Tag Archives: Abuse

Beyond Men and Masculinity

This is not a film about men versus women. Beyond Men and Masculinity explores how men see themselves, how they relate to the people they say they care about and how the personal impacts the political.

What happens when men are taught to disconnect from their feelings in the name of being strong and independent? What is the link between shame and male violence?
Why do we find it hard to value kindness and compassion in men? And what role do women play in defining what is expected from men and masculinity?

A discussion of these sometimes uncomfortable questions is now more crucial than ever. From the therapy room to the political battlefield, this provocative film offers a clear insight into why we must look beyond traditional definitions of men and masculinity.

To Rent or Buy click Here.

Mind Forward

The symbiosis of the brain / mind and artificial intelligence will give rise to a new humanity, a kind of ´super-humanity´.

Brain-machine communication will allow that the cognitive capabilities of human beings will be enhanced, giving rise to the first augmented humans. Connected brains will lead to powerful synthetic telepathy technologies making it possible to not only to read other person’s thoughts, but also manipulate them. But where what are the potential benefits and pitfalls of these new technologies?

Neuro – technologies are about to cause a radical social shift that will change our understanding of the inner self and our very conception of reality. Neuro – rights will be foremost, necessitating regulations that guarantee the privacy of our conscious or even subconscious thoughts.

Mind Forward explores the frontiers of this brave new world.

Non Western

We join Thaddeus and Nanci, a Native / Non Native Montanan couple, in the lead up to their wedding, as they face their biggest challenge yet. Thaddeus wants Nanci to convert to his Cheyenne way of life even if it forces Nanci into a subordinate role.

Both Nanci and Thaddeus were adopted as teenagers by families with different ethnicities: Thaddeus by a white Christian family, and Nanci by the Lakota tribe. It’s no coincidence they have sought shared experience and understanding in one another.

Thaddeus believes in returning to his Cheyenne culture and through running sweats he finds peace from the PTSD he suffers. Nanci wants to please him, to find a balance between life in the modern world and her Native traditions even if that means denying her independence.

Under the strain of trying to co-habit and survive together, we see the cracks in their values showing through. Cracks which reveal not just the trauma they suffered growing up, but the chain of oppression endemic in Montana.

The Internet of Everything

The Internet is invading all aspects of your life. No longer confined to your computer or your phone, the Internet is now in garbage cans, refrigerators, and the infrastructure of our cities. The future will either be a surveillance nightmare or an eco-utopia, the outcome determined by startups in Silicon Valley and Shenzhen.

The Internet of Everything captures our present moment, when both futures still seem possible. 

Brett Gaylor – a reformed techno-utopian who works in the tech industry – will be your guide.

His award winning documentaries Rip! A Remix Manifesto and Do Not Track have mapped the public’s relationship with the Internet; first fascination and obsession, then growing discomfort around the abuse of our private information, and now a sense of confusion and dread.  If the pace of change and lack of agency is confusing for a techie like Brett, everyone else is probably feeling bewildered, too.

But now, with the connecting of the physical world into the “Internet of Things”, the stakes have been raised – it’s no longer just the abstractions of cyberspace that are spinning out of control, but instead our homes, our bodies and our cities that are being transformed.

It’s a fast, funny and enlightening take on the bewildering change the Internet has wrought. The Internet of Everything embraces the “tech-lash” while reflecting on the big picture of a world where we are all connected.

 

A five webisode miniseries is also available comprising new, complementary stories

 

Episode 1 – Screen time

It’s easy to point our finger at kids for too much screen time — we’ve all laughed at memes of children on their phones at the museum, in the park, or on a camping trip… but as adults, are we any better?

At his home in Victoria, B.C., reformed techno-utopian Brett Gaylor, like most parents, is in a constant battle between his kids and screens. But what happens when the internet moves beyond the screen and into the world around us? With innumerable connected objects and spaces, depending on how you see it, we’re either living in a futuristic utopia or a nightmarish surveillance state. Every connected product comes with a trade-off — from the carbon footprint of smart assistants, to the complicated health insurance implications of wearables, or safety concerns around self-driving cars.

 

Episode 2 – Alexa, Save the Planet

Ever wondered how much energy is needed for Alexa to play that 90s dance hits playlist you love so much? More than you think.

There are already 66 million smart assistants in operation in the United States alone, and the number is growing daily. But what are we trading for the convenience of turning the lights on with our voice? Director Brett Gaylor approaches the question from a child’s point of view with his daughter Layla as they grapple to understand the enormous amount of energy and processing power involved in the machine learning powering Alexa. In parallel, Amazon’s corporate carbon footprint continues to grow, between the massive amount of non-renewable energy used to power their web services, or the ongoing pollution from transport emissions. In 2018, staff protests prompt shareholders to confront management, demanding a plan for climate change and a reduction of the company’s dependence on fossil fuels.

