Beautiful Things

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.

The film shows one day from waking up in the morning all the way to waking up again the next morning. The everyday situations that many commercials are made of, the little dramas that they create and solve through the product or service they sell, are stitched together into one day. This is a film about the everyday in (German, or Western-European) society because the commercials are part of the everyday of most people (everyone who watches television) and they depict an ideal image of society. The film abundantly uses repetition as an editing technique, in visual ways as described above, but also because commercials can be read in different ways. For instance, Brat baking foil shows up at the evening dinner sequence, when an ovendish is put on the table, and again later on in the sequence about going out to a classic concert, because the clip has classic music.

A serious docu-comedy about the commercialization of Christmas. What Would Jesus Buy? follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir as they go on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse: the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt!

Record high oil prices, global warming, and an insatiable demand for energy: these issues define our generation. The film exposes shocking connections between the auto industry, the oil industry, and the government, while exploring alternative energies such as solar, wind, electricity, and non-food-based biofuels.

A look at the modern-day problem of "affluenza," an epidemic of stress, overwork, shopping and debt caused by the pursuit of the American Dream. The history of the condition is explored, as well as the advertising and marketing ploys used to sustain it. Men and women from around the country share their stories of personal debt and suggestions for financial recovery.

Logistics or Logistics Art Project is an experimental art film. At 51,420 minutes (857 hours or 35 days and 17 hours), it is the longest movie ever made. A 37 day-long road movie in the true sense of the meaning. The work is about Time and Consumption. It brings to the fore what is often forgotten in our digital, ostensibly fast-paced world: the slow, physical freight transportation that underpins our economic reality.

A short film on throw-away culture and TV

A Eurovision singer, Iceland's strongest woman, a male model, a plumber who wants to direct movies. They all work in the shopping mall that this documentary focuses on ... most of them want to get out, even just to the bigger mall down the road.

This documentary takes the viewer on a deeply personal journey into the everyday lives of families struggling to fight Goliath. From a family business owner in the Midwest to a preacher in California, from workers in Florida to a poet in Mexico, dozens of film crews on three continents bring the intensely personal stories of an assault on families and American values.

Swedish documentary film on consumerism and globalization, created by director Erik Gandini and editor Johan Söderberg. It looks at the arguments for capitalism and technology, such as greater efficiency, more time and less work, and argues that these are not being fulfilled, and they never will be. The film leans towards anarcho-primitivist ideology and argues for "a simple and fulfilling life".

Two students from the Czech Film Academy commission a leading advertising agency to organize a huge campaign for the opening of a new supermarket named Czech Dream. The supermarket however does not exist and is not meant to. The advertising campaign includes radio and television ads, posters, flyers with photos of fake Czech Dream products, a promotional song, an internet site, and ads in newspapers and magazines. Will people believe in it and show up for the grand opening?

In this documentary we discover the dangerously funny cartoonist Mr. Fish, struggling to make a living in an industry that is dying out.

Gilles Groulx's first film shot in 1955 with a camera borrowed from his brother and edited during his spare time when he worked as an editor at the Radio-Canada news service a few years before he joined the NFB. Silent film, presented as its author left it, where the soil and the dialectic of Groulx's work are already there: documentary realism, the social space to be explored, daily life, the relationship between individual and society, social disparities, the consumer society, seduction and happiness.

Programming the Nation? takes an encompassing look at the history of subliminal messaging in America. According to many authorities, since the late 1950s subliminal content has been tested and delivered through all forms of mass-media including Hollywood filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and William Friedkin. Even our modern military has been accused of these practices in the "war on terror" against soldiers and civilians both abroad and at home. With eye-opening footage, revealing interviews, humorous anecdotes, and an array of visual effects, the film categorically explores the alleged usage of subliminals in advertising, music, film, television, anti-theft devices, political propaganda, military psychological operations, and advanced weapons development. Director Jeff Warrick makes it his personal mission to determine if these manipulative tactics have succeeded in "programming the nation?" Or, if subliminal messaging belongs in the category of what many consider urban legend.

A documentary that focuses on Hayao Miyazaki’s deep connection to nature and the environmental themes expressed through his films.

Once upon a time... consumer goods were built to last. Then, in the 1920’s, a group of businessmen realized that the longer their product lasted, the less money they made, thus Planned Obsolescence was born, and manufacturers have been engineering products to fail ever since. Combining investigative research and rare archive footage with analysis by those working on ways to save both the economy and the environment, this documentary charts the creation of ‘engineering to fail’, its rise to prominence and its recent fall from grace.

2050, faudra-t-il vraiment se passer de viande ?

Antonio, a filmmaker running out of ideas, has a vision of the city's patron, St. Nicholas, who asks him to make a film about his true story. So Antonio sets out on a journey in the myth's footsteps, crossing all the countries where the saint is revered. Turkey, Belgium, Holland, France, Russia, all the way to the United States, where he is better known as Santa Claus, i.e., Santa Claus. A journey in the midst of a melting pot of popular cultures and traditions, with all their contradictions, a journey through colors and religious rigor mixed together giving life to a sacred figure who is, at the same time, a consumerist model.

A Mondo documentary focused on the 1960's American lifestyle, consumerism, religion, adversity, and oddity. An outsider's look at a country afflicted by episodes of racism and neo -Nazism. Scenes of a Ghost Town, LSD in NYC, Sunset Strip Los Angeles California, Amish, Klu Klux Klan, African-American Fashion Show, etc.

Film from Andrew Morgan. The True Cost is a documentary film exploring the impact of fashion on people and the planet.