Big cities have serious errors that affect our quality of life. Over half of our world's population is now living in cities. Life in a City Full of Errors is an online short documentary series about those who dig out, record, share but also go out and fix the errors of their big city. The series is part of a cross-media platform called City of Errors. City of Errors is a mobile and...
Life in a City Full of Errors is an online short-documentary series of City of Errors. Each episode of the series is called an Error. This is Error #6 [stress]. It talks about the few oases of the city, where anxiety, noise and pressure go mute and which we now more than ever need in order to feel human. And how it's up to us to protect, enjoy and care for these oases. For more...
Cities should be a solution not a problem for human beings. The city of Curitiba has demonstrated for the past 40 years how to transform problems into cost-effective solutions that can be applied in most cities around the world. A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil is an informative, inspirational documentary aimed at sharing ideas to provoke environment-friendly and...
What happens when citizens apply permaculture principles to a city grid? They create friendly places within the grid that invite people to come together. Mark Lakeman, co-founder of Portland, Oregon's City Repair Project describes these "creative intervention" projects as placemaking at its best. People learn to work together, build trust and have fun. The results, from painted intersections...
Asking “wouldn’t it be wonderful if our city could feed itself?” Joe Leitch ponders everybody in Portland planting a chestnut tree. Pam Leitch relates how they both left the corporate world after reading the book “Your Money or Your Life”. As educators on sustainability and resource depletion, permaculture and social justice, they soon learned of Peak Oil. Pam initiated bringing a Peak Oil...
Over the past century, our cities have been shaped — literally — for the benefit of the automobile and oil industries. Today, with global oil reserves headed toward irreversible decline, we need to face the challenges of the imminent post-oil reality. Seizing foreign oil fields (then “spinning” the story to make a prophet of Orwell) will not solve our environmental...
Kansas City, Thursday March 1, 2011 a group of concerned citizens gathered at the Cherith Brook Community House ( A Catholic Worker House ) to educate and plan protests against the building of nuclear warheads in Kansas City. Dorothy Day was the matriarch of an anarchist movement in the earlier part of the twentieth century. She began what is known as the catholic worker movement. The...
This series will attempt to roughly give some examples as to how the urban environment can be altered so that cities can not only sustain themselves but also become ecologically rich environs benefiting mankind and servicing nature. In order for us to do so, we must create radical shifts in the way we think about the vital needs of our civilization and follow the examples biology can give us...
The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. From acclaimed director Steve James and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, this film is an unusually intimate journey into the stubborn, persistence of violence in our cities. Click Here to Watch the full film via PBS...
Geoff Lawton ventures into the cities and towns of the small Urban Garden. Urban Permaculture. What are the creative Permaculture strategies that people use in small scale garden design? Watch Geoff Lawton in action on a real Permaculture consultancy. If you live in the city with a tiny courtyard or even a larger suburban backyard, this DVD is packed with useful examples for you to learn and...
In Brief : There will be at least 100 million more Americans by 2050, and likely 150 million more. Yet the cities that will house them are so spatially and economically unstable that it is impossible to do much beyond superficial sustainability planning. One solution is to anchor and recycle wealth in communities, using locally owned businesses as bulwarks against uncontrolled economic forces...
Films For Action's City Chapter websites aim to provide a definitive web-based resource for the activist community of that city. By providing a robust set of information and communication tools geared to amplify the impact of local efforts, the website serves to build synergy and momentum to affect dramatic and radical change at a city-wide level. We believe an informed, well connected, and...
This is a video about the celebration of May Day, by Unions, and Occupy Wall Street. A Rally, Demonstrations, and Parades took place on May 1, 2012, in New York City. It was in all parts of the city and it lasted all day.
Smart municipalities are planning and preparing for energy vulnerability and climate change. Daniel Lerch, manager of the Post Carbon Cities project, has prepared a guidebook including case studies of cities large and small planning how to maintain essential services in the face of energy and climate uncertainty.
San Francisco is the first American city to formally address the challenges of oil depletion. Dennis Brumm and Alyse Heartwell recount how members of SF Oil Awareness envisioned, wrote and presented to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors a Peak Oil resolution, which they passed unanimously in April 2006. They explore next steps: public hearings and plans to create a task force to assess the...
Santa Barbara is serious about lowering carbon emissions. Guided by a comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions study, they’re adding solar panels to city buildings, requiring lower energy usage for new buildings, switching to biodiesel and hybrid vehicles, and giving free bus passes to downtown workers. City councilmember Das Williams urges citizens to push officials to make substantive (i.e...
