Background illustration by Jessica Perlstein: dreamstreamart.com
Most colleges prepare students to read a map of the world that's both outdated and distorted. From economics to history to politics to ecology, modern schools are failing to prepare students for the future on a fundamental level.
To put it simply, most colleges are still running on a set of assumptions that were developed during the 20th century. These assumptions are largely invisible to us - they are part of our subconscious "story of humanity" - but they ultimately constitute the heart of our societal crisis. The most simple of these is the premise that things will go on as they have before - that we can just get a job, do our part to grow the economy (progress!) and go on our merry way. They are not guiding students with the knowledge and wisdom that we are facing a planetary emergency, with a time crunch measured in decades.
Most colleges still follow the logic of neoclassical economics - a logic which ignores ecology and suffers from the illusion that human law is separate from natural law.
Nowhere is this belief better embodied than in the foolhardy notion that our economy can grow forever on a finite planet. But that is one of the implicit assumptions underlying a standard college education. They train students to become workers and consumers within an ever-growing economy. They teach marketers how to sell more products. They teach business students how to make a profit. They teach students lots of useful, fascinating and amazing things too, but ultimately the mission is to train students to integrate within the status quo. This might be fine if the status quo worked for all of us, but it never has and it's about to stop working for everybody if we don't soon make a change.
Whether things change in a really positive direction or a really bad one is up to what we do over the next 10-30 years. But either way, we can be certain - the status quo isn't going to last, and presently, most schools can't bring themselves to admit this. Not yet in a very serious sense - not yet in a way that would disrupt many of their corporate investments or sponsors.
What is needed, urgently, are schools that acknowledge the 'fierce urgency of now.' They need to be preparing us to become collaborative designers of an ecologically sustainable, just and democratic society. They need to help all of us become creative and participatory agents for this great societal transition, away from empire and into the planetary era.
Education can no longer afford the pretense of neutrality when neutrality is leading society towards collapse - it must choose life. It must promote not just knowledge, but wisdom. Because that is what the world needs right now - it needs people with the wisdom to actively take part in designing a way of life for humans that is not just sustainable, but regenerative - a way of life that makes life good for life.
Ultimately that is what ecology teaches us - life creates conditions that are good for life, and our own society, as past human societies have done, must align with this inherent wisdom. Align with this wisdom, and life for us will be better than we've ever dreamed it could be, and it will good for all life - because we had the wisdom to put our creativity and imagination to those ends. If we continue to disregard this natural law - enriching some to the detriment of many, both human and environment, then we will perish with the many millions of other life forms that will go down with us.
While many despair and believe all is already lost, we know that is just a mental fantasy, a trap of the mind. The future has yet to be written. The present moment is everything there is. We believe the story of humanity - while on the verge of calamity, has a great plot twist coming, and it is already being written by millions of people all over the planet. But we still need millions more, every young person, every older person - we need us all, helping to write this story.
We know cynicism is safe. Cynicism is easy. But we also know the courage of our ancestors lives in our bones, and we have the power to tap into that strength when our heart is willing to remain still and listen.
With all this and more in mind, we have created this educational map for navigating the coming years. It's broken up into several core themes. We hope everyone, students and teachers especially, will find it useful.
Economics
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145 min ·
The Corporation is today's dominant institution, creating great wealth but also great harm. This 26 award-winning documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts and future of the...
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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...
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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...
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43 min ·
This 42-minute film is bursting with examples of exciting localization initiatives across the world.
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96 min ·
"A masterpiece! By far the most inspiring economics film I have ever seen. This film is a gift to humanity. Everyone should watch it." - Prof. Jason HickelAn intrepid group of economists...
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51 min ·
Planet Local shows a quiet and transformative revolution emerging worldwide.
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86 min ·
Money & Life is a passionate and inspirational essay-style documentary that asks a provocative question: can we see the economic crisis not as a disaster, but as a tremendous opportunity?
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73 min ·
In his final long-form documentary interview - filmed over four years - Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality...
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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...
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48 min ·
A film on Climate Change, Degrowth and System Change. The effects and risks of climate change are compelling young people the world round to call upon radical system change as the only...
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39 min ·
REAL ESTATE 4 RAN$OM outlines a genuine alternative to the global property speculation that forced so many into debt. Doubling the pressure, the tax game has become just that, with tax...
