Tag Archives: Environment

Groundswell Rising

Groundswell Rising shows how Fracking – an untested energy extraction process – has contaminated drinking water and jeopardized health. We meet scientists, doctors and farmers across the political spectrum engaged in a David and Goliath struggle against Big Oil and Gas, decrying a process that puts profits over people.

Homeowners near wells suffer from respiratory ailments and property devaluation. A former industry employee shows skin lesions and edema, a result of working on drilling rigs, while others witness mistakes (5% of all wells leak) and explosions, against a back drop of rising ill health, as more and more suffer, from nose bleeds to asthma.

But there is cause for hope.

Local mothers groups unite to win some protections, while lease holders outraged by the corporations strong-arm tactics win local bans. Common Cause uncovers corruption as corporations buy influence to evade environmental protection laws, and the movement begins to gather momentum as actor Mark Ruffalo and singer Natalie Merchant support—and sometimes lead—their efforts.

Grassroots efforts have achieved bans, moratoriums, and referendums on Fracking, giving hope to others worldwide faced with the same nightmare. Transcending the genre of environmental film, Groundswell Rising’s passionate stories inspire and empower.

“Groundswell is ultimately a rousing, convincing rallying cry that the little guys, working in numbers, can triumph” LA Weekly

“But however you stand on the issue, you’re likely to be moved by the film’s portraits of grassroots activists managing to make their voices heard despite the opposition of major corporations and the big money at their disposal.” The Hollywood Reporter

An Invisible Threat

We cannot see the waves, we cannot hear them, we cannot touch them, but they are all around us, invading the air, irradiating our body and the environment.

An Invisible Threat looks at the relationship between microwave technology and health, investigating the conflicts of interest among industry representatives, politicians, scientists and consumers that leave us unprotected to the effects of radiation.

Wireless networks irradiate microwaves indiscriminately across cities, villages and the countryside of all developed countries. This increasing exposure disturbs the biological processes that are essential for the healthy growth of human beings, animals and plants – it especially affects children and teenagers.

The reasonable doubt that has arisen from independent scientific reports regarding the harmful effects of these technologies has led the Council of Europe to recommend its members countries apply the Precautionary Principle. In June 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a body of the World Health Organization (WHO), admitted for the first time that microwaves produced by mobile phones could be “possible carcinogens”.

Our investigation delves  into three groups: the telecommunications industry (mobile telephone companies, MMF); official organisations (WHO, IARC, ICNIRP) and official scientific reports (BioInitiative, Interphone, CEFALO).

In parallel, An Invisible Threat takes in the daily life of Minerva Palomar, a woman affected by the electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome and the obstacles she needs to overcome in order to lead a normal life.

An Invisible Threat has a clear international focus, dealing with a social issue of global importance. Microwave effects are currently being analysed and debated in almost all developed countries. The question is, are we prepared for the answers.

 

 

Beyond Pollution

A thought provoking, in-depth look at the causes and effects of the most devastating man made environmental disaster America has ever experienced.

Beyond Pollution is a firsthand investigation into BP’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Traveling thousands of miles across the Gulf coast interviewing environmental experts, government officials, fisherman & distributors, scientists, drilling engineers, and key BP contractors, the film reveals, in depth the immediate and long term environmental, economic, and health impacts the tragedy is having on the local communities.

In the context of BP’s record on safety and the environment, the oil spill now seems sadly inevitable, so why weren’t measures put in place to avoid the disaster that will be felt for generations to come? How were they able to play down the consequences and avoid criminal responsibility, and how did their response further devestate those communities affected?

Beyond Pollution is an exhaustively researched and elegantly executed expose on an avoidable tragedy that began with an oil spill but had far-reaching, and unreported repercussions, uncovering what really happened, why, and who really benefited

Death of a Cemetery

Manila North Cemetery in the Philippines is a place of rest for 3000 people, all of whom are alive.