The Youth Project in New York City aims to build the capacity of inner-city kids to advocate for themselves and their communities. We build on participant's confidence, creativity, and self-expression skills through creative workshops, outings, and overnight trips and use these skills to speak out in a variety of ways.
We like our cities? What drives a vibrant city these days? What are our daily transportation habits and what are its consequences? This documentary was selected as a finalist in international environmental film festivals: ECOZINE 2011(Spain), URBAN TV 2011(Spain), FRICINE 2013 (Brazil), KLEFF 2012 (Malaysia), TELENATURA 2012 (Spain). Director: Mattia Trabucchi
Occupy Wall Street's Birthday Celebration is a two hour documentary of one year of Occupy Occupy Wall Street events, that took place in New York City, from September 17, 2011 to September 17, 2012, The video covers the anniversary weekend that went on throughout the city.
For those of you who are curious exactly how Richard Register's ideas would work in practice, here's what it could look like if Americans ever decided to retrofit their downtowns for true sustainability. We know how to build the ecocity. It's easy if you want to: up-zone for more density and diversity in the centers and withdraw from sprawl. We are replete with tools. The starting...
Patrick Crouch practices the kind of gardening that Detroit has recently become famous for. The typical plot at Earthworks Urban Farm , where he serves as program manager, is cultivated on borrowed land and in close proximity to houses and apartment buildings. These plots provide local food to neighbors through CSAs, and help neighborhood kids get acquainted with agriculture. Activists...
Wall Street Occupation, was a video of the 8Th day of the occupation of Wall Street, in New York City, which took place on Sept 25, 2011. 99% of the people are going to take back our Media, Military, Courts, and our Government, which have been taken over by the wealthy 1%. The message of the occupation is that America belongs to all the people. Power to the People. In unity we will win...
“There it is,” I said, camera in hand. “I’ve been looking for that poster for my ecological city slide show.” Before me was a sign I’d seen several times flashing by through the window of my moving train. It turned out to be part of a campaign by the Vancouver Aquarium. Featuring an image of a polar bear floating on a slab of ice in an almost open ocean, the...
From elephant to estuary: does the 2013 European Green Capital have something to teach US cities?
Films For Action is a local and international organization dedicated to providing you with the information and perspectives essential to creating a more just, sustainable, and democratic society. Along these lines we are many things. We're community film screening organizers. We're an alternative news center. We're a problem/solutions learning library. We're an international and city-focused...
New York City Casserole was a gathering of Occupy Wall Street that took place on October 13, 2012.
University of Missouri Kansas City economics professor Michael Hudson compares the behavior of Wall Street to a parasite on the U.S. economy.
Little Mountain is the oldest public housing site in Vancouver, home to families and a rich community for over 60 years. What was once public land has been sold to private developers who plan to evict all of the tenats and demolish the site. The Steenhuisen family have lived in Little Mountain for close to 50 years and are not leaving without a fight. Along with support from community...
Mark Crispin Miller speaks at a rally organized by NYC CAN (Coalition for Accountability Now) on Sept 27th, 2009. NYC CAN is a group consisting of survivors and family members of the victims who were murdered on Sept. 11th 2001. NYC CAN is demanding a new investigation into the attacks and is currently in a battle with the City of New York to get a referendum put on the November ballot to ask...
Edible City, a 60 minute documentary film, tells the stories of the pioneers who are digging their hands into the dirt, working to transform their communities and do something truly revolutionary: grow local Good Food Systems that are socially just, environmentally sound, economically viable and resilient to climate change and market collapse. Part 2 is the trailer. Please share it freely...
Swansea Love Story: An award-winning look at a generation lost to heroin, as told through the tragic love story of Amy and Cornelius. In 2009, Swansea drug agencies reported a 180 percent rise in heroin use, and it's visible on the city's streets. Early one morning we meet a young, homeless couple named Amy and Cornelius in a city centre alley. As heroin-addicted alcoholics, they're smack in...
The film deals with one of the most dramatic societal trends happening today: urbanization. The world population is expected to soar to more than 9 billion people by 2050, with roughly 70 percent living in cities. At the same time, Information Communications Technology is extending its reach. These parallel trends are intersecting at a time in which the world faces serious economic...
Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. He discovers a group of people who consider it their religious and political obligation to populate some of the most sensitive and disputed areas of the West Bank, especially those with a spiritual significance dating back to the Bible. Throughout his journey, Louis gets close to the...
Hundreds of Citizens Pack Council Chambers, Council Votes Unanimously to Support the “Move to Amend” LOS ANGELES, CA – After forty-five minutes of public testimony urging a yes vote, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to support a resolution calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to clearly establish that only living persons -- not corporations -- are...
