The Price We Pay

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.

Black Coffee is a 2007 Canadian documentary film examining the complicated history of coffee and detailing its political, social, and economic influence from the past to the present day. The film details how coffee is the eighth most traded legal commodity in the world. It is also the fourth most valuable agricultural commodity. However, only one cent of a $2 cup of coffee goes to the grower.[1] This inequality has helped shape the history of continents and the Cold War.

Filmmakers investigate 2001 anthrax attacks and uncover a nightmare world.

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 very human tech doc, uncovers the real costs of the platform economy through the lives of workers from around the world for companies including Uber, Amazon and Deliveroo. From delivering food and driving ride shares to tagging images for AI, millions of people around the world are finding work task by task online. The gig economy is worth over 5 trillion USD globally, and growing. And yet the stories of the workers behind this tech revolution have gone largely neglected. Who are the people in this shadow workforce? It brings their stories into the light. Lured by the promise of flexible work hours, independence, and control over time and money, workers from around the world have found a very different reality. Work conditions are often dangerous, pay often changes without notice, and workers can effectively be fired through deactivation or a bad rating. Through an engaging global cast of characters, it reveals how the magic of technology we are being sold might not be magic at all.

The World is Watching is a political film about the moral issues surrounding news gathering and newsmaking in the electronic age. Who decides what constitutes the news? How do they decide? And what about the men and women who report from the field. Are foreign correspondents allowed to tell all that they see? The film examines these complex issues by focusing on several international journalists in Nicaragua as they cover the negotiations surrounding the Arias Peace Plan in November 1987. With unprecedented access to the inner workings of ABC News, what follows is a unique portrait of a news crew in the field, as it interacts with the editorial process in the newsroom in New York City.

David Hammons’ singular career covers life in LA during a turbulent 1960s through to his prominence within the global art world today. Key to his work has been an analysis of African American society and its representation within US life. Featuring interviews with eminent artists, curators and critics; a wealth of archival footage; an evocative soundscape by Ramachandra Borcar that includes Marshall Allen, Idris Ackamoor and Shabaka Hutchings; and a reading by The Last Poets member and hip-hop forefather Umar Bin Hassan, The Melt Goes on Forever is a revelatory journey through six decades of art and culture.