 

Episode 3 – In Good Hands

It’s easy to get sucked into the cute graphics of your health monitoring app, but the data captured by your FitBit or smart watch is being used for much more than simply encouraging you to up your step count.

Director Brett Gaylor travels to the outskirts of Paris where four young roommates try out fitness trackers for the first time, allowing him to monitor their health data. He finds out much more about their lives than they were expecting — what time they go to bed, when they go to the convenience store for a late night snack, and who’s sleeping with whom. This is creepy enough in and of itself, but it gets worse when the data falls into the hands of third parties. Health Insurance companies and corporate “wellness” programs are using health data obtained from fitness trackers to make decisions about how much your health insurance should cost, or whether or not they will insure you at all.

 

Episode 4 – Take the Wheel

The fantasy of stepping into a self-driving car and kicking back to read, nap or work until you arrive at your destination has universal appeal. But are the cars, or the cities in which we plan to let them loose, up to the task?

Director Brett Gaylor travels to northern France where the company TEQMO is testing self-driving cars in common accident scenarios, such as getting cut-off at an intersection. Let’s just say, they still have some testing to do. On the infrastructure front, hacker Cesar Cerato is on a mission to expose weaknesses in smart city traffic systems. Steps from the White House in Washington, he is surprised to discover that Washington’s traffic sensors aren’t encrypted. With pedestrians and drivers’ lives at risk, algorithmic driving where we can trust the data to make the right decision seems to be a long way off.

 

Episode 5 – See Something, Say Something

The Ring doorbell camera is positioned as a great way to monitor who or what’s at the door, whether you’re home or not. But preying on consumers’ fears of their Amazon packages getting stolen, or worse, is having far-reaching impacts on communities and policing practices around the world.

Director Brett Gaylor meets community activists in Skid Row, Los Angeles, where law enforcement has partnered with Amazon’s Ring, with some unintended consequences. On a map obtained from the police, the activists notice that “hot spots,” where police predict crimes will occur based on users’ “reports of suspicision,” are often found not in the heart of Skid Row, but at the outskirts, where gentrifying communities are clashing with their less fortunate, often non-white neighbours. By embracing these technologies, are the police protecting everyone, or just the gentrified?

 

 

Eminent Monsters

Eminent Monsters traces the roots of western governments love affair with torture.

In  1950s Montreal Scottish born psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron experimented on his patients, using sensory deprivation, forced comas and LSD injections. Covertly funded by the Canadian government and the CIA, his techniques have been used in Northern Ireland, Guantánamo and 27 countries around the world.

Including extraordinary first hand testimony from Guantanamo survivors, the Hooded Men from Northern Ireland and senior American psychologists and military personnel, Eminent Monsters shows how the collusion of doctors to aid and abet torture began in the 1950s and continues to this day.

Crossing the Andes (series)

Half of Latin American countries number among the top economies in the world to do business in, and for many the continent is an investor’s paradise. Why should we keep an eye on Latin America, and which changes are taking place there right now?

As the backbone of South America – some 7000 kilometres long and passing through seven countries – the Andes mountain range is a good place to ask that question.

You’ll find Chilean capitalism in the smog of Santiago, and will travel 30 years back in time through the clouds of remote Bolivian mountain villages. Latino’s are known as a politically engaged people. Always fighting, but with a smile. Strong, but not tough as nails. The history of this continent is one of ups and downs. Sometimes there’s a glimmer of hope, then everything seems to fall apart again. Is the continent crawling, walking or about to fall down again?

Stef Biemans’ journey starts in Tierra del Fuego and ends in Colombia. Along the way, he searches out small stories about big issues, which illuminate contemporary South America.

 

Episode 1.  The Man-eating Mountain

Stef Biemans travels the ridge of the Andes and wonders how South Americans are doing in Potosí, the highest city in the world, and once one of its richest, but also one where life can be short.

In the mining town of Potosí, capitalism was born, as it were. Here, the first coin was struck using silver from the mine of the ‘rich mountain’, which is still in use. So much silver has been extracted from this imposing mountain, you could use it to build a bridge to Spain. But you could also build a bridge out of the bones of dead miners and slaves. On average, miners only make it to the age of 45.

 

Episode 2. The Skyscraper of Santiago

In the Chilean capital of Santiago, Stef visits South America’s highest skyscraper. It was once built as a symbol of progress, but now the tower represents the dark side to that success story: record depression and suicide rates.