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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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30 min ·
This film covers the basic economic principles of Prout, which offers a viable alternative to the materialistic, anti-human philosophies of Capitalism and Communism.
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59 min ·
Within modern life exists a paradox: we celebrate democracy as a political system, but not as an economic system, even though our workplaces have a far greater impact on our day to day...
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Education
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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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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...
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45 min ·
This is a documentary about getting out into the natural world and learning from the wisdom of land and people - focusing on how rewilding our perception might be the catalyst for the...
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53 min ·
Education For a Sustainable Future presents information on how today's practices in schools are socially unsustainable. The documentary film critically analyses what is considered...
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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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27 min ·
Class Dismissed provides a critical look at how U.S. history is taught in high school, at the myths that reduce the complexity of history into simple soundbites, and the information that...
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36 min ·
This 36-minute documentary follows the lives of 5 young explorers on their journey through the 5-week Ecovillage Design Education program in Switzerland, which navigates today's...
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68 min ·
RE-LEARNING THE LAND is the story of a Blackfoot community in southern Alberta, Canada, and how they have re-taken control of their education system within Red Crow Community College...
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70 min ·
RE-LEARNING HOPE is the story of Unitierra, an autonomous university in Oaxaca, Mexico that is immersed in, and has emerged from, the social and indigenous movements of the region. The...
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Ecology
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109 min ·
In this profound film, permaculture designer Andrew Faust invites us to reclaim our place in the grand story of life on Earth—a story that reveals how deeply we're woven into the living...
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51 min ·
All our knowledge comes from nature and yet nature is a source of many mysteries.
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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...
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104 min ·
United Natures explores the rights of Mother Earth, environmental philosophy, wisdom, spirituality, and the potential for a neo-indigenous future for humanity.
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53 min ·
Western views and the legal system tend to view nature as property, and as a resource from which wealth is extracted, a commodity whose only value is to provide for human needs. But 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...
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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...
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73 min ·
"The Superior Human?" systematically challenges the common human belief that humans are superior to all other life forms, which is often used as an excuse for animal cruelty and the...
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27 min ·
Lawns are undeniably an American symbol. But what do they really symbolize? Pride and prosperity? Or waste and conformity?
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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...
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Media Literacy
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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...
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60 min ·
If you think U.S. news has a liberal bias, this assumption-shattering film from Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Justin Lewis will have you thinking again. Making the common-sense case...
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95 min ·
Since it mysteriously appeared on YouTube on July 18, 2012, ‘Propaganda’ has been described as ‘1984 meets The Blair Witch Project’, ‘A mouthful of scary porridge’, and ‘Even better than...
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157 min ·
Funny, provocative and surprisingly accessible, MANUFACTURING CONSENT explores the political life and ideas of Noam Chomsky, world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist...
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63 min ·
"Project Censored The Movie: Ending the Reign of Junk Food News" takes an in-depth look at what is wrong with the news media in the U.S. today and highlights the work of 40-year veteran...
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63 min ·
United States of Distraction chronicles critical media literacy and faculty experts, students, and media makers who provide contextual analysis for understanding the current rise of the...
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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...
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Empire & Government
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264 min ·
"A gripping, deeply informative account of the plunder, hypocrisy, and mass violence of plutocracy and empire; insightful, historically grounded and highly relevant to the events of...
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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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57 min ·
Political power—armed central authority, with states and war—is it part of human nature?
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570 min ·
There is a classified America we were never meant to see. From Academy Award®-winning writer/director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick, this twelve-part documentary series looks...
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360 min ·
"Scott Noble may have outdone himself with Counter Intelligence. The Psywar filmmaker amassed a tour de force of power elite and deep state scholars weighing in and synthesizing decades...
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63 min ·
The Canary Effect takes an in depth look at the devastating effect that US policies have had on the indigenous people of America.
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119 min ·
Human Resources explores the rise of mechanistic philosophy and the exploitation of human beings under modern hierarchical systems.
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76 min ·
Hijacking Catastrophe places the Bush Administration's original justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neo-conservatives to dramatically...
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War
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72 min ·
This critically acclaimed look at American war propaganda exhumes five decades of remarkable archival footage to show how presidents from both parties have relied on fear-driven...
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98 min ·
A powerful and timely investigation into the media’s role in war, tracing the history of embedded and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction 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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360 min ·
"Scott Noble may have outdone himself with Counter Intelligence. The Psywar filmmaker amassed a tour de force of power elite and deep state scholars weighing in and synthesizing decades...
