Films For Action hosts a subscription service that currently offers 55 highly-curated films to Patron subscribers donating $5 per month. Your support helps grow our 5000+ video library, which is 99% free.
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View All Patron Films.
Filmmakers:
Interested in adding your film(s) to our Patron Films library? Contact us to learn more about our licensing model.
Teachers:
Our Patron Films have been licensed for home use only, so if you'd like to use any of them in a classroom setting, please purchase a license via the License button on each film's page. Alternatively, students can watch the films at home if they each purchase a $5 subscription for at least one month. We won't be offended if students just subscribe for one month but perhaps they'll find it of value beyond school! That's our aim.
Since this request is on the honor system, we'll just add that educational sales are the primary way most of our distribution partners fund new films and sustain their efforts, so it really makes a difference.
If cost is an issue, our edu partners offer discounts for community colleges, high schools, nonprofits, individual teachers, and others. Contact them for discounts.
Our Partners:
- Media Education Foundation
- Bullfrog Films
- Video Project
- Passion River Films
- Green Planet Films
- Old Dog Documentaries
+ more
Patron Film Highlights:
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92 min ·
Humanity is more than ever threatened by its own actions; we hear a lot about the need to minimize footprints and to reduce our impact. But what if our footprints were beneficial? What if we could meet human needs while increasing the...
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76 min ·
INHABITANTS follows five Native American communities as they restore their traditional land management practices in the face of a changing climate. For millennia Native Americans successfully stewarded and shaped their landscapes, but...
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84 min ·
From Executive Producer Mark Ruffalo comes the world’s first documentary film on the Rights of Nature Movement, a “Paradigm Shifting” story where the 'Rights of Nature' has become 'capitalism’s one true opponent.'
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89 min ·
School Circles is an independent documentary that explores the practice of democratic schools in the Netherlands. The film shows students, teachers and staff members coming together to dialogue, discuss proposals, mediate conflicts and...
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60 min ·
Biophilic Design is an innovative way of designing the places where we live, work, and learn. We need nature in a deep and fundamental fashion, but we have often designed our cities and suburbs in ways that both degrade the environment...
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90 min ·
Inspired by Lewis Hyde’s beloved classic The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, GIFT is a richly cinematic film, interweaving character‐driven stories.
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71 min ·
Before starting a family, Soozie Eastman, daughter of an industrial chemical distributor, embarks on a journey to find out the levels of toxins in her body and explores if there is anything she or anyone else can do to change them...
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57 min ·
The story of how a mining town recovered from its legacy of pollution and prospered by building community around the battle to save their beautiful river.
Born in the California Gold Rush, Nevada City was once the scene of some of...
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90 min ·
70 years ago Costa Rica abolished its army and committed itself to fostering a peaceful society. It has been reaping the benefits ever since.
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75 min ·
One in five Americans, along with millions of children, are prescribed psychiatric drugs daily, and often for a lifetime. MEDICATING NORMAL follows the stories of five high-functioning people whose doctors prescribed pills to help with...
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44 min ·
The Third Harmony tells the story of nonviolence, humanity’s greatest (and most overlooked) resource.
"I am exhilarated and grateful to the filmmakers for bringing forth such a fine gift for the future of life on Earth. Hurray! and...
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100 min ·
Tawai is a word the nomadic hunter-gatherers of Borneo use to describe the connection they feel to their forest home. In this dreamy, philosophical and sociological look at life, Bruce Parry (of the BBC's Tribe, Amazon & Arctic) embarks...
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70 min ·
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 visits thriving cooperative businesses in...
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32 min ·
The media regularly use public opinion polls in their reporting of important news stories. But how exactly do they report them and to what end? In this insightful and accessible interview, Professor Justin Lewis demonstrates the way in...
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47 min ·
Advertising & the End of the World features an illustrated presentation by Sut Jhally of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the producer and writer of the award-winning Dreamworlds series.
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87 min ·
A Quest for Meaning is an inspiring journey that connects personal growth and social change. It tells the story of two friends, Marc and Nathanael, who leave everything behind to go question the workings of the world and look for...
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40 min ·
THE NATURE OF CITIES follows the journey of Professor Timothy Beatley as he explores urban projects around the world, representing the new green movement that hopes to move our urban environments beyond sustainability to a regenerative...
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55 min ·
Climate change is here. Will we have the wisdom to survive? The film features thought leaders and activists in the realms of science, economics, and spirituality. The focus: how we can live creatively and even joyfully in the face of...
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35 min ·
"When today's stories of crushing greed and endless growth have come to an end, what, then, will be the new stories?"
This film was created as an educational tool that can be used to move us beyond disempowerment, in order to enact...
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61 min ·
Opening with a powerful ‘deep time’ perspective, from the beginning of the Earth to our present moment, BAFTA-winning director Peter Armstrong's new film recognises the fundamental unsustainability of today’s society and dares to ask...
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57 min ·
Allergies, obesity, asthma, diabetes, auto-immune and intestinal disorders are all on the rise, with the incidence of some diseases doubling every ten years. New research points to changes in the ecosystem of microbes that live on and...
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88 min ·
Told through the life of Alan Clements, Spiritually Incorrect shatters numerous light-washed sacred cows of the spiritual movement and explores sustainability from an inner perspective - showing how we can escape the trap of spiritual...
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105 min ·
On February 15th, 2003, up to 30 million people, many of whom had never demonstrated before, came out in nearly 800 cities around the world to protest against the impending Iraq War. We Are Many is the never-before-told story of the...
