Rhapsody of Steel

A film about fireworks, the people who make them and the cultures behind them across the globe.

Lee Anne Schmitt explores California's landscape and past to document the history of one-time boom towns built and abandoned by the industries that necessitated their creation. Sold as a limitless land expansive with free opportunity, California was actually, from its onset, fissured by the interwoven needs of private and public interests. Schmitt's film covers various locations through time, as the major industries of the early 20th century (mining, lumber, oil) give way to the military, eventually leading to multinational corporations, and the use of small towns as satellites for growing urban metropolises.

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.

It's 1948 and hydro-electric power is transforming Scotland's Grampians.

Time-travel to a 1940s classroom with this exemplary educational film.

The environmental problems caused by fracking in America have been well publicized but what's less known are the gas industry's plans for expansion in other countries. This investigation, filmed in Botswana, South Africa and North America, reveals how gas companies are quietly invading some of the most protected places on the planet.

Documentary on industrial lubrification.

An engineering feat: Second city civil engineers complete a new bridge to carry traffic over New Street's tangled railway intersections.

This 10-minute short documentary exploring the shifting state of the American poultry industry was preserved in 2015 from an original nitrate print. More information is available on the film's page in the National Film Preservation Foundation's website, where this version can be found featuring original music by Michael D. Mortilla.

A resistance writer and pioneer of nature writing with a controversial personality, Edward Abbey wrote more than twenty books on the theme of eternal nature. A gem of counterculture, his 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired a generation of environmental activists and readers with rebellious souls. Portrait of a rebellious, lyrical, and rude writer.

Grafická kontrola výroby

This is a documentary that tells about the history of Ålvik as an industrial town. It is the story of the water on the mountain that was tamed into electric power, and was the foundation of Bjølvefossen. The film tells about Trallebanen, one of the most unique cultural heritage sites in Hardanger. Should it be preserved?

Crunch - Traum und Albtraum in der Gaming-Industrie

Monde agricole : la fracture de l’eau

Facing deteriorating machines and the advance of new technologies, Argentine printing presses are closing up their shops. A group of young designers has rediscovered this great technical innovation in the history of the written word – the typesetting printing press – but the technique is difficult to learn, passed down from master to apprentice. The last press mechanic in the country will be in charge of teaching them so that this historic technique endures.

Enrico Mattei, le rebelle du pétrole

Nos très chers animaux

An industrial film sponsored by the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company promoting the "Cleveland Corridor," an 85-mile corner of northeast Ohio between the port cities of Conneaut and Cleveland, as "the best location in the nation" for industrial business. This 16mm film is from the Cinecraft Productions collection at the Hagley Museum and Library.

A highly choreographed review of the Industrial Age as we know it today – an intense and playful roller coaster ride that demands the viewer confronts how “work works.” Culled entirely from archival footage, the film unfolds in the filmmakers’ trademark, and humorously critical, cinematic voices.

Très chère électricité