When rich families first erected mausoleums for their dead in the 1800s, they needed caretakers to maintain them and guard any valuables buried within. In exchange for their work, the caretakers were allowed to live inside the mausoleums, and a cemetery community was born.

Gravekeepers grow gardens around tombs; chefs cook up hearty fare in pop-up restaurants alongside crypts; and children play basketball in between school and funerals.

Manila North Cemetery has become a home to those without a home. But the graveyard is not always peaceful. One caretaker must face the task of burying his own relative in the cemetery, and another – only 13 years old – must undergo an exorcism lest forever be possessed by the spirits he disturbed.

Yet in a place where exhumations, ghosts, and witch doctors are part of daily routine, the biggest dangers residents face are universal to the human experience.

Zeitgeist: The Series

The Zeitgeist documentaries are an international sensation, with over 1,000 theatrical screenings in 60 countries and 30 languages, viewed by millions on the internet and even spawning a movement.  For the first time they are now available to broadcast audiences and other license opportunities, as individual films or as an eleven part series.

Zeitgeist: The Movie is a treatment on Mythology and Belief in society today, presenting uncommon perspectives of common cultural issues.

Part One presents historical data relating to the astronomical/astrological origins of the Judeo-Christian theology (which can be extended to Islam as well), along with the understanding that these respective stories, beliefs & traditions are really an adaptation-extension of prior Pagan beliefs.

Part Two presents a controversial view of the events of Sept. 11th 2001. It describes how the event has been transformed into a sacred, near religious act and to challenge the orthodox view, regardless of the quality of the contrary arguments, is considered blasphemy and rejected.

Part Three presents a shotgun tour through the subjects of Central Banking, War Pretexts, Banking Panics, the Military Industrial Complex, Media Culture and ultimately the mental neurosis and deadly addiction known as “Power.”

The central theme is how society is often misled when it comes to certain pivotal historical events, what those events serve in function, along with how the overall social conditioning patterns we see today function to create values and perspectives which support and perpetuate the static, established order/power structure, as opposed to fluid social change and productive evolution for the betterment of the society as a whole.

Zeitgeist: Addendum was born out of public interest in possible solutions to the cultural issues presented in Zeitgeist: The Movie.

Building upon the topics of social distortion and corruption, Addendum moves to also present possible solutions. Featured in the work is former “Economic Hit-man” and New York Times bestselling author, John Perkins, along with The Venus Project, an organization for social redesign created by Social Engineer and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco.

Part One (four in the series) explains the process of Money Creation and Expansion through the Fractional Reserve System. It explains how Debt and Bankruptcy are not mere byproducts of our current system, but rather are underlying realities of our existence with periodic failures guaranteed.

Part Two (five in the series) exposes various levels of international corruption via the financial/corporate system, including the manipulation of public leaders to further the interests of corporate institutions.

Part Three (six in the series) changes gears and depicts a possible solution to the growing social problems in the world today by the introduction of a new social concept known as a “Resource-Based Economy”.

Part Four (seven in the series) gives a philosophical perspective in the hope to inspire change in the viewer and enable action to affect society for the better.

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward focuses on the very fabric of the social order: Monetary-Market Economics.

The majority of the world today have come to see basic flaws in the economic system we share. Large scale debt defaults, inflation, industrial pollution, resource depletion, rising cancer rates and other signposts have emerged to bring the concern into the realm of “public health”.

The tendency is to demand reform in one area or another, avoiding the possibility that perhaps the entire system is intrinsically flawed at the foundational level.

Part One (eight in the series) presents a treatment on “Human Nature”, with the argument that society is out of line with what Science has taught us about positive human development, enabling distortions of health and behavior that could be thwarted if the social system was changed.

Part Two (nine in the series) details the central inherent flaws of the Monetary-Market System of economic conduct and how this system is destroying ourselves and the planet in a very direct way.

Part Three (ten in the series) begins a thought exercise where the Earth and Natural Law is considered a starting point for human decision-making rather than politics, with the subject explored from all sides.

