Summary Whilst Ron Jones’ The Third Wave has received a lot of attention and been dramatised, George Muldoon’s experiments in capitalist democracy involving two groups of seventh graders in Mill Valley, California have seemingly slipped under the political radar… “I said years and years and years ago that the public school system is like a [...]

Summary On a trip to visit family in Seoul in April, I was approached by a man and a woman who claimed to be North Korean defectors. They presented me with a DVD that recently came into their possession and asked me to translate it. They also asked me to post the completed film on [...]

Summary Jacques Ellul was a French theologian/sociologist and anarchist. He first became well-known to American readers when his book The Technological Society was published in English in 1964. This book leveled a broad critique of technique, a term that means more than gadgets and machines – as the English word technology means. For Ellul, technique [...]

Summary Political philosopher and visionary, husband and father, dynamic orator and militant minister. In his lifetime, Malcolm X was many men. Born Malcolm Little, he later became “Detroit Red” and “New York Red” — a hustler, drug pusher, pimp, con man and the head of a Boston robbery ring. After spending time in prison, he [...]

Summary “I am dying. … There is no sense in trying to deny that fact,” 59-year-old Craig Ewert says of his rapid deterioration just months after being diagnosed with ALS, a motor neuron disorder often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. “I’m not tired of living,” explains Ewert, a retired computer science professor. “I’m tired [...]

Summary The Canadian documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media presents a lengthy, detailed look at the political beliefs of celebrated intellectual Noam Chomsky. Casting only passing glances at Chomsky’s groundbreaking work in the field of linguistics and his eventful life, filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Witonick instead focus on his activities as a [...]

Summary Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz[1] (Arabic: الحاجّ مالك الشباز‎), was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in [...]

Summary There’s a world wide revolution going on.. it goes beyond Mississippi, it goes beyond Alabama, it goes beyond Harlem.. What is it revolting against? The power structure. The American power structure? No. The French power structure? No. The English power structure? No. Then what power structure? An international western power structure. Malcolm X: Prince [...]

Summary In the field of brain research there is no subject more intriguing than the savant – an individual with mental, behavioral, or even physical disability who possesses acute powers of observation, mathematical aptitude, or artistic talent. This three-part series provides an enthralling look into the psychology and neuroscience of the savant’s mysterious world. 3-part [...]

Summary The Secret Life of the Brain, a David Grubin Production, reveals the fascinating processes involved in brain development across a lifetime. The five-part series, informs viewers of exciting information in the brain sciences, introduces the foremost researchers in the field, and utilizes dynamic visual imagery and compelling human stories to help a general audience [...]

Summary For most of our history, we’ve rested easy in the notion that there were three dimensions that have existed throughout time: length, width and height. Ah, the good old days. In the early 20th century, Hermann Minkowski and Albert Einstein connected our comfortable three dimensions with a fourth, time, defining special relativity using a [...]

Summary The documentary looks at the modern advances in mathematics and how they affect our understanding of physics, economics, environmental issues and human psychology. The film looks at how developments in 20th Century mathematics have affected our view of the world, and particularly how the financial economy and earth’s environment are now seen as inherently [...]

Summary Einstein’s Theory of Relativity says that time travel is perfectly possible — if you’re going forward. Finding a way to travel backwards requires breaking the speed of light, which so far seems impossible. But now, strange-but-true phenomena such as quantum non-locality, where particles instantly teleport across vast distances, may give us a way to [...]

Summary When you’re having fun, time flies. Waiting in a traffic jam, not so much. Your birthday was last month, and your mortgage payment is due in a few days. The fact that we perceive time is certainly no illusion. But is it really there, or is it something we invented? Early on in human [...]

Summary “Zizek!” is a feature documentary exploring the eccentric personality and esoteric work of the “wild man of theory”: the eminent Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. “Žizek!” trails the thinker as he crisscrosses the globe, racing from New York City lecture halls, through the streets of Buenos Aires, and even stopping at home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. [...]

Summary Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, aka The Elvis of cultural theory, is given the floor to show off his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance. The Giant of Ljubljana is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of [...]

Summary A documentary adaptation Naomi Klein’s 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine. An investigation of disaster capitalism, based on Naomi Klein’s proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance. Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how [...]

Summary On a cold December morning in 1919, just after midnight, Emma Goldman, her comrade Alexander Berkman, and more than 200 other foreign-born radicals were roused from their Ellis Island dormitory beds to begin their journey out of the United States for good. Convicted of obstructing the draft during World War I, Goldman’s expatriation came [...]

Summary This drama-documentary tells the story of Ethel MacDonald. A forgotten legend, her story ranks alongside the courage of ‘La Pasionaria’ and the legendary ‘Odette’. Whilst both these women sustained world-wide recognition, our Scots heroine dwindled into obscurity and remains forgotten to this day. Ethel MacDonald’s own intimate recollections are presented through a definitive mix [...]

Summary This hard-to-describe movie, which combines talking-head documentary footage with a fictional narrative, attempts to explain quantum physics in terms most audiences can understand. The extent to which it succeeds will largely be the extent to which a viewer grasps the complex theories being addressed in those terms. Does matter exist? Does time flow in [...]

Summary A colorful and provocative survey of anarchism in America, the film attempts to dispel popular misconceptions and trace the historical development of the movement. The film explores the movement both as a native American philosophy stemming from 19th century American traditions of individualism, and as a foreign ideology brought to America by immigrants. The [...]

Summary This documentary goes over many philosophical concepts that inspired, and are presented in, the trilogy. They spend the first half on the original film, and the rest of the time then goes over parts 2 and 3, with a couple of things on the Animatrix shorts. It consists of clips of aforementioned releases and [...]