This guide will give you step by step instructions on how to host Films For Action sponsored film screening events in your city. It is intended primarily for people who have started or want to start a local Films For Action chapter, which will host multiple events per year. You can also review this guide to see if this is something you'd be interested in doing. We hope this guide will...
At a time when many are disillusioned with big banks and big business, and growing inequity in our country, employee ownership offers a real solution for workers and communities. Shift Change is a new documentary that highlights worker-owned enterprises in North America and in Mondragon, Spain. The film couldn’t be more timely, as 2012 has been declared by the U.N. as the...
Regularly watching the news over the years, and getting my news from a variety of sources, I’ve noticed that the mainstream news media does a pretty bad job of covering certain issues. A story about Paris Hilton takes the lead over a story about the Afghanistan war or a piece on climate change. Some issues don’t get covered at all. But to address this problem at a local level, many...
In celebration and exploration of all things green, two bicyclists are on a year-long journey around the United States to share what they've learned about sustainable communities. They’ve traveled more than 6,000 miles to visit and film 100 sustainable communities of all types, working to capture in film the abundance of community-oriented solutions out there that are already working...
"Super Size Me" is one man's journey into the world of weight gain, health problems and fast food. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock unravels the American obesity epidemic by interviewing experts nationwide and by subjecting himself to a 'McDonald's only' diet for thirty days straight. His Sundance award-winning feature is as entertaining as it horrifying as it dives into corporate responsibility...
Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and the family car. Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children's advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth...
Jean Kilbourne continues her groundbreaking analysis of advertising's depiction of women in this most recent update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series. In fascinating detail, Kilbourne decodes an array of print and television advertisements to reveal a pattern of disturbing and destructive gender stereotypes. Her analysis challenges us to consider the relationship between...
The project began as a way to explore, educate about, and advocate change around the overcrowding of the Philadelphia county jail system. The documentary has come to focus on mass incarceration across the nation and the intersection of race and poverty within criminal justice. The feature-length documentary is available for activists and educators to use in...
Imagine half a million adults skipping town and leaving their children behind. Picture an opened suitcase filled with bundles of cash at a bus stop and yet no robber wants to snatch it. The apiary science mystery known as Colony Collapse Disorder displays these very symptoms. Not only do the bees abandon their hive, but the queen and the brood as well. Unnatural. Unheard of. Even the...
Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and ethnic conflict; climate chaos and species extinction; financial instability and unemployment. There are personal costs too. For the majority of people on the planet life is becoming increasingly stressful. We have less...
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...
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...
So, I was trying to get my friend to read a recent issue of Adbusters magazine. "You've got to read this!" I said. "There's an article about how the media today is owned by only a handful of corporations, and corporate consolidation is leading to fewer voices getting on the air and stifling the range of debate, which is stifling the health of our democracy. And...
THE BLOOM, a ground-breaking new documentary webseries, illuminates the blossoming phenomenon of Transformational Festivals, immersive participatory realities that are having profound life-changing effects on hundreds of thousands of lives. Episode 1: Fundamental Frequencies March 21st: Premiers at local screenings around the world. Flagship Premier in Portland, OR at The Academy...
Host David Brancaccio tackles one of the toughest challenges facing Americans today: How does our country create jobs that pay well and build prosperity? Brancaccio travels across America uncovering innovative community and small business projects pioneered by inspirational personalities. Want to host a screening of this film? If your city is not listed on our screening list , and...
The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the future. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off) stars as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, looking back at archive-footage from 2007 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance? This film will be screening in over 400 locations in the U.S. for...
What are the consequences of a childhood removed from nature? At a time when children play more behind screens than outside, PLAY AGAIN explores the changing balance between the virtual and natural worlds. Is our connection to nature disappearing down the digital rabbit hole? This documentary follows six teenagers who, like the average American child, spend five to fifteen hours a day behind...
This (now former) climate change skeptic and self-professed Bill O'Reilly fan recently attended a screening of a new documentary that features time-lapse footage of entire glaciers disappearing at alarmingly fast rates. I think it's pretty safe to say what she saw made an impact.- Mansur Gidfar Want to know more about the documentary that changed this woman's mind? Check out the...
Get ready for YERT: The Film. We've finished our feature film based on our eco-adventures to every state of the USA! Please spread the word to all of your friends and family - we want this film to travel around the world. Find or arrange a screening near you by clicking on this page: http://www.yert.com/screenings.php . You can also check out the full synopsis and additional...