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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...
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84 min ·
When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns. They join a movement of young...
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118 min ·
This is a powerful 10-part compilation that (in important ways) pulls aside the veil of Official myths and Lies about "freedom", "democracy", and “human rights” being the basis of U.S...
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52 min ·
John Pilger travels to many third world countries to investigate the devastating results of loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). This film shows how many wars...
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Drug Prohibition and Prisons
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54 min ·
Cops and former cops who have put in decades fighting the war on drugs speak out against prohibition.
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106 min ·
This is a story of the violence and coercion that underlies our modern societies. Most of the time, our interactions are peaceful and consensual, but there is a large notable exception...
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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%...
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58 min ·
Psychedelia takes viewers on a journey through the origins and resurgence of psychedelic research, exploring the profound, life-altering effects of these compounds in both the...
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Community
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50 min ·
What happens when people work together to create solutions to the social, economic, and ecological issues we face today?
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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...
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51 min ·
David Korten’s inspiring and extensively illustrated presentation of his book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. David says we are at a defining moment in all of human...
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39 min ·
A film about the citizen-led community-energy movement in Europe and the visionaries lighting the way.
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52 min ·
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells...
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60 min ·
We are living in a time that has been described as the age of loneliness. Despite Western advances in technology, living conditions, education and healthcare, we, as a society, are...
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Food
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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...
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68 min ·
Food and farming is in crisis. In just over a decade we’ve lost more than 33,000 farms from our countryside, and alongside this, bad diet is now causing more health problems than...
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39 min ·
“This beautiful film is the perfect antidote to the cynical narrative that says people are inherently selfish... This film will melt your heart. Guaranteed.”
– Rob Hopkins, author...
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32 min ·
”A refreshing perspective on what it means to be wealthy” – Don Smith, Kiss the Ground
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42 min ·
In the face of threats to our farming future such as climate change, people are innovating to protect and regenerate our most vital resources – soil, water, seeds, and our farmer...
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101 min ·
This is a movie about how we have left the natural connection to the planet. The movie investigates how this has happened, the incredible amounts of pollutants that we are exposed to...
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57 min ·
About 70% of the food we eat contains genetically engineered ingredients and the biotech industry is spending million a year to convince us that this technology is our only hope. Using...
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Democracy & Politics
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95 min ·
From Venezuela's Communal Councils, to Brazil's Participatory Budgeting; from Constitutional Assemblies to grassroots movements, recuperated factories to cooperatives across the...
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114 min ·
This film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the "graveyard of social movements", the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of...
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92 min ·
THE EVILNESS OF POWER examines the ways in which power and hierarchy affect individuals, society, and the world at large. It's possibly the best film on the subject ever made. Produced...
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91 min ·
We the People 2.0 describes the growing people’s revolt against destructive corporate activities in the US to stop toxic dumps, mines, drilling, etc. Communities are seizing back the...
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87 min ·
The definitive documentary explaining the influence of money on politics by Jonathan Shockley. If you like it, consider buying the high quality DVD or donating a few $ at...
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Culture
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382 min ·
What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery?
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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...
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75 min ·
Directed by Franklin Lopez, END:CIV examines our culture’s addiction to systematic violence and environmental exploitation, and probes the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and...
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51 min ·
All humans on the planet are living under an illusionary paradigm that can be compared to what was presented in the 'Matrix'. A mental prison that exists within the minds of the...
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Consumerism
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50 min ·
Does the philosophy of materialism work to destroy our identities, experience, and environment? Join narrator Daphne Ellis on a radical romp through the evidence and decide for yourself...
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50 min ·
This is a story about clothing. It’s about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing...
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66 min ·
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 to...
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230 min ·
The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose...
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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...
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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.
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46 min ·
Economist and bestselling author Juliet Schor lays out a positive vision for rethinking our relationship to consumer goods in this accessible and timely analysis of the devastating...
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The Big Picture
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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...
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162 min ·
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is a feature-length documentary by Peter Joseph that argues for a global transition away from our current monetary-based economic system toward a more...
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3000 min ·
Do you ever feel like we're swimming in an ocean of bullshit? This ground-breaking and viral 50-part series from John Vervaeke seeks to understand why this is so, and answer the...