Part Four (eleven in the series) ends with a prediction of what is to come as the society becomes more destabilized due to our outdated traditional practices.

 

download PDF onesheet – ‘The Movie’>
download PDF onesheet – ‘Addendum’>
download PDF onesheet – ‘Moving Forward’>
download PDF onesheet – ‘The Series’>

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Awards:

WINNER: Award of Excellence; LA Movie Awards, USA. Best Visual Effects; LA Movie Awards, USA. Best Documentary; Image Gazer, USA. Honourable Mention; Indie Gathering, USA. USA. First Documentary, LA Arthouse, USA. Best Cinematography, LA Arthouse, USA. Best Documentary, LA Arthouse, USA. Best Political Documentary, Action on Film, USA.

Official Selections:

Marbella International Film Festival, SPAIN. Salt lake City, USA. White Sands International Film Festival, USA.

Carbon Nation

Carbon Nation is an optimistic, solutions-based, non-preachy, non-partisan, big tent film that shows tackling climate change boosts the economy, increases national & energy security and promotes health & a clean environment.

Public opinion is sliding the wrong way – far fewer people are concerned about climate change than even a year ago.

Carbon Nation was made to give an entertaining, informed and pragmatic primer about why it’s incredibly smart to be a part of the new, low-carbon economy. Even if you doubt the severity of the impact of climate change or just don’t buy it at all, this is a compelling and relevant film that illustrates how solutions to climate change also address other social, economic and national security issues.

We meet a host of entertaining and endearing characters along the way, including entrepreneurs, visionaries, scientists and the everyday man, all making a difference and working towards solving climate change. We already have the technology to combat most of the worst-case scenarios of climate change, and it makes business sense too.

Carbon Nation’s pioneering optimism and pragmatism are appealing across the political spectrum, and while other good films have been about problems, blame and guilt, Carbon Nation is a film that celebrates solutions, inspiration and action.

Secrets of the Tribe

This is the story of the unhealthy meeting of two cultures: an indigenous tribe, the Yanomami and the western anthropologists who came to the Amazon to study them. Over three decades the Yanomami Indians were transformed from the “last Stone Age tribe” so prized by those anthropologists to the most exhaustively documented and filmed tribe on earth.

Napoleon Chagnon built his reputation – and sold over a million books – by claiming to demonstrate the innate ferocity of Yanomami. He dubbed them The Fierce People. In 1968 his biggest expedition and most famous film were both lavishly funded by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He targeted world-famous geneticist Dr James Neel, who literally wanted their blood – he was on the lookout for a ‘virgin soil’ population and was keen to know how diseases spread through such populations. Coincidentally or otherwise, a serious and deadly outbreak of measles happened during their expedition, killing hundreds in its wake.

Chagnon friend and fellow anthropologist Jacques Lizot, was a young prodigy and favoured student of the godfather of cultural anthropology and French intellectual icon, Claude Levi-Strauss. Like practically all other anthropologists in the field, they both distributed gifts, in order to ease their way into a tribe’s affections. “Chagnon is the golden goose for the Yanomami. He brings steel tools, machetes, fishhooks and they tell him what they think he wants to hear.” Lizot’s gifts included shotguns, but his favours were not confined to the academic and his illegal sexual predations amongst the Yanomami were kept sated over years, funded by the Collège de France and Académie Française over decades.

A leaked email from two top anthropologists notes: “This nightmarish story – a real anthropological Heart Of Darkness is beyond the imagining of even a Josef Conrad – though not, perhaps, a Josef Mengele.”

The Devil Operation

The charismatic Father Marco Arana, named a Hero of the Environment in 2009 by TIME Magazine, has been so effective in advocating against the US-owned Yanacocha mine that he’s code-named “the Devil” and targeted in a campaign of harassment and terror.

When one colleague is threatened with rape and another is killed, the activists fight back, capture a spy, and uncover a military-scale operation of surveillance and violence that shocks even them.

