BBC Science Documentary – 60 minutes
Once again the Brits excel in explaining the unexplainable. This time it’s all about numbers and infinity. Sounds boring? Think again.
Watch it before it disappears – and if your bandwidth allows it watch it directly in HD.
BBC Panorama: A Walk in the Park
Excellent report on what’s really going on in Israel. And how fanaticism makes the lives of ordinary people hell. While the Mainstream Media focuses on Al-Quaeda, they mostly miss the slow grinding and brutal realities in all the other spots (like this one in this report, but also the tyranny in Egypt, Libya and other countries in the region).
Charming and insightful documentary by Stephen Fry about the machine that changed the world.
1:13 / Channel 4 / documentary
Excellent documentary how much we consume and leave behind in one human life span. Most brilliant!
Highly recommended!
Channel 4 documentary / 48 minutes / 2007
An excellent report from Afghanistan. Not very cheerful, but it will give you some insight of what is like over there.
Once again it that British openness and honesty that makes this report so special and valuable.
BBC Documentary / 58 Minutes
Carlos Castaneda is certainly one of the most controversial and influential spiritual teachers of the last century. His books about the teachings of the Yaqui Indians was an international bestseller and still a must read for many esoteric’s out there. This documentary gives you an excellent insight in his tragic life and all the controversy surrounding his teachings.
Once again it shows that so called Gurus can turn grains of truth into madness – instead of spirituality and enlightenment you get distortion and lies.
I guess the temptation to abuse the power that some spiritual insights give you are too much for many Gurus.
Money, fame, admiration, sexual offers and power over large groups of people are a challenge most gurus fail to overcome. Instead of resisting temptation they fail to withstand the temptations of leadership and power.
Most terrible of all: he damaged the cultures he studied, he put wrong ideas in millions of heads (and therefore caused a lot of confusion and pain) and he did it all for mostly materialistic reasons.
Like L. Ron Hubbard he used his superior mind and excellent insights into the human psyche for his personal advantage.
Once again that phrase “If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!” is a very good guide to your own spirituality. Don’t follow any illusions! Don’t follow other Buddha’s – be your own teacher and take responsibility!
Follow your own road …
Once again Frontline delivers an excellent documentary about current US affairs. Once again solid work offering many insight. Once again Frontline helps us to put many pieces of the puzzle into one big picture. Once again – thank you Frontline for the great work and allowing us bloody foreigners to watch the whole thing online.
More? Watch it all online with many bonus interviews you won’t see on TV.
HBO – like the BBC – is one of the great producers of astonishing stories, series and movies. It’s newest mini series “John Adams” is simply amazing – or at least the first two episodes so far.
Paul Giamatti is simply breath taking as John Adams – and Laura Linney as his wife simply blows me away.
The script is well written, the dialogues intriguing and one gets a pretty good feeling how hard it must have been for the so called founding fathers to break away from the British Empire and start their experiment called the United States of America.
Highly recommended!
Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes
From Wikipedia:
An insight into the history of nuclear power. In the 1950s scientists and politicians thought they could create a different world with a limitless source of nuclear energy. But things began to go wrong. Scientists in America and the Soviet Union were duped into building dozens of potentially dangerous plants. Then came the disasters of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl which changed views on the safety of this new technology.
More? Pandora’s Box Series
Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes
From Wikipedia:
A look at how former Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah set Africa ablaze with his vision of a new industrial and scientific age. At the heart of his dream was to be the huge Volta dam, generating enough power to transform West Africa into an advanced utopia. But as his grand experiment took shape, it brought with it dangerous forces Nkrumah couldn’t control, and he slowly watched his metropolis of science sink into corruption and debt.
More? Pandora’s Box Series
I am a big fan of Louis – his Weird Weekends documentaries are insightful and have an odd, but very honest touch.
So let’s enjoy his adventures and encounters in the wrestling world. Highly recommended! More to come …
Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes
From Wikipedia:
A modern fable about science and society, focusing on our attitude to nature. Should we let scientists be the prime movers of social or political change when, for instance, DDT made post-war heroes of American scientists only to be put on trial by other scientists in 1968? What kind of in-fighting goes on between rival camps before one scientific truth emerges, and when it does emerge, just how true is it?