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65 min ·
Crossroads: Labor Pains of a New Worldview is a documentary exploring the depths of the current human condition and the emergence of a worldview that is recreating our world from the...
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59 min ·
This film series explores many aspects of our society. To rethink what is possible in our world, we need to consider what kind of world we want to live in. Although we refer to it as...
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48 min ·
A free online documentary created by The Venus Project, which examines the root causes of the systemic value disorders and detrimental symptoms caused by our current established system...
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87 min ·
The Crisis of Civilization investigates how global crises like ecological disasters, financial meltdowns, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism, and food shortages are converging symptoms of...
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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...
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123 min ·
A middle class white guy comes to grips with peak oil, climate change, mass extinction, population overshoot and the demise of the American lifestyle.
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Wisdom
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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...
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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...
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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...
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35 min ·
Peter Russell’s award-winning video, based on a live audio-visual presentation in 1983. He explores the idea that the Earth is an integrated, self-regulating living organism and asks...
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75 min ·
“The Twelve” tells the story of twelve spiritual Elders from around the globe. By interviewing each one of them in their home environments, the film is told exclusively through the...
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90 min ·
Leaving behind their cosmopolitan life, a couple and their three young children travel the ends of the earth searching for a new perspective on life. In their five-year journey across...
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85 min ·
This film presents an optimistic alternative to apocalyptic doom and gloom. Directed by Emmy Award nominee João Amorim, the film follows journalist Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the...
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120 min ·
Imagine growing up with the dream seeds of a wise grandmother, whose inner knowing is distilled within her stories, myths, and songs. These messages serve as a map for you and the future...
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Designing The Future
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79 min ·
A Simpler Way follows a community in Australia who came together to explore and demonstrate a simpler way to live in response to global crises. Throughout the year the group built tiny...
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66 min ·
This film is an inspirational immersion in the Transition movement, gathering stories from around the world of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. There are stories of...
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165 min ·
InterReflections is an experimental, mixed genre narrative feature film by Peter Joseph, adapted from his book The New Human Rights Movement. The ambitious, nearly 3 hour work challenges...
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120 min ·
What if telling a story that gives hope by pointing out solutions was the best way to solve the ecological, economical and social crises that shake our world?
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44 min ·
A whirlwind week in Singapore exploring the amazing story of how Singapore came to be one of the most 'biophilic' cities of the world, on the cutting edge of ecocity design and...
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90 min ·
FIRST EARTH is a documentary about the movement towards a massive paradigm shift for shelter -- building healthy houses in the old ways, out of the very earth itself, and living together...
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39 min ·
It’s a fact. In Europe, 1.5 million workers co-own their enterprises. They are called worker cooperatives, social cooperatives or participative enterprises. The documentary TOGETHER...
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33 min ·
A video about the many cooperatives in Maleny, Australia, and the beneficial effects they have on the local community. It includes interviews with people from the Maleny Credit Union...
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61 min ·
Not Business As Usual is a provocative look at capitalism and its unintended price of success. The film tracks the changing landscape of business with the rising tide of conscious...
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56 min ·
Envision a society where economic opportunity, social justice and sustainable culture all spring from environmental stewardship. Imagine a world where nurturing the health of the planet...
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49 min ·
Man is the only creature that produces landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in nations like China and India. The...
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85 min ·
This film presents an optimistic alternative to apocalyptic doom and gloom. Directed by Emmy Award nominee João Amorim, the film follows journalist Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the...
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76 min ·
A small band of natural building enthusiasts and outlaws met in a field over 20 years ago at something they called a ‘colloquium’. The movement they created has grown uncontrollably ever...
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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...
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Explore Films For Action's complete library via the Explore menu.
Films For Action University is currently comprised of 123 films. There are numerous films we would really like to add to it, but currently, they aren't available to watch online, either for free or to rent. As that changes, we'll be updating this resource over time.
If you like it, please feel free to start sharing it widely.
Over the years, we have heard so many wonderful stories about people telling their friends about this site, or about teachers telling their students, and how much they love it after spending some time watching a few films.
Now that there are thousands of films on the site, the very best gems have become buried all across our library, so we realized we needed a more guided way to dive in. Films For Action University aims to be this entry point. It is our attempt to curate the kind of crash-course curriculum on the state of the world we wish we had all got growing up, but didn't. A resource gathered after watching over 800 films over the last 10 years.
We hope you find it of value.