When billions of dollars are at stake, just how far are corporations willing to go to protect their bottom line?

A gripping David and Goliath tale of corporate espionage unfolds in this exposé of torture, intimidation, and murder of Peruvian eco-activists and indigenous farmers. Shocking video footage, horrifying photos, and meticulous reports compiled by private security firms working for gold mines are uncovered by the filmmakers to reveal the truth in this real-life political thriller.

The Shark Con

When Director Rusty Armstrong accompanied the Editor of Shark Diver magazine on a diving trip, a passion for shark conservation was shared by everyone they met. Overfishing and finning were the reasons for their depletion and had to be stopped. But then at the end of the trip, they met a retired shark fisherman who had different ideas about shark conservation…

The shark fisherman had fished sharks for three decades, and kept extensive notes about his catches and shark migrations, but then in 1997, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) attempted to put an end to overfishing and heavily reduced shark fishing quotas. Despite a well-known scientist presenting ground-breaking research that proved sharks couldn’t be overfished, his work was dismissed and the shark fisherman were put out of business.

The Shark Con uncovers the truth about the shark conservation industry.

Following the collapse of shark fishing, the shark tourism industry – comprised of people with a common goal of protecting sharks – was the next to suffer from new regulations being imposed. As the investigation mounts, it becomes clear that many non-profit organisations were raising millions of dollars each year for shark research, yet very little research was actually being done. Meanwhile, more and more regulations were being implemented.

The Shark Con takes viewers on a rollercoaster ride into the big business of shark fishing, revealing the controversial truth about the industry and answering the question: Are sharks really overfished or is this just an elaborate con?

Malos Pasos (series)

Malos Pasos is a series that through sports give us an inspiring perspective on environmental, disability and social issues in Latin America. We will travel across Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador and more Latin American countries learning that sports can help us overcome any obstacles.

Episode 1 – Limitless Sports

Inspiration can come from anywhere, but nothing is more inspiring than seeing others overcome adversity and demonstrate that their capacities take them to places where nothing is impossible.

Episode 2 – Sports and Environment

There is a strong bond between extreme sports athletes and their environment. Felipe and Jules show us their adventures, combining sports and love for the environment. 

Episode 3 – Female Stereotypes

Passions can be restricted by prejudice. Nevertheless, the stories of Mimi and Greisy show us that they can be overcome.

Episode 4 – Bones and Steal

Sometimes a wound can be far more than just that for an extreme sports athlete. Sportsmen Diego Iturrieta and Jonathan Camacho show it takes to get back on track.

Episode 5 – The Competition

Overcoming your own fears is more difficult than overcoming your opponents. Two extreme sports athletes invite us to witness the extreme lengths they will go to prepare.

Episode 6 – Sports and Dreams 

The path of dreams can be full of struggles, but for sportswomen Daniela and Mafer, passion is what gets them through. 

Episode 7 – World Records and World champions

Karl and Fabio relive their sports achievements and show us the sacrifices they had to make in order to achieve the highest places in their disciplines.

Episode 8 – Retirement and New Generations

Great figures of extreme sports dedicate themselves to preserving and expanding sports culture once their moments of glory are over. 

Episode 9 – First Steps

We all started out in different ways, in very different environments. The Villegas twins and Hardy Muñoz show us how to find your place in extreme sports. 

Episode 10 – On the Street

Discrimination is something extreme sports athletes have to put up with everyday. The lack of space to train, however, did not deter Musingo and Napo from standing out and achieving success.

Episode 11 – Sports and Family

Sports can bring families closer. That is what the Navarro and the Carrera families demonstrate, with children and parents following the same path for generations. 

Episode 12 – Extreme Sports and The Media

Technology has opened the borders of information sharing, and many entrepreneurs have taken the lead in using it to expand sports culture across the world.

Episode 13 – Sports and Legacy

All sports have champions who have inspired others to follow their path. By looking at the lives of Carlo de Gavardo and Felipe Acosta, we will understand how they entered the history books.