Mark Achbar

Bursting from the immigrant streets of 1920s Brooklyn, Harvey Kurtzman ignited a creative revolution reshaping comics, satire, and popular culture. Through rare archives, unseen interviews, handcrafted animation, and an original jazz score, this documentary reveals the man who created MAD Magazine and helped redefine American humour and visual storytelling forever.

Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.

Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.

A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.

A mockumentary illustrating a supposed conspiracy to infiltrate American culture through employing Canadians in the U.S. entertainment industry.

Wars of the future will be fought over water as they are over oil today, as the source of human survival enters the global marketplace and political arena. Corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of our dwindling supply, prompting protests, lawsuits, and revolutions from citizens fighting for the right to survive.

Waterlife is a documentary film about the Great Lakes that follows the flow of the lakes' water from the Nipigon River to the Atlantic Ocean. The film's goal is to take viewers on a tour of an incredibly beautiful ecosystem that is facing complex challenges.

Captures the exciting movement of Spiritual Activism that is exploding around the planet, and the powerful personalities who are igniting it.

Star Wars is no longer science fiction The prospect of Earth being ruled from space is no longer science-fiction. The dream of the original Dr. Strangelove, Wernher von Braun (from Nazi rocket-scientist to NASA director) has survived every US administration since WW2 and is coming to life. Today the technology exists to weaponize space, a massive American industry thrives, and nations are maneuvering for advantage. PAX AMERICANA tackles this pivotal moment. Are war machines already orbiting Earth? Can treaties keep space weapons-free? Must the World capitulate to one super-cop on the global beat? With startling archival footage and unprecedented access to US Air Force Space Command, this elegant, forceful documentary reveals the state of play through generals, space-policy analysts, politicians, diplomats, peace activists, and hawks.

In this feature documentary, 6 student activists visit 36 Canadian towns to take on one giant corporation. Filmed over 2 summers, these young crusaders (plus a gonzo journalist) try to raise public awareness about Wal-Mart's business practices and their effect on cities and towns across Canada. With youthful passion and often hilarious cultural jams, this film takes us to the frontlines of the ongoing debate over the company's increasing dominance in the Canadian retail market.

Through interviews with leading psychologists and scientists, Neurons to Nirvana explores the history of four powerful psychedelic substances (LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA and Ayahuasca) and their previously established medicinal potential. Strictly focusing on the science and medicinal properties of these drugs, Neurons to Nirvana looks into why our society has created such a social and political bias against even allowing research to continue the exploration of any possible positive effects they can present in treating some of today's most challenging afflictions.

When Linda, an outspoken lesbian psychotherapist, decided that George, a bulldozer-driving transsexual, was the woman for her, Two Brides and a Scalpel: Diary of a Lesbian Marriage was born. Directed and produced by Vancouver-based Mark Achbar, the video was shot over a two-year period by the subjects and covers what the media touted as the first lesbian marriage in Canadian history, a graphic sex change operation, and the daily lives and most intimate moments of a relationship generally hidden behind the iron curtain of societal taboo.

Amidst a deadly overdose crisis in Vancouver, a daring activist funds a non-profit drug testing centre by operating the illicit Coca Leaf Café and Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary, risking everything to provide life-saving harm reduction and advocate for drug reform.

The political journey of Canadian photographer Elaine Brière from the villages of East Timor to the halls of the United Nations in an effort to find out Ottawa's rational for abandoning the tiny nation of East Timor to corporate interests in Indonesia.

In Fairy Creek, director Jen Muranetz documents the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, creating a searing portrait of contemporary environmental activism, bearing witness to the lengths activists are willing to take to protect British Columbia’s last old growth forests.