The highest tower in South America rises out of the Santiago smog, a symbol of the strong neoliberal economic system. But almost every month, someone jumps off of it. Nowhere else are depression rates as high as in this city of remarkable economic prosperity. In and around this skyscraper, Stef tries to find out where it all went wrong. What are the prerequisites for success and how do people survive in the smog of neoliberalism?

 

Episode 3. El Paraíso Technológico

Stef travels to Argentina’s southernmost tip Ushuaia, and discovers an impressive electronics industry among the penguins. Since it’s become known that there are jobs to be had in Tierra del Fuego, the capital of Ushuaia draws countless South American fortune seekers. What is this growth doing to the mountains surrounding the town?

Terra del Fuego is the new migrant’s paradise of South America. Since word’s gotten out that on the southern tip of the continent you can easily find work in an Argentinian electronics plant, the city has boomed. The Argentinian government has declared the area a tax free zone and companies have flooded in with smartphone and television factorys.

Growth is so rapid here, that it feels like a threat to many people; what is the impact on the nature of the surrounding mountains and its biodiversity? In Tierra del Fuego, Charles Darwin studied man and animal, and discovered the principles of his theory of evolution. Can modern-day inhabitants adapt to these changes?

 

Episode 4. Eternal life

In Ecuador, Stef Biemans visits the valley of eternal life – where the high life expectancy of its inhabitants has astonished observers – and investigates its finite nature. What do spry centenarians in Ecuador right below the equator do in order to stay healthy, what provisions are there for them should they fall ill, and how do South Americans deal with their elderly?

The Vilcabamba valley in Ecuador is known for its healthy old people. The fit old man who interrupts his work in the field to firmly shake Stef Biemans’ hand shows an official proof of identity with a 1913 birthdate. A little bit later, he lets his hips do the talking when he’s dancing.

Others in the valley also dance, but it doesn’t mean they’re all happy. An 89-year-old woman says she’d like for it to be over. ‘God is keeping me alive. I’m waiting for my time to come.’ A voluntary ending to this earthly life is so unthinkable, Biemans is afraid to even broach the subject.

 

Episode 5. My Mother-in-Law stayed at home

In this episode we look at the role of the mother-in-law, because Latino’s tend to talk about them rather a lot.

In Latin America, folk tales, songs, novels and soap operas are not complete without a distrustful mother-in-law. Why is that, he wonders? And has the role of the mother-in-law changed, now the economy is booming and whole families don’t have to live under one roof anymore? Or are mothers-in-law still as picky and meddlesome as Latino men would have us believe? Maybe they have good reason to be so, because men aren’t always gentle with their women.

 

Episode 6. The Mother of Colombia

In the final episode of the series, we journey down the Magdalena River, which originates in the Andes and ends in the Caribbean Sea.

This is the most hopeful period in Colombia’s history: the peace treaty has been signed and the country looks towards the future as new roads and bridges are being constructed. At the same time, the Magdalena River, also known as the mother of the country, still means a lot to inhabitants. What will progress destroy?

Broken Harmony: China’s Dissidents

Broken Harmony: China’s Dissidents tells the story of Hua Ze, an ordinary Chinese citizen for whom a discovery of corruption led her into a hidden world of dissidents, citizen journalism, police harassment and kidnappings.

Once a mild mannered TV director, Hua Ze discovered that an old friend reporting on alleged corruption after the Sichuan earthquake had disappeared, along with any mention of him online. Following a trail of leads over the great internet fire wall of China, she discovers not just the fate of her friend, but the truth behind Sichuan’s fatal building code violations, a jaw-dropping array of human rights abuses across China and comes to the realization that the entire internet in China is a state controlled fiction.

Hua’s awakening takes her into a new world of dissidents, journalists and human rights lawyers. As she begins her own reporting, pressure from the government is swift, and her world is turned upside down. She is forced out of her job and placed under surveillance. One by one, her new friends are arrested or detained. Phones are tapped and secretive threats and warnings are made. But Hua cannot turn a blind eye to the corruption and she pays the price.

When ordinary Chinese citizens go to extraordinary lengths to fight human rights abuses, the risks are enormous, even life-threatening. Broken Harmony reveals Hua’s courageous acts and willingness to lose everything to fight for justice and the rule of law.

The Guardians

Over the next few decades, the Baby Boomer generation will reach senior citizen status and bequeath more than 30 trillion dollars. An unprecedented shift of wealth will pass from one generation to the next. With this shift comes the temptation and opportunity for appalling greed and cold-hearted abuse by those very people charged with protecting society’s most vulnerable citizens.

