Napalm

A personal reflection on 2020's Black Lives Matter protests.

A porn-loving, Charles Manson-befriending, Mississippi Republican runs to become the next sheriff.

Tobacco, climate change, pesticides,... Never has scientific knowledge seemed so vast, detailed and shared. And yet it appears to be increasingly challenged. It is no longer surprising to see private corporations put strategies in place to confuse the public debate and paralyze political decision-making. Overwhelmed by excess of information, how can we, as citizens, sort out fact from fiction? One by one, this film dismantles the workings of this clever manoeuvre that aims to turn science against itself. Thanks to declassified archives, graphic animations and testimonies from experts, lobbyists and politicians, this investigation plunges us into the science of doubt. Along with a team of experts (philosophers, economists, cognitive scientists, political men, or even agnotologists), we explore concrete examples of doubt making and try to understand the whole process and the issues behind it.

On Wednesday, July 17th 2019, a heavily armed police force arrested 36 Native Hawaiian kūpuna peacefully protecting Maunakea from desecration. The actions from that day sparked an international outcry and brought new life to the ongoing movement for Native Hawaiians’ rights for self-determination.

Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin's expose on the pornography industry.

Welcome to a never-before-seen tour of the creations by resistance artists around the world. From the streets of Moscow to the shores of Los Angeles and featuring interviews with Tom Morello, Dave Navarro, Moby, Shepard Fairey, and more, this powerful film brings a message of hope and change through radical resistance and righteous social uprising.

A Litany for Survival' explores the shades between love, rage, and rebellion as a black person surviving in America. Two months before the shocking revelation of Daniel Prude's murder video surfaced, BLM activists organize at the Mayor's house to make their case for equal human rights in the heavily segregated city of Rochester, NY.

The six-decade transformation of a block of houses, shown by means of artfully featured archival shots, highlights the beauty and sadness of human-made decay. In the blink of an eye 66 years pass by and a savings bank replaces a church.

In 2020, the USA experienced a multiple catastrophe: No other country in the world was hit so badly by the coronavirus pandemic, the economic slump was dramatic, and so was the rise in unemployment. A rift ran through society. In the streets there were protests of both camps with violent riots, authoritarian traits were evident in the actions of the leader of the nation. And all of this in the middle of the election year, when the self-centered president fought vehemently for his re-election. From the start of his presidency, Donald Trump had divided American society, incited individual sections of the population against one another, fueled racism, hatred, xenophobia and prejudice, insulted competitors and denigrated critical journalists as enemies of the people. The documentary shows how this could happen and what role the targeted disinformation of certain sections of the population through manipulative media played.

"Not Done: Women Remaking America" chronicles the seismic eruption of women's organizing from the 2016 election through today, and the intersectional fight for equality that has now gone mainstream. Like the movement it documents, this story is told collectively: through the firsthand experiences and narratives of frontline activists, writers, celebrities, artists, and politicians who are remaking culture, policy, and most radically, our notions about gender. Premiering against the backdrop of an unprecedented pandemic and widespread social upheaval, "Not Done" shines a light on the next generation of feminists who are unafraid to take on complex problems and are leading the way to true equality.

It became world news in October 2019 when economic reforms in Ecuador led to gas prices suddenly shooting up by 123 percent. People from urban and indigenous communities united in protest. In The Rebellion of Memory we follow the events through their eyes, as the country’s capital, Quito, descends into smoke-filled chaos.

For years, right-wing politicians and pundits have repeatedly criticized the left for playing “the race card” and “the woman card.” This new film turns the tables and takes dead aim at the right’s own longstanding – but rarely discussed – deployment of white-male identity politics in American presidential elections. Ranging from Richard Nixon’s tough-talking, law-and-order campaign in 1968 to Donald Trump’s hyper-macho revival of the same fear-based appeals in 2020, "The Man Card" shows how the right has mobilized dominant ideas about manhood and enacted a deliberate strategy to frame Democrats and liberals as soft, brand the Republican Party as the party of “real men,” and position conservatives as defenders of white male power and authority in the face of transformative demographic change and ongoing struggles for racial, gender, and sexual equality.

Faced with climate change, many countries have embarked on the energy transition. Since the COP21 in 2015, which set demanding targets for reducing greenhouse gases, green energies have been on the rise. The electric car has thus become the mascot of this revolution. But manufacturers remain discreet about the carbon footprint of their cars marked "zero emission". Because not only do they consume electricity that is not always clean, but they also consume rare metals such as cobalt or lithium, the extraction of which causes havoc on the other side of the world. In China, for example, champion of rare metals, in Heilongjiang province, a carpet of toxic dust covers agricultural regions.

Via Celestina

A New York Times documentary mini-series revealing the dark and troubling history of Soviet and Russian misinformation campaigns on foreign governments.

On 19 March 1966, a photo exhibition about the police intervention during the wedding of Beatrix and Claus opened in Amsterdam. After the opening, filmmaker Louis van Gasteren filmed how, in the distance, policemen began beating up a young man, seemingly without any provocation. This footage was shown that same evening on television. Van Gasteren interviewed the victim, a 22-year-old student, who declared that he was walking in that direction because his ‘bicycle was there’. That became the title of this short film, in which Van Gasteren used slow motion to analyse the objectionable actions taken by the police.

Ingo Zamperoni has been known as one of the anchormen of the popular German late-night news journal Tagesthemen since 2016. The German-Italian knows the USA like only a few people because he studied there and later he reported from there as an US correspondent. He is also married to an American. That is why he has many relatives in the United States. But the rift that runs through American society also runs right through his in-laws living there. While father-in-law Paul is a supporter of the Republicans under Donald Trump, his wife Jiff and mother-in-law Lynn are supporters of the Democrats and concerned for their country. As an African American, the second husband of his mother-in-law brings his own insights into the increased racism in the country. Zamperoni embarks on a family-political search for the causes in order to understand why the whole country and its family are so torn.

The true history of the anti-government extremist terrorist group's century of violence. Focusing on the group which has caused nationwide rioting and violence, The film – which undermines the mainstream media’s depiction of the group as “just an idea” – has already been censored by YouTube and Vimeo.

Sassnitz is a small coastal town at the Baltic Sea on the Island of Rügen. In its vicinity are the world-famous chalk cliffs, a tourist magnet. The Mukran Port is also part of the municipality. The overseas port is the starting point for the construction of Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline that connects Germany directly with Russia. In 2020, the port town hit the international headlines. Even the New York Times reported and cited Mayor Frank Kracht as a staunch opponent from the northeast German province against the rumbling America of Donald Trump. The reason is the undisguised threat from Washington to ruin the international port economically if the natural gas pipeline continues to be built from there. Many jobs and the region's economic stability are at risk. Reporter Klaus Scherer documents the case, questions experts as well as those affected and looks at the behavior of national politicians towards the USA and how they react to the interference in internal affairs.

Mad minutes is a documentary about the memories of civilians who were killed by the Korean army during the Vietnam War. It testifies to the insanity and barbarism of war that does not stop, even through the memories of survivors, who are living with the terrible memories of war buried in the heartbreaking historical sequence where countless civilians were sacrificed. The director tells a forgotten part of history through the lives and testimonies of the survivors. It is a record of the scars of war that can never be erased, in line with the twisted modern history: Before even properly apologizing for the massacre of Vietnamese civilians caused by the dispatch of South Korean troops to Vietnam in the past, the government dispatched troops to Iraq again. - Mad Minutes: "To soothe the boredom of American soldiers dispatched to Vietnam during the war, we give them 2-3 minutes once every two months to allow them to freely shoot at anything other than the target inside the unit."