PROGRAMMING THE NATION takes an encompassing look at the history of subliminal messaging in America. According to many authorities, since the late 1950s subliminal content has been tested and delivered through all forms of mass-media including Hollywood filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and William Friedkin. Even our modern military has been accused of these practices in the "war on...
Oo-de-lally !! After twelve months in development, the site has finally gone live! What started out as a simple plan a year ago to make a few minor visual tweaks and navigational changes ended up morphing into an over-the-top, head-to-toe redesign of the entire site. It's been an epic adventure of long nights, coffee, and dreams of the day we'll someday be done, but the day has arrived...
A dangerous thing can occur when you start learning about what's really going on in the world. The problems start to seem so complex, and you're just one person, doubts begin to creep in. You sincerely want to help change the world, but from all this knowledge you start to believe that the world is too out of control and too big to change, so you end up not doing anything. What aspiring...
Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, launches a women’s contingent that quickly...
"Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave" expresses ideas that will never be heard in mainstream media. It is the consummate critical examination of the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Asking whether America has entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth, director Robert Kane Pappas explores what the media doesn't like to talk about...
Frack! tells the story of the unconventional gas-drilling ("fracking") frenzy sweeping the Marcellus region, including the Catskills and Upper Delaware River watershed, threatening pristine areas which provide clean drinking water for over 15 million people. Without a massive public outcry, once idyllic rural landscapes could become toxic industrial wastelands, and New York State a gas...
Four years in the making, The Harvest looks inside the American hunter subculture at a Make-A-Wish-like foundation that makes dreams come true for sick and dying boys and girls---dreams of hunting and harvesting the animal of their choice. The Harvest chronicles three families facing the uncertainty of life and the untimely loss of innocence. To learn more about the...
Three years in the making, this riveting new documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger tells the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet. An inside look at the infamous $27 billion Amazon Chernobyl case, Crude is a real-life, high stakes legal drama involving global politics, the environmental movement, celebrity activism, human rights...
In the documentary film "Ingreedients" , registered nurse and filmmaker, David Burton, discovers an alarming connection between diet and illness while investigating trans fats and hydrogenated oils in America's food supply. Do you know what a partially hydrogenated oil is? What does zero grams of trans fat per serving really mean? Find out in this compelling documentary that...
Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite plays an old man living in the devastated world of 2055 in this documentary-drama-animation hybrid from Director Franny Armstrong and Oscar-winning Producer John Battsek. Runaway climate change has ravaged the planet by 2055. Pete plays the founder of The Global Archive, a storage facility located in the (now melted) Arctic, preserving all of humanity’s...
Our FAST FOOD NATION exposed. Before you take another bite, you must see this movie. Take action at BackwardsHamburger.com... then get the full story on the big screen with Fast Food Nation, the movie. Of course, for the fullest, "completest" story on the subject, see the documentary "Earthlings" which you can watch online here. It's not as funny. In fact it's not funny at all, but it will...
"We're literally stuck up a cul-de-sac in a cement SUV without a fill-up" - James Howard Kunstler Global oil peak and the inevitable decline of fossil fuels are upon us now, Are today's suburbs destined to become the slums of the future? This is a short version of "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream", a documentary about the end of the age of cheap oil...
The Algonquin once lived in harmony with the vast territory they occupied. This balance was upset when the Europeans arrived in the 16th century. Gradually, their Aboriginal traditions were undermined and their natural resources plundered. Today, barely 9,000 Algonquin are left. They live in about 10 communities, often enduring abject poverty and human rights abuses. These Aboriginal...
IRAN (Is Not The Problem) is a feature length documentary film responding to the failure of the American mass media to provide the public with relevant and accurate information about the standoff between the US and Iran, as happened before with the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. We have heard that Iran is a nuclear menace in defiance of the international community, bent on “wiping...
I AM is an utterly engaging and entertaining non-fiction film that poses two practical and provocative questions: what’s wrong with our world, and what can we do to make it better? The filmmaker behind the inquiry is Tom Shadyac, one of Hollywood’s leading comedy practitioners and the creative force behind such blockbusters as “Ace Ventura,” “Liar Liar,&rdquo...
A chilling documentary on U.S. policy in Central America, this three volume series, which took six years to make, was researched and filmed by Allan Francovich, best known for his award winning film about the CIA, On Company Business. An astonishing range of characters tell their stories, from soon-to-be-assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero to Salvadoran right wing leader Robert...