Elderly people are disappearing in Las Vegas. Deemed incompetent, they are removed from their homes, drugged, and dumped in nursing homes against their will. Their autonomy is stolen, dignity destroyed, and life savings gradually pillaged — all without their consent. This multi-million-dollar scam is perpetrated by “The Guardians” – the very people sworn to protect the vulnerable among us. Abetted by a network of crooked judges, lawyers, and healthcare practitioners, these guardians execute an unscrupulous scheme, perfected over 30 years, that profits from the largest transfer of wealth in history.

Nothing and no one has stood in their way. Until now.

At the Gates of Hell (series)

At the Gates of Hell takes us into the most deadly parts of the world where escaping abuse, exploitation, extortion and even death is a daily battle. This series takes us deep into hidden worlds, covering: child exploitation by gangs in Colombia, femicide in Mexico, business in the shadow of the Mafia in Napoli, life as a homosexual in Russia, environmentalists under fire in the Amazon, the abandoned communities of Detroit and beyond.

Episode 1 – Broken Children – Colombia

Childhood is not a happy time in Colombia, it can mean living in constant threat of coerced into gangs or caught in the cross-fire. In the forgotten barrios of Bogotá and Medellín, children find themselves hired as killers or forced into prostitution before they have left their teens. We give voice to this lost generation.

Episode 2 – Searching for Camorra – Napoli, Italy

Napoli has for hundreds of years been in the hands of a handful of criminal families. To run a business here is to pay ever increasing extortion demands or face destruction, arson or murder. We visit the communities – and the gang members – to understand this violent eco-system.

Episode 3 – Women Without a Name – Mexico

Between Jan 2012 and June 2016 –  9,581 women were violently murdered in Mexico, but just 1,887 were categorised as Femicides. Mexican authorities are unwilling to face the rising tide of violence against woman, and domestic violence, trafficking and prostitution remain hidden from public view and public discourse. We meet with the victims familiers, survivors and perpetrators and analyze, together with anthropologists, why there is so much machismo and misogyny in the Mexican culture.

Episode 4 – Trapped in Homophobia – Russia

After years of slow but steady progress, the rights of homosexuals in Russia took a giant step backwards with the passing of the Anti-Propaganda law – effectively forcing the gay population of Russia to live in the shadows and in shame. Lacking the basic right of living openly, as well as facing legal discrimination in work and study – Russia’s LGBT are also now facing a growing wave of violence. We meet those who are fighting for their rights, those responsible for the swell of homophobia and the many ordinary gay citizens for whom the future is so bleak that choose to stay in the closet or leave.

Episode 5 – (De)construction – Detroit, USA

Detroit was the most promising city in the USA, the birthplace of Fordism and mass credit and a bedrock of reinforced concrete and fair salaries. Racial riots, the gutting of the car industry and the crisis drained the city, from a high of nearly 2 million inhabitants to a waking nightmare for the 700K remaining. We meet with those left behind – many of them low income African-American, condemned to live in delinquency, poverty and abandonment.

Episode 6 – Mara’s War Tax – Honduras

Every year, dozens of public transport and taxi drivers are murdered in Honduras – the worlds most dangerous country – turning the entire sector into struggle for survival. The ‘war tax’ is a toll that gangs demand from drivers to work in their territory. Whoever refuses to pay it, will pay it with his life or that of a close relative´s. Who would work in this terrifying business and at what cost?

Episode 7 – On the Right Side of the Wall – Lima, Peru

There is a 10km wall in Lima that separates the richest neighbourhood in the city from the poorest. For some it is known as the ‘wall of shame’, for others its essential to security. What are the root causes of this massive monument to inequality, how is it that a low income person on one side of the wall is paying twice what their rich neighbour is, on the other side of the wall, for a glass of water?

Episode 8 – Threatened – Amazon, Brazil

In parts of the Amazon, protecting your ancestral land from illegal loggers, and oil and gold prospectors, can be a death sentence. Shady businesses from far away, not content with destroying the environment and stealing the resources of indigenous communities are now engaged in a violence and intimidation. We meet with the environmental heroes, who are threatened daily, and those who will do anything to get their hands on these resources – including a hit man who has murdered over 20 activists.

 

Sticky: A (Self) Love Story

Everyone does it; few admit it; now there’s a movie about it!

Sticky talks candidly about what has been referred to throughout history as both a form of self-love and self-abuse. After being shamed as a child by fellow students for admitting that he masturbated, writer/director Nicholas Tana, interviewed over sixty sexologists, authors, religious figures, porn stars, and entertainers to understand what’s so wrong with masturbation.

