Our Time is a hard-hitting investigative film by Danny Schechter. The "News Dissector" explores how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity uncovering the connection between the collapse of the housing market and the economic catastrophe that followed.

The One Percent

Jamie Johnson takes the exploration of wealth that he began in Born Rich one step further. The One Percent, refers to the tiny percentage of Americans who control nearly half the wealth of the U.S. Johnson's thesis is that this wealth in the hands of so few people is a danger to our very way of life.

Finding the Money

FINDING THE MONEY follows economist Stephanie Kelton on a journey through Modern Money Theory or “MMT”. Kelton provocatively asserts the National Debt Clock that ticks ominously upwards in New York City is not actually a debt for us taxpayers at all, nor a burden for our grandchildren to pay back. Instead, Kelton describes the national debt as simply a historical record of the number of dollars created by the US federal government currently being held in pockets, as assets, by the rest of us. MMT bursts into the media with journalists asking, “Have we been thinking about how the government spends money, all wrong?” But top economists from across the political spectrum condemn the theory as “voodoo economics”, “crazy” and “a crackpot theory”. FINDING THE MONEY traces the conflict all the way back to the story we tell about money, injecting new hope and empowering countries around the world to tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century: from climate change to inequality.

Bathtubs Over Broadway

When he started as a comedy writer for the Late Show with David Letterman, Steve Young had few interests and not many friends outside of his day job. But while gathering material for a segment on the show, Steve stumbled onto a few vintage record albums that would change his life forever.

Detropia

Detroit’s story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century – the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim Crow; the rise of manufacturing and the middle class; the love affair with automobiles; the flowering of the American dream; and now… the collapse of the economy and the fading American mythos.

We’re Not Broke

An exposé on how the government has allow U.S. corporations to avoid paying taxes and the growing wave of discontent that it has fostered.

Surviving Progress

Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.

Langhe Doc

Three characters, three stories of "heretics", three food producers who think in a different way to describe the transformation of our Country in what in “Langhe Doc” Giorgio Bocca calls the Italy of warehouses. We're in Langhe, a unique territory, universally recognized as one of the most beautiful places in Italy, fresh candidate for Unesco World Heritage but afflicted by uncontrolled economic development, urbanization, overbuilding, abandonment of the less profitable areas. Those of Maria Theresa, Silvio and Mauro are stories of people who have insight into a future they do not like and have chosen to refuse it. Their challenges are still open, they're not yet fully met and perhaps they never will: these heretics move in one direction, while the world moves in another, quite the opposite one.

Empire City

A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.

Classic British Cars: Made in Coventry

Find out how the cars were crafted and discover the secret family stories behind the most famous marques including Riley, Standard, Triumph and Jaguar. Legendary racers Rosemary Smith, Pat Quinn and Norman Dewis share their memories of competing Coventry’s cars in some of the world’s most dangerous motorsport events. And, meet the people passionate about preserving the city’s extraordinary motoring heritage.

Cybersocialism: Project Cybersyn & The CIA Coup in Chile

A documentary on the rise and fall of Project Cybersyn, an attempt at a computer-managed centralized economy undertaken in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende.

Princes of the Yen

Set in 20th Century Japan the documentary explores the role and power of Central Banks and how they can be used to change a country's economic political and social structures A documentary adaption off the book by Professor Richard Werner.

The Flaw

The story of the credit bubble that caused the financial crash. Through interviews with some of the world's leading economists, including housing expert Robert Shiller, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and economic historian Louis Hyman, as well as Wall Street insiders and victims of the crash including Ed Andrews - a former economics correspondent for The New York Times who found himself facing foreclosure - and Andrew Luan, once a bond trader at Deutsche Bank now running his own Wall Street tour guide business, the film presents an original and compelling account of the toxic combination of forces that nearly destroyed the world economy.

The True Cost

Film from Andrew Morgan. The True Cost is a documentary film exploring the impact of fashion on people and the planet.

Death By China

In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization with the strong support of a Democratic President and Republican Congress. Before the ink was dry on this free trade agreement, China began flooding U.S. markets with illegally subsidized exports while the big multinational companies that had lobbied heavily for the agreement rapidly accelerated the off shoring of American jobs to China. Today, as a result of the biggest shell game in American history, China has stolen millions of our jobs, corporate profits are soaring, and we now owe over $3 trillion to the world's largest totalitarian nation. This film is about how that happened... and why the best jobs program for America is trade reform with China.

The Hollow Men

The 'stolen' insider emails that informed Nicky Hager's best-selling account of National's 2005 election campaign return in Alister Barry's (Someone Else's Country) new film - just in time to caution us against campaigning politicians in 2008. Addressing each other like schoolboy Machiavellis, party leader Don Brash and his advisors spelled out how they'd copy the big boys in Australia and the US in order to win the votes of people who'd never support the kind of policies such men are widely presumed to represent. The dividing and conquering began at Orewa.