Click here for a video version of this review: https://youtu.be/IQRAkUhoQUg Michael Moore has taken on a number of subjects over the years, and his latest project is to add his name to _Planet of the Humans_, a documentary directed by Jeff Gibbs, one of his long time collaborators. Timed to release with Earth Day, I expected this to be a pro-green, "we are all bad", "we are the virus" type thing, but it was, in fact, not really that at all. It's a pretty comprehensive take down of the green industry and how for all their big talk about saving the planet, a lot of their practices are the same, if not worse for the earth than the methods they want to do away with. The film also takes aim at certain environmental organisations that when examined are shown to be not so green after all, and in many cases taken over by capitalistic practices. It's a deep dive into the shortcomings of the current green energy sector, the destructive operating practices of the biofuel industry, and how billionaires and multinational corporations have hijacked the environmental movement for their own gain. The hypocrisy of certain companies and people are laid out using archival interviews, documentation, and contemporary footage. Gibbs visits green rallies to see if protesters have an understanding of what they are shouting for, and takes some movement leaders to task over the ambiguous wording of their policies and how what they claim and what they do often do not align at all. I found the content of this to be quite thought provoking. If what is being said here is true, then a lot of the green and environmentally friendly solutions being put forward today to hush the climate change movement are ineffective, and in some cases as harmful or more harmful than current practices. If anything this should be a trigger for people to do some actual research of their own to see if the thing they are shouting for in the street is in fact something that is a viable solution, and not just some window dressed thing from yet another corporation ready to cash in on the buzzwords people chase. This is readily available for free on Michael Moore's YouTube channel, and will definitely get your brain cells working.
The chronic shortage of housing in Central Havana has pushed the city upwards, where life spills out onto the rooftops. Resilient and remarkable, these rooftop dwellers have a privileged point of view on a society in the process of major transformation.
Fordlandia Malaise is a film about the memory and the present of Fordlandia, the company town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rain forest in 1928. His aim was to break the British rubber monopoly and produce this material in Brazil for his car production in the United States. Today, the remains of construction testify to the scale of the failure of this neocolonialist endeavor that lasted less than a decade. Nowadays, Fordlandia is a space suspended between times, between the 20th and 21st centuries, between utopia and dystopia, between visibility and invisibility: architectural buildings of steel, glass, and masonry still remain in use while traces of indigenous life left no marks on the ground.
An environmental account of Henry Ford’s Amazon experience decades after its failure. The story addressed by the film begins in 1927, when the Ford Motor Company attempted to establish rubber plantations on the Tapajós River, a primary tributary of the Amazon. This film addresses the recent transition from failed rubber to successful soybean cultivation for export, and its implication for land usage.
For consumers, bananas are a delicious and nutritious start to the day, a healthy snack and a fixture in our fruit bowls. For millions of residents in the banana lands, the production of bananas means social upheaval, violence and pesticide poisoning. Banana Land explores the origins of these disparate realities, and opens the conversation on how workers, producers and consumers can address this disconnect.
A man that is a stranger, is an incredibly easy man to hate. However, walking in a stranger’s shoes, even for a short while, can transform a perceived adversary into an ally. Power is found in coming to know our neighbor’s hearts. For in the darkness of ignorance, enemies are made and wars are waged, but in the light of understanding, family extends beyond blood lines and legacies of hatred crumble.
A feature length Marxist documentary looking at 20th Century fascism, early English settler colonialism in the Americas and the prospects of a contemporary neofascism. The film focuses on the political economy of these forms, drawing on Rajani Palme Dutt's view that fascism represented an organisation of capitalist decay, to illustrate the various different laws of motion which condition the development of reactionary political movements.
In the United States of America, lobbyists, corporations and billionaires invest millions of dollars to ensure that a suitable candidate, one inclined to support their personal ambitions and economic projects, wins an election, which inevitably affects everything, from the selection of local officials to presidential elections, creates countless conflicts of interest and undermines what supposedly used to be a model democracy.
A magic realist fable about invisible elves, financial collapse and the surprising power of belief, told through the story of an Icelandic woman - a real life Lorax who speaks on behalf of nature under threat.
Concerning Violence is based on newly discovered, powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.