Full of candid interviews from sex therapists, religious figures, and psychologists to celebrated figures such as former Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, comedian Janeane Garofalo, and, among others, “Hustler” creator, Larry Flynt. Sticky answers age-old questions; “Will it make me go blind?”; “Is it “normal”?”; and, “Why are we so afraid to be caught in the act?” As well as tackling more contemporary issues like why the media portrays masturbation so negatively, how the world’s major religions disagree about the moral effects of self-pleasuring, and why the sale of sex toys is illegal in Alabama.

When confusion about sexuality remains at the root of so many societal problems – rape, sexual abuse, and the threat of sexually transmitted diseases – Sticky pulls no punches in exploring a subject that touches us all.

A Stone in Our Heart

A Mother and Daughter – Lillian and Jette –  are climbing up a mountain in Switzerland. A mountain that brings back a lot of memories.

They hike from cabin to cabin while they dig into a past which Lillian has spent many years trying to suppress: Jette was sexually abused by her stepfather throughout her childhood and youth. A part of the abuse took place in the same cabins that Jette and Lillian are now revisiting.

Jette has invited her mother to go on this trip because she needs to talk about what happened, and especially about Lillian’s role in it all. Jette loves her mother, but at the same time she can’t stand being close to her. Over the years Jette has begun to question whether her mother knew about the abuse or not. Naturally Jette feels a deep frustration. But she has a strong hope that if Lillian admits she knew about the abuse, Jette can find an opportunity to forgive her mother and reestablish a healthy relationship.

The mountain trip puts the two women’s relationship to the test. When Jette gets the conversation started, she doesn’t get the answer that she expected: Lillian denies that she saw or knew anything.

This is the starting point of a physically and emotionally life-changing journey, which forces the two women to face their own inner demons and to embrace the pain and the guilt, but also to have faith. The conversations intensify as the two women move up the mountain.

At one point it seems like this trip might be the last thing they will ever do together.

Taboo: Season 1 – Stolen Childhoods

Taboo: Stolen Childhoods is a series that shines a light on the dark underbelly of our society. Each compelling episode takes Jon Sistiaga to a unique dark place linked by the theme of shattered childhoods – from the web cams of the Philippines to a prison in Colombia, we meet with the abusers and the abused. Filmed with bold honesty and sensitivity Taboo: Stolen Childhoods is a series like nothing you have seen before.

Episode 1: Atonement

Villa Milagro – an isolated village in Florida – has a very particular census: all of its inhabitants have been prosecuted for sexual offenses, as its one of few places that meet sentencing requirements of being completely child-free.

Jon Sistiaga enters their houses and discovers how the toughest laws in the world are applied to child abusers, and what kind of lives can they return to after concluding their sentences. A portrait emerges of a community united in shame and misery. Against the odds though, some have managed to rebuild a life of sorts there, find forgiveness and even find love..

Episode 2: Perversion

Sweetie is a girl that lives in the Philippines. Her daily routine is to sit down in front of her computer and talk with men. Luckily, Sweetie is not real, it is a software created by a dutch foundation to hunt pedophiles.

In this episode, filmed in Spain, Holland and the Philippines, Jon Sistiaga investigates the horrifying world of child pornography.

We meet underaged webcam girls in the Philippines who, with their families support, fall victim to the Western demands for child pornography. Law enforcement officers tasked with tracking illegal images, grading them according to their severity and hunting down the ever-more tech-savy pedophiles who create and exchange them.

Episode 3: Grief

Children who one day disappeared and never came back. Families who await news from their lost children. These are the stories that embody every parents worse nightmares.

Jon Sistiaga travels to the heart of Minnesota to follow the trail of some children disappearances, contacting relatives and investigators. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, in the US there are over 3,500 unsolved cases.

We meet with some of the few victims who had lucky escapes, and others who having suffered unimaginable crimes lived to tell the tale.

Episode 4: Monster

Luis Alfredo Garavito – known as ‘The Monster’ –  is by every measure the most feared and reviled murderer living today and perhaps ever to have ever lived . He has confessed to have killed, raped and tortured 140 children between the ages of 6 to 16 years old, though experts put the number at 172. He is currently imprisoned in a Colombian prison where Sistiaga, in scenes reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs, has gone to conduct an extended interview with him. With chilling detachment Garavito confesses to unimaginable crimes, tells of his motivations and how he was able to evade capture for so long. In doing so we are afforded a horrifying glimpse into the heart of darkness. We also revisit crime scenes and the families of his victims.

A quirk in Colombia’s legal system means that Garavito will be set free in seven years having served the equivalent of three months for each of his murders.