Tag Archives: west

The Watch Or The Time

´You have the watches, we have the time´, a Taliban commander infamously warned an American in 2002 Afghanistan. It was ominously accurate. Months earlier, America had swiftly ousted a flailing Taliban government, pledging to rebuild the embattled country. Fifty nations joined the ‘Operation Enduring Freedom´ war machine and for two decades, foreign armies poured into Afghanistan along with eye-watering amounts of foreign aid funding. Yet now the Taliban is back in charge of the entire country. So what went wrong? 

The Watch Or The Time explores America and its allies’ ill-fated offensive in Afghanistan told by the foreigners and Afghans who lived it. The film tracks the arc of America’s longest war in modern history with these personal experiences, looking at the pitfalls of military intervention, humanitarian aid and the culture clash through the legacy of the West’s efforts in Afghanistan.

Did the thousands of expat-nation-builders foresee a Taliban victory? After so many other previous invasions, did the Afghans see the writing on the wall? And what is the price of the so-called peace in Afghanistan today?

You’ll meet a German armoured car salesman, an American sports trainer and women’s rights activist, a Canadian NATO psychological operations specialist, an Australian war photographer, an Afghan female graffiti artist from the Taliban heartland; Kandahar, Kabul University’s debate club vice-president, a local media producer dubbed Afghanistan’s Number 1 fixer, and a senior Taliban commander.

You’ll see ex-pats grapple with what they’ve left behind, Afghans struggle to make sense of the dramatic shift in their fates, while others celebrate the Taliban’s win.

As America and its allies try to wash their hands of responsibility in Afghanistan, The Watch Or The Time puts it front and centre again. This film presents the perspectives and ultimately asks, was it worth it? You decide.

The Price of Fairness

Why do we accept huge levels of inequality and social injustice? This is one of the central questions that The Price of Fairness sets out to answer, beginning with a surprising set of social experiments in Norway, which suggest that our willingness to support systems of inequality is far greater than we are often prepared to admit.

In Atlanta, we take a different look at fairness, from the perspective of a group of capuchin monkeys. Behavioural scientist Sarah Bronson’s work with the monkeys questions the idea that we have an evolutionary tendency towards selfish behaviour. Could it be that the outrage we feel towards systems of inequality have roots in our human need for cooperation? 

We visit Costa Rica and Iceland to see how whole economies have been engineered to function with greater ‘fairness’, and the US where systematic racial injustices have tested many of their citizens hopes for a fairer justice system.

From the caste-biased villages of India to the race-sensitive streets of Ferguson, Missouri, this documentary explores our understanding of fairness and what it takes to change an unfair system.

Touching on issues of economic, political, racial and gender inequality, this film offers a thought-provoking and timely look at what fairness really means to us. 

Princes of the Yen

Princes of the Yen reveals how post-war Japanese society was transformed to suit the agenda of powerful interest groups, and how citizens were kept entirely in the dark about this. History is now repeating itself around the world.

Based on a book by Professor Richard Werner, a visiting researcher at the Bank of Japan during the 90s crash, during which the stock market dropped by 80% and house prices by up to 84%. The film uncovers how the Bank of Japan pumped up and then crashed the Japanese economy, with an aim of inducing change. Today, what happened in Japan 25 years ago is repeating itself in Europe, with an aim of centralizing power in the Eurozone.

The film shows why it is important for central banks to be accountable and transparent. It also explains how International Financial Organizations such as the IMF seek to impose conditions on countries that are mainly of benefit to dominant Western interests. For anyone interested in understanding recent developments and the significance of the establishment of institutions such as the AIIB and the BRICS led New Development Bank, Princes of the Yen provides the background.

Princes of the Yen reveals with clarity the control levers that underpin the dominant ideology of the 21st Century. Piece by piece, reality is deconstructed to reveal the world as it is, not as those in power would like us to believe that it is.

“Because only power that is hidden is power that endures.”

Propaganda

Controversial to its core, this hard-hitting anti-Western propaganda film, which looks at the influence of American visual and consumption culture on the rest of the world from a North Korean perspective, has been described as ‘either a damning indictment of 21st Century culture or the best piece of propaganda in a generation.’

Propaganda signals the birth of a new genre-bending generation of film maker. Using the ‘fake North Korean propaganda’ found-footage device, Slavko Martinov first parodies its language and stylings, before targeting the mountain of hypocrisies and contradictions that make up the modern Western narrative. In doing so, Propaganda delivers a devastating blow to those who might be quick to laugh at ‘backward’ ideologies before considering how 21st century political and cultural trends have weakened any claims to the moral high ground.

Along Gaddafi’s Road

For the first time in 42 years, a camera enters Southern Libya in what was forbidden territory under the Gaddafi regime.

Shortly after Gaddafi’s demise, we accompany members of the disgraced Tabu tribe along the road to their impoverished desert territory near the Algeria-Niger-Chad borders 1000 Km from Tripoli.

Electricity has been on again for barely two months, mobile phones haven’t worked for seven. Fuel is scarce and queues are endlessly long. Two widespread weapons are in use: sat phones and Kalashnikovs.

Closely guarded by rebel escorts for security reasons, we follow the illegal immigrants route all the way to the Niger border. We discover how Gaddafi challenged Europe at the beginning of the revolution by sending and financing flows of migrants. Rebels, smugglers and victims of the old regime tell their stories.

The desert’s well-preserved secrets now finally come to light.