FILMS FOR ACTION

The Best Social Change Documentaries of 2011

By Tim Hjersted / filmsforaction.org
Dec 31, 2011
5
The Best Social Change Documentaries of 2011

2011 will likely be remembered in America as the year that the nation's youth finally started to wake up - all that bubbling knowledge of the world's problems, all the discontent and disillusion with our broken system finally burst into a flurry of creative action. Our understandings of the deep, structural flaws in our economy, politics and culture reached new heights of collective awareness, and this collective understanding has given way to collective action in a myriad of movements. 

Among them: Occupy Wall St, Zeitgeist, Transition Towns, Permaculture, Relocalization, and 350.org. While they each focus on a different aspect of the problem, they share a common foundation of understanding, a common direction, and complimentary goals.

Likewise, the films of 2011 captured the spirit of these movements and the deep analysis of both the problem and the solutions - which go beyond hacking at branches to address the root issues.

Without further ado, the 10 best activist documentaries of 2011 (click the links to watch them for free online):

Subconscious War is a short documentary on media, reality, and the culture of violence, It covers the prophecies of Aldous Huxley and Neil Postman's grim assessment of our Brave New World and relates these to our violence and the cultural influences that fosters it today.
This documentary explains the nature of capitalist crisis, visits the protests against austerity measures, and recommends revolutionary paths for the future.
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 shell-shocked nations.Based in part on Endgame, the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen, END: CIV asks: If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and...
A series of BBC films about how humans have been colonised by the machines we have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers. 
The Tea Party movement has taken American politics by storm. But is this truly a populist uprising or one of the greatest feats of propaganda ever seen? Seeking to find out, Australian filmmaker Taki Oldham embeds himself in the Tea Party uprising.
A feature length documentary by Peter Joseph that presents the case for a needed transition out of the current socioeconomic monetary paradigm which governs the entire world society.
Scott Noble, who also produced Lifting the Veil, pulls together a combination of internet and original footage to create the first feature-length documentary on Occupy Wall St, telling the story and motivation behind the movement in its own words.
The Crisis of Civilization is a documentary feature film investigating how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system.
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 wealth in the United States, the escalation of neocon policies under Obama...
Going local’ is a powerful strategy to repair our fractured world—our ecosystems, our societies and our selvesEconomic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking.
This work is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Trending Videos
Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980)
780 min - Astronomer Carl Sagan's landmark 13-part science series takes you on an awe-inspiring cosmic journey to the edge of the Universe and back aboard the spaceship of the imagination. The series was...
The New Corporation - Watch for FREE Until the End of May
2 min
People are Losing Faith in Democracy, What a Surprise!
12 min
SHOCK Video: George W Bush ADMITS He's A War Criminal In Freudian Slip!
10 min
Humanity Is Not A Parasite
14 min - Misanthropic, borderline ecofash narratives about humanity's relationship with nature have become way too common in discourse about climate change, highlighting the urgent and critical importance...
The Art of Life (2022)
39 min
America's War On Abortion (2020)
66 min
A Cloud Never Dies | Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (2022)
28 min
How To Keep Your Heart Open In Hell | Ram Dass
14 min - Ram Dass first went to India in 1967. He was still Dr. Richard Alpert, a prominent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer with Dr. Timothy Leary. He continued his psychedelic research until...
Let’s Replace Cancel Culture with Accountability | Sonya Renee Taylor
18 min
Hiding in the Walls (2022) (trailer)
2 min
Socialism for Absolute Beginners
25 min
Honest Government Ad | 2022 Election (Season 2 Finale)
6 min - The Australien Government has made a final ad before the 2022 federal election and it’s surprisingly honest and informative. Support The Juice Media on Patreon. 
Born Sexy Yesterday: Another Gendered Hollywood Movie Trope That Needs to Die
18 min
Sicko (2007)
123 min
Oliver Stone: The Untold History Of The United States (2012)
570 min
LOAD MORE
Trending Articles
We Can't Grow Infinitely on a Finite Planet
Watch On Netflix
New Documentaries
Subscribe for $5/Month to Gain Access to These Great Films

Films For Action is a library for people who want to change the world.

 

Our mission is to provide citizens with the knowledge and perspectives essential to creating a more beautiful, just, sustainable, and democratic society.

Films For Action was founded in 2006 by a few friends in Lawrence, Kansas, after realizing how essential healthy media is to a healthy democracy.

Over the last 15 years, we've reviewed and curated over 1,000 free documentaries and 4,000 short films, plus over 150 pay-per-view documentaries, spanning 34 topics related to changing the world.

During this time we've been able to reach tens of millions of people - not by owning a TV network or spending truckloads of cash on advertising, but because millions of awesome people keep sharing 'films for action' with their friends on social media - in particular, our 850,000 supporters on Facebook and 70,000 site members. 

One of the coolest things is, thanks to our patrons, our library is ad-free and 100% supported by member donations. We don't accept any government or corporate funding, and the dozens of emails we get every week asking us to put ads or sponsored posts on the site just go in the trash bin. The Pay-Per-View films on our site, of course, help support the filmmakers, and 90-100% of the revenue for PPV films hosted by us goes to the filmmakers. 

To thank our $5/mo patron subscribers, we partner with filmmakers to provide access to a growing number of films that are normally PPV. With just 26 highly-curated films at the moment, it's basically a mini "Netflix for world changers," but its main function is to support the library as a whole, which is 99% free and always will be.

Want to become a patron? Subscribe here. You can cancel or pause your subscription at any time.

If you'd like to know more, want to help out, or you're a filmmaker or distributor looking to collaborate, drop us a line via our contact page. 

Cheers,  
Tim Hjersted
Co-Founder & Director
Lawrence, KS