Mission Mind Control

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.

Prescription for Disaster is an in-depth investigation into the symbiotic relationships between the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, lobbyists, lawmakers, medical schools, and researchers, and the impact this has on consumers and their health care. During this thorough investigation, we take a close look at patented drugs, why they are so readily prescribed by doctors, the role insurance companies and HMO's play in promoting compliance, and the problem of rising health care costs. We will examine the marketing and public relations efforts on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies, including sales reps, medical journals and conferences.

Two physicists discover psychic abilities are real only to have their experiments at Stanford co-opted by the CIA and their research silenced by the demands of secrecy. This is the true story of Russell Targ and America's Cold War psychic spies, disclosed and declassified for the first time, with evidence presented by a Nobel laureate, an Apollo astronaut, and the military and scientific community that has been suppressed for nearly 30 years.

Tongue-in-cheek look at 20-something singles clubbing and partying in L.A. Voice-over narration, charts and graphs, and visits to a research laboratory punctuate the story of a single night when groups of friends go out, drink alcohol, take drugs, dance and talk, and look for someone to go home with.

Kevin Jerome Everson and his collaborator Kahlil I. Pedizisai filmed the comings and goings in front of a trap house on Empire Street in Cleveland, Ohio. Loosely inspired by Andy Warhol's 1964 film "Empire," which also runs for eight hours.

On Valentine's Day, 1993, Caveh Zahedi decided to ingest 5 grams (a very large dose) of hallucinogenic mushrooms. For the first time in his mushroom-taking history, he had an experience of "divine possession," in which he felt that a divine being took possession of his body and spoke through him, in a voice that was not his, and with knowledge that he himself did not possess. He later tried several times to repeat the experience. I WAS POSSESSED BY GOD is the documentary record of one such attempt.

An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu city of 500,000.

Maria is somewhat of a rebel and problem child. Her mother died and her father remarried some awful lady, and Maria isn't happy at all. She takes a drug overdose and winds up in a home for other girls with problems, but the two women who run the place turn out to be not quite the ladies they seemed. Maria knows she can't stay there very long, and starts planning her escape.

Anne Hamilton-Byrne was beautiful, charismatic and delusional. She was also incredibly dangerous. Convinced she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Hamilton-Byrne headed an apocalyptic sect called The Family, which was prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s through to the 1990s. With her husband Bill, she acquired numerous children – some through adoption scams, some born to cult members – and raised them as her own. Isolated from the outside world, the children were dressed in matching outfits, had identical dyed blonde hair, and were allegedly beaten, starved and injected with LSD. Taught that Hamilton-Byrne was both their mother and the messiah, the children were eventually rescued during a police raid in 1987, but their trauma had only just begun.

Wasted Talent

With more people taking a wider range of drugs than ever before, Radio 1 DJ B. Traits meets users and dealers to find out how much they really know about their drugs - and whether they're safe. After a decade working in some of the biggest clubs in the world, she worries that many people have no idea what they're taking, and are being sold drugs that aren't what they think.

Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter on LSD, then worked for decades counseling drug abusers. Dock's soulful style defined 1970s baseball as he kept hitters honest and embarrassed the establishment. An ensemble cast of teammates, friends, and family investigate his life on the field, in the media, and out of the spotlight.

The successful undercover agent Victor Cooper is assigned for his ninth mission: to find how the loadings of drug is being brought to Miami. He suspects that the drug is coming through the air and joins a team of sky diving, under the leadership of Red Line, a fanatic and considered the athlete number one in this sport in the world. Due to his profile of winner, Vic gets involved with the group and he "disconnects" from his position of infiltrated agent, "connecting" with the team.

Scénarios sur la drogue

A powerful three-part documentary studying the US involvement in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. The differing factions - Sandinista leaders, Guatemalan campesinos, CIA operatives, Contras and US government apologists - are interviewed and, in the absence of a controlling narration, the audience is encouraged to draw its own conclusions.

The 60s equivalent of Reefer Madness and all those other 30s drug exploitation flicks. Apparently, dropping acid leads to stripteases, cat fights, promiscuous sex, playing with kittens, and being convinced your dinner is much larger than it actually is. This is all illustrated in a series of silent sketches accompanied by a droll narrator who seems positively doped out of his mind.

Portrait of Charles Manson. Contains various interviews with J.R. Bruun, Boyd Rice, Nikolas Schreck and other persons with an interest in Charles Manson, inter cut with a barrage of weird clips from movies and television.

CBS TV news special hosted by Harry Reasoner explores the way-out world of the Hippies and the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic 1960s LSD scene. Footage of LSDs users experiencing bummer trips. The Diggers, the Oracle and cool street and Golden Gate Park scenes with hippies tripping out. The Grateful Dead are interviewed and are shown performing "Dancin' in the Streets" on a flatbed truck in Golden Gate Park. The Hippie Temptation!

An investigation on the death of a 18-year-old boy and its cover-up by the police.

In the name of the struggle against terrorism, a special operation - code named CONDOR - was conducted in the 1970s and '80s in South America. Its target were left-wing political dissidents, the organized labor and intellectuals. Condor soon became a network of military dictatorships supported by the U.S. State Department, the CIA, and Interpol.