Rethinking Education The film documents diverse alternative education practices and unconventional schools in Latin America and Spain and includes educational approaches such as popular education , Montessori , progressive education , Waldorf ,
"Solidarity! All for One and One for All!" With that slogan, the Industrial Workers of the World, aka the Wobblies, took to organizing unskilled workers into one big union and changing the course of history. Along the way to winning an eight-hour workday and fair wages in the early 20th century, the Wobblies were one of the few unions to be racially and sexually integrated and often met with...
Koch Brothers Exposed is a hard-hitting investigation of the 1% at its very worst. This full-length documentary film on Charles and David Koch—two of the world’s richest and most powerful men—is the latest from acclaimed director Robert Greenwald ( Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price , Outfoxed , Rethink Afghanistan ). The billionaire brothers bankroll a vast network of...
This excellent documentary takes us into another world; the world of rogue loggers and firefighters turned eco-warriors. The story begins as an arsonist burns 9000 acres of protected old-growth public forest in Oregon that can not be logged unless it burns. To stop the proposed "salvage" logging of this incredible ancient forest, citizens are moved to blockade a road and keep the government...
In his student flat in Colchester, Jack Howe is staring intently into his computer screen. He is picking the team for Ebbsfleet United's FA Trophy Semi-Final match against Aldershot . Around the world 35,000 other fans are doing the same thing, because together, they own and manage the football club. If distributed networks of people can run complex organisations such as football clubs, what...
Free to Learn is a 70 minute documentary that offers a “fly on the wall” perspective of the daily happenings at The Free School in Albany, New York. Like many of today’s radical and democratic schools, The Free School expects children to decide for themselves how to spend their days. The Free School, however, is unique in that it transcends obstacles that prevent similar...
At the Edge of the World chronicles the controversial Sea Shepherd Antarctic Campaign against a Japanese whaling fleet. The international volunteer crew, under-trained and under-equipped, develop a combination of bizarre and brilliant tactics with which to stop the whalers. But first they must find the Japanese ships, a far more difficult challenge than ever imagined. In an age when...
Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, "Propaganda," published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the...
“You say laughter and I say larfter,” sang Louis Armstrong. The difference is subtle. Across the world, however, from the Amazon to the Arctic, tribal peoples say it in 4,000 entirely different ways. Sadly, no one now says “laughter” in Eyak, a language from the Gulf of Alaska, whose last fluent speaker died in 2008, or in the Bo language from the Andaman Islands, for...
Join acclaimed director Velcrow Ripper on a journey deep inside the global revolution of the heart that is erupting around the planet. Humanity is waking up to the fact that the dominant system of power is failing to provide us with health, happiness or meaning. The resulting crisis has become the catalyst for a profound transformation: millions of people are deciding that enough is enough ...
" Occupy Sandy ," which debuted at a surprise outdoor screening above a gas station in Lower Manhattan on Nov. 28, documents the Occupy movement's volunteer efforts to assist the most hard-hit New Yorkers in the wake of last month's storm. [Part 2 is a trailer and video about the guerilla premier] Filmmaker Josh Fox ("Gasland") told The Huffington Post he found himself "completely...
Growing Change follows the filmmaker's journey to understand why current food systems leave hundreds of millions of people in hunger. It's a journey to understand how the world will feed itself in the future in the face of major environmental challenges. Part 2 is the Trailer Show Your Support for the Film-Makers. Donate $5 or Buy the DVD. The documentary...
NEW YORK CITY — Today, the New York City Coalition for Accountability Now ( NYC CAN ), a group of family members of those killed in the 9/11 attacks, issued the following statement: We who lost our loved ones on September 11, 2001 vigorously applaud Judge Andrew Napolitano and Geraldo Rivera for the courage they have shown in publicly questioning the official claim that the collapse of...
As a sustainability-loving transportation planner, I was thrilled to learn that Dr. Kee Yeon Hwang would be visiting Vancouver and talking about the project that has made Seoul, Korea a legend in urban planning circles: the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project .
I was in New York City on Thursday night at the Brecht Forum to discuss with the photographer Eugene Richards his powerful new book “War Is Personal” when I was approached for an interview by a blogger for The Huffington Post. I had just finished speaking with another blogger who had recently graduated from UC Berkeley. These encounters, which are frequent at public events...