The Panthers are a unique organisation that takes inspiration and methods from the Black Panthers in the USA. The Panthers was started in February 2011 by a few older youths from the suburb of Biskopsgården in Gothenburg, Sweden. They have organised themed days, summer and winter camps, and a football tournament with invited teams from other suburbs. With a strong sense of commitment...
If emerging victorious after being down 3-0 to the Yankees in the 2004 playoffs should have taught us anything, it’s that the people of Boston are tough as hell and never lose faith. After Monday’s bombing of the Boston Marathon and the following days under lockdown, we are already seeing that resilience emerge. Already, people in the city are talking about how the Marathon next...
To the Residents of Anaheim, I am one of the outsiders who's coming to your city today to protest the cowardly shooting of Manuel Diaz, the five other fatal police shootings this year alone, and the police incursion into a neighborhood protest with guns and dogs. Before I arrive, I want to thank you for your welcome and hospitality. Just as the police are uniting in nationwide and...
Sprawling From Grace is a documentary feature film about the unintended consequences of suburban sprawl. It illustrates the importance of altering the course of how we develop our nation’s cities. It communicates the dangers of continuing to invest in the inefficient horizontal growth patterns of suburban communities, and details how they threaten to bankrupt the remaining wealth of...
The Honeywell complex in Kansas City owned by the General Service Administration (GSA) and regulated by the NNSA is a toxic waste dump. Instead of holding the corporations liable for the mess they have created the EPA has created a program referred to as a Superfund. The EPA states: Superfund is the federal government’s program to clean up the nation’s uncontrolled hazardous waste...
Lawrence, KS -- After 12 months in development, Films For Action has launched its new website - a head-to-toe redesign that lays the foundation for a vibrant community-powered news site dedicated to inspiring positive social change. At the heart of the new site is a constantly growing learning library of over 200 documentaries and 500 short films that can be watched free online, daily...
The Group of 8 Summit, a meeting of the governments of the world's eight largest economies, was supposed to convene in Chicago this May. For months, Occupy Chicago , international anti-war groups, Anonymous, and hundreds of allies have publicly planned to shut it down . Now, only two months before the meeting is scheduled to begin, U.S. President Barack Obama is moving the assembly of over...
With excellent independent media sites like Adbusters, Truth Out and Common Dreams providing progressive news and perspective in written form, Films For Action has dedicated itself to filling in the progressive video niche. "It's probably the most comprehensive collection of videos dedicated to social change online," says Tim Hjersted, co-founder and director for the project. "With the...
It's been five years since the Films For Action project began in Lawrence, Kansas. It started with one simple idea: we can't depend on the mainstream media to inform us, so let's become the media ourselves by hosting documentaries on issues that the corporate media ignores. Over the years we 've hosted over 30 film screenings, launched a website that has attracted over 380,000...
Aims to trace the journey of the Child for the parents and for the employer. Parents have no idea what happens to the child once he/she goes missing or taken to city with a promised dream of life changing employment. Employers have no knowledge of how did the child reach from his/her household to theirs. Sons and daughters aim of Sons and Daughters is to take the urban viewer through the...
Ladies of New York , you are free to walk bare-breasted through the city! New York City's 34,000 police officers have been instructed that, should they encounter a woman in public who is shirtless but obeying the law, they should not arrest her. This is a good step towards gender parity in public spaces. This decision means that breast exposure is not considered public lewdness...
Watch an animation that shows how to turn a conventional community into an edible city. Learn how to transform unproductive spaces into agricultural landscapes that help fight obesity and reduce food deserts. A couple resources: http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/ http://growninthecity.com/
May Day has been traditionally a day for workers. The New York City celebration of May Day was directed to address the fight against injustice to the 99%,occupy wall street, immigrants, labor unions, the homeless, the unemployed , students, and all working people .
Free Bradley Manning is a video of a rally which took place Feb 23 2013 in Union Sq., New York City. Bradley Manning has been imprisoned and tortured by our government for revealing war crimes committed by our military.
Nominated for an Academy Award, this film chronicles the hard-fought campaign for mayor of Newark, New Jersey, by Corey Booker, a young community activist and City Council member, against a 16-year incumbent with a powerful political machine.
Sir Ken Robinson delivers a brand new, insightful and entertaining talk to educators at the 9th Annual AERO Conference, "Finding the Catalyst for the Education Revolution." - Join educators, parents, and organizers who think outside the box at http://www.educationrevolution.org Come to the 10th annual AERO Conference: May 23-26, near New York City!