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83 min ·
Fly By Light is an intimate exploration of young people seeking to overcome the violence in their lives and create a new path for their future by connecting to a world outside their neighborhoods.
In Washington, DC, where high school...
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87 min ·
Within Reach explores one couple's pedal-powered search for a place to call home. Mandy and Ryan gave up their jobs, cars, and traditional houses to 'bike-pack' 6500 miles around the USA seeking sustainable community. Rather than...
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51 min ·
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...
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56 min ·
AFFLUENZA diagnoses a serious social disease - caused by consumerism, commercialism and rampant materialism - that is having a devastating impact on our families, communities, and the environment. We have more stuff, but less time, and...
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77 min ·
Through the stories of six extraordinary individuals, Self-Taught explores what self-directed education means to them and the impact it has had on their lives, ambitions, work and beliefs.
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56 min ·
OYLER profiles how an innovative "community school" helped fuel a dramatic turnaround in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, part of a growing national movement to help poor children succeed by transforming schools to meet basic health...
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80 min ·
All over the world species are becoming extinct at an astonishing rate, from 1000 to 10,000 times faster than normal. The loss of biodiversity has become so severe that scientists are calling it a mass extinction event.
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75 min ·
"Wonderfully in touch with this historical moment". - Mark Achbar, The Corporation
"To the Ends of the Earth" follows concerned citizens living at the frontiers of extreme oil and gas extraction, bearing witness to a global...
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86 min ·
Carne Ross was a government highflyer. A career diplomat who believed Western Democracy could save us all. But working inside the system he came to see its failures, deceits and ulterior motives. He felt at first hand the corruption of...
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40 min ·
A documentary following two women from Ladakh, a remote region in the Himalayas, on a reality tour of London to see what life in the West is really like. The tour, sponsored by Local Futures, exposes the women to aspects of modern urban...
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60 min ·
Never before in history have so many people relied on so few for the basic essentials of life.
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62 min ·
Abundant Land is a one-hour documentary about a Hawaiian community on Moloka’i opposing the biotech industry’s use of the island to test genetically engineered seeds. Agrochemical biotech corporations, including Monsanto and Mycogen...
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61 min ·
The Staging Post follows two Afghan Hazara refugees, Muzafar and Khadim. Stuck in Indonesia after Australia 'stopped the boats' and facing many years in limbo, they built a community and started the school which inspired a refugee...
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73 min ·
Today, there are more Americans in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. The prison population has exploded by 500% since the end of the Civil Rights and Black Power...
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59 min ·
Ladakh, or 'Little Tibet', is a wildly beautiful desert land high in the Western Himalayas. It is a place of few resources and an extreme climate. Yet for more than 1,000 years, it has been home to a thriving culture. Traditions of...
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52 min ·
Blood and Oil, featuring Michael Klare, a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington D.C. and the defense correspondent for The Nation, offers a riveting look at how U.S. efforts to control the global flow of...
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57 min ·
With breathtaking clarity, renowned University of Massachusetts Economics Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today's economic crisis, showing how it was decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures...
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45 min ·
For marketers who wish to reach the lucrative youth market, the relatively uncluttered medium of the school environment represents the final frontier -- access to a captive audience of millions of students. Meanwhile dwindling federal...
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View All Patron Films
Here's a selection of films we're self-hosting for free, in partnership with the filmmakers:
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66 min ·
If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it? You would change the way it educates its children.
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65 min ·
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...
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160 min ·
From cave paintings to virtual reality, Beware of Images embarks on a fascinating journey through the history of mediated representation. This is the history of media you will never find on TV.
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102 min ·
This stunning film takes you on a hypnotic journey, reaching to the past to understand the origins of the catastrophic environmental transitions we now face. Over two years, director Matt Anderson traveled 16,000 miles to document...
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104 min ·
"In a time when many are questioning institutional integrity across society, seeking accurate and relevant information to help make sense of our supposedly post-truth era, Noble shines a spotlight into our dark past while providing a...
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101 min ·
“Once in a while a film comes along that has profound impact – this is a delicious taste of what can be.” - Polly Higgins
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85 min ·
Living the Change explores solutions to the global crises we face today – solutions any one of us can be part of – through the inspiring stories of people pioneering change in their own lives and in their communities in order to...
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96 min ·
Feeding Ourselves weaves intimate stories from the hopes and convictions of rural BC farmers and producers as they navigate undercurrents of uncertainty with our food system. Their commitment to local food culture inspires us to...
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63 min ·
Thanks to the filmmakers, you can watch this film for free! If you'd like to show your thanks, you can buy a digital download of the film on this page for $10. All proceeds will go to the Media Freedom Foundation, which works closely...
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63 min ·
Thanks to the filmmakers, you can watch this film for free! If you'd like to show your thanks, you can buy a digital download of the film on this page for $10. All proceeds will go to the Media Freedom Foundation, which works closely...
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56 min ·
Australian filmmaker Peter Charles Downey takes us on a personal and cathartic journey of empowerment, redemption, and healing.
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560 min ·
Plutocracy, by filmmaker Scott Noble, is the first documentary series to comprehensively examine early American history through the lens of class.
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95 min ·
An epic, ominous and perhaps life saving radio interview occurs with director, Peter Charles Downey on a small-town country radio station about his new documentary movie, Surviving Earth. Where the trees whisper of humanity’s mass...
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