Summary There has been a “drug culture” since the dawn of civilization. Sumerian cuneiform tablets from 3000 BC show a poppy harvest, as do ancient Egyptian scripts and Greek statues adorned with poppy crowns. Far more recently, Freud sung the praises of cocaine, which was included in the original recipe for Coca-Cola. But since the [...]

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 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 In October 1969 hundreds of young people, clad in football helmets and wielding lead pipes, marched through an upscale Chicago shopping district, pummeling parked cars and smashing shop windows in their path. This was the first demonstration of the Weather Underground’s “Days of Rage.” Outraged by the Vietnam War and racism in America, the [...]

Summary Have US counter-terrorism policies contributed to the deadly crisis in the Horn of Africa? The worst drought in 60 years has thrown some 13 million people across the Horn of Africa into crisis. In Somalia, ravaged by two decades of conflict, the consequences have been disastrous. For over six months, aid agencies on the [...]

Summary Sudan was the giant of Africa which once represented the greatest hope for peaceful coexistence between Arab and African, Muslim and Christian. That hope is all but gone. As Sudan is split into two, the government of Omar al-Bashir in the North faces growing public resentment over the loss of national pride. To boost [...]

Summary Through a secret program called the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), there was a concerted effort to subvert the will of the people to avoid the rise “of a black Messiah” that would mobilize the African-American community into a meaningful political force. This documentary establishes historical perspective on the measures initiated by J. Edgar Hoover [...]

Summary War on Our World from Dominoes Falling Productions, is a feature length documentary using a collaboration of various material. The film examines war, imperialism and some of the causes and consequences of this, with a particular look at the Military-Industrial complex. An aim of the film is to help inspire peace. The film starts [...]

Summary Money is just information, a way we measure what we trade, nothing of value in itself. And we can make it ourselves, to work as a complement to conventional money. It’s just a matter of design. Money is at the intersection of nearly every aspect of modern life. Most of us take the monetary [...]

Summary Is the US contributing to the militarization of cyberspace? Cyberwar. A conflict without foot soldiers, guns, or missiles. Instead the attacks are launched by computer hackers. Digital spy rings. Information thieves. Cyberarmies of kids, criminals, terrorists – some backed by nation states. But is cyber war really a threat? Can cyber war actually cripple [...]

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 Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans’ most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced [...]

Summary Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers is an award winning 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 [...]

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 Huey Pierce Long, Jr. (August 30, 1893 – September 10, 1935), nicknamed The Kingfish, served as the 40th Governor of Louisiana from 1928–1932 and as a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935. A Democrat, he was noted for his radical populist policies. Though a backer of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election, [...]

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 The War on Democracy is a 2007 documentary film directed by Christopher Martin and John Pilger. Focusing on the political state of Latin America, the film is intended as a rebuke of both the United States’ intervention in foreign countries’ domestic politics, and its “War on Terrorism”. The film was first released in the [...]

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 The Obama Deception: The Mask Comes Off better known simply as The Obama Deception is an American political documentary film written and directed by radio talk show host Alex Jones. The film was released on March 12, 2009 and distributed by Alex Jones Productions. The film argues that American presidents since the 1960s have [...]