Upstate Purgatory

Documentaries have an incredible power to raise awareness and create transformative changes in consciousness both at the personal and global levels.
Since 2006, we've watched hundreds of social change documentaries and cataloged the best of them in this library.

Now that there are thousands of films on Films For Action, we realized the very best gems have really become buried all across our library, and for people new to this information, we needed a more guided way to dive in. Spread across 15 core themes, this collection aims to be that 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, especially during high school and college, but didn't.

The world today is in crisis. Everybody knows that. But what is driving this crisis? It's a story, a story that is destroying the world. It's a story about our relationship to the world and to other humans, but we take this story for granted.

What is this "new story" revolution?
What follows is a collection of over 75 films and articles that touch this space.
It's a digital library dedicated to exploring this new frontier in human consciousness - where we live into creation new & ancient ways of being, where we redefine our relationship with ourselves and the world, and where we remember all that we have forgot.

Our present moment is saturated in dystopian, apocalyptic fantasies of the future.
As the late Mark Fisher said, "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” We can envision a thousand ways that humanity might destroy itself and the rest of the world, but positive visions of the future remain severely lacking in comparison. Why is that?
The Dark Ages led to the Renaissance. Feudalism led to capitalism. No era remains stagnant forever.

How does government really operate behind the scenes? Beyond all the slogans about freedom and democracy, how does our political system really work?
Pretty much everyone is aware to some extent how corrupt and dysfunctional the US political system has become.

About eighteen years ago, watching The Corporation inspired us - a few friends from Lawrence, KS - to launch Films For Action and “be the media” in our home town.
We hosted dozens of film screenings, launched this website, and started to curate the best docs and videos in our library. Over the years, millions of people started coming here to watch “films for action,” thanks to people simply sharing these films on social media with their friends. That's it.

Pachamama, our dear Mother Earth, is 4.5 billion years old. She is home to an estimated 8.7 million species of life! This wondrous web of relationships is truly a gift to be a part of, and we can thank our growing and evolving Mother Earth for the eyes and mind we have to appreciate our relationship with her. Just think - we evolved to have a form of consciousness that would eventually see that, as Earth is one meta-organism, we are the consciousness of that organism.

Starting with the most relevant at the top, these are the best documentaries that capture the spirit and motivation of the #OWS movement.
What was Occupy about? These documentaries give a deeper voice to the slogans and chants.

These documentaries expose the ugly truth about war and the governments who wage them. The US government is focused on in this collection because I am based in the US, and it is every citizen's duty to call out and name the crimes of their government.
It's all too easy to decry the injustices of other countries while remaining silent when those crimes are committed by our own. But nothing good has ever come from silence when the truth is marginalized and lies are amplified.