More? Pandora’s Box Series
Documentary / 1 hour 22 minutes / by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack
Oil is – like so many natural resources – only available in a limited supply. And with all limited resources we will reach an ‘ extraction / production peak’ – which means less of it will be available after that point.
Many scientists and oil people think that we have either reached or soon will reach peak oil. This is of course very bitter, because our global industrial society is just really starting to take off in many big countries like India, Brazil and China.
Watch this documentary to learn more about peak oil and it’s consequences.
More? Official Website
Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes
From Wikipedia:
Thirty years ago, a group of economists managed to convince British politicians that they had foolproof technical means to make Britain great again. Pandora’s Box tells the saga of how their experiments have led the country deeper into economic decline, and asks – is their game finally up?
More? Pandora’s Box Series
Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes
From Wikipedia:
Focusing on the men of the Cold War on whom Dr Strangelove was based. These were people who believed that the world could be controlled by the scientific manipulation of fear – mathematical geniuses employed by the Rand Corporation. In the end, their visions were the stuff of science fiction fantasy.
Curtis most recent documentary ‘The Trap’ also comes back to these think tanks featured in this documentary.
More? Pandora’s Box Series
Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes
Once again Maestro Curtis delivers some excellent insights into modern affairs. This time he reports about the inner workings of the Soviet Union and why it’s economy failed. This is once again highly recommended to anyone who wants to understand our present world.
Important note: some minutes of the end are missing. Nothing really essential. Just don’t be surprised if some final statement is abruptly ended. The rest is still brilliant!
More? Pandora’s Box Series
I think this is one of the best movies about the American military industrial complex – and how it came to be.
An addiction to military power is as dangerous as the addiction to oil – the US suffers from both. Will this ever change? Will America grow up some day and feel less insecure and vulnerable? Today this country spends more money on military power and secret services than almost all other nations on this planet. This is paranoia and insecurity of a so called great nation.
documentary / 1:38 / Wikipedia entry
Highly recommended for all who want to understand how the American politics, the American dreams and politics are intertwined.
BBC 4 / documentary / 3 episodes each ca. 1 hour
This is what I would consider basic knowledge or better say insight what happened in recent history.
I can recommend watching all parts – but number 2 is especially important, because it shows that Racism was one of the driving forces in America that swapped over to Europe (again) in a scientific disguise and supported the old idea of the Masterrace, which suited the Nazis perfectly.
Beginning by assessing the implications of the relationship between Europe, Africa and the Americas in the 15th century, it considers how racist ideas and practices developed in key religious and secular institutions, and how they showed up in writings by European philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.
Looking at Scientific Racism, invented during the 19th century, an ideology that drew on now discredited practices such as phrenology and provided an ideological justification for racism and slavery. These theories ultimately led to eugenics and Nazi racial policies of the master race. Some upsetting scenes.
The third and final episode of Racism: A History examines the impact of racism in the 20th Century. By 1900, European colonial expansion had reached deep into the heart of Africa. Under the rule of King Leopold II, The Belgian Congo was turned into a vast rubber plantation.
Men, women and children who failed to gather their latex quotas would have their limbs dismembered. The country became the scene of one of the century’s greatest racial genocides, as an estimated 10 million Africans perished under colonial rule.
Adam Curtis / documentary / 50+ minutes / BBC
If you are one of these people who tries to make sense of our mad modern world then this documentary is for you.
Adam Curtis is one of the few and rare geniuses working in television – trying to connect the dots and documenting his findings in an understandable way.
The Century of the Self is about Freud, his nephew Bernays, marketing, the politics of freedom, consumerism, so called free markets, individualism and the modern “self”.
Please take the time (four hours) and watch each episode. It’s worth it – and many things will appear in a different light after that.
More? Century of the Self @ Wikipedia, Adam Curtis and Edward Bernays
The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud’s ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn’t need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.
Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to eroticising the motorcar.
His most notorious coup was breaking the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile.
It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate today’s world.
The programme explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud’s ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses.
Politicians and planners came to believe Freud’s underlying premise – that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.
Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna, and his nephew, Edward Bernays, provided the centrepiece philosophy. The US government, big business, and the CIA used their ideas to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people. But this was not a cynical exercise in manipulation. Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that lurked just under the surface of normal American life.
In the 1960s, a radical group of psychotherapists challenged the influence of Freudian ideas in America. They were inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, a pupil of Freud’s, who had turned against him and was hated by the Freud family. He believed that the inner self did not need to be repressed and controlled. It should be encouraged to express itself.
Out of this came a political movement that sought to create new beings free of the psychological conformity that had been implanted in people’s minds by business and politics.
This programme shows how this rapidly developed in America through self-help movements like Werber Erhard’s Erhard Seminar Training – into the irresistible rise of the expressive self: the Me Generation.
But the American corporations soon realised that this new self was not a threat but their greatest opportunity. It was in their interest to encourage people to feel they were unique individuals and then sell them ways to express that individuality. To do this they turned to techniques developed by Freudian psychoanalysts to read the inner desires of the new self.
This episode explains how politicians on the left, in both Britain and America, turned to the techniques developed by business to read and fulfil the inner desires of the self.
Both New Labour, under Tony Blair, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, used the focus group, which had been invented by psychoanalysts, in order to regain power. They set out to mould their policies to people’s inner desires and feelings, just as capitalism had learnt to do with products.
Out of this grew a new culture of public relations and marketing in politics, business and journalism. One of its stars in Britain was Matthew Freud who followed in the footsteps of his relation, Edward Bernays, the inventor of public relations in the 1920s.
The politicians believed they were creating a new and better form of democracy, one that truly responded to the inner feelings of individual. But what they didn’t realise was that the aim of those who had originally created these techniques had not been to liberate the people but to develop a new way of controlling them.
Documentary / each ca. 50 minutes
Another great historical documentary by Bettany Hughes. I think this should be mandatory in each school in democratic countries to serve as education and a warning to all future generations.
Documentary / Channel 4 / 55+ minutes
It’s always good to check from time to time who you are and who we are. Some nice insights about humans, apes, brains and our heritage in this documentary.
Got some spare time? Like history? You already know everything about Spartan culture? Nope? Then watch this great documentary.
Documentary / three episodes each about 55 minutes
Ms Hughes has done a great job writing and presenting these insights into one of the most influential cultures of European history.
More? Bettany Hughes @ Wikipedia and the Sparta @ Wikipedia
BBC documentary / 50 min
Nitzsche finally freed us from God and Religion – he also deepened our understanding and horizon about personal freedom, pain and development.
BBC documentary / 50 min
Heidegger – the last of Germany’s great Philosophers and weird thinkers. Although he had some great insights – he totally failed to see the dangers of Fascism.
BBC documentary / 50 min
A great documentary about Sartre – and how he compliments Nietzsche and Heidegger.
I am a big fan of Frontline and it many great documentation – not only because you can watch so many great reports online. This one is important, because it shows what really happened at Abi Graib and HOW it happened. I still can’t belief that Rumsfeld is still in Office and this Gonzales guy got even a bigger job.
I hope that one day they will be brought to justice, like Osama or any other terrorist – because what Rumsfeld ‘allowed’ was political terrorism – nothing else.
I love the BBC. They always produce challenging series and try to support public education and discussion. I can’t add much to what the website has to say about itself and the project:
Democracy is arguably the greatest political buzzword of our time and is invoked by everyone – but what does it mean? Can it be defined, measured, safeguarded? Can it be sold, bought, and transplanted? Can it grow? Can it die? What does it mean to people who can’t even talk about it? What does it mean to people who don’t believe in it? What does it mean to you?
In October 2007, ten one-hour films focused on contemporary democracy will be broadcast in the world’s largest ever factual media event. More than 40 broadcasters on all continents are participating, with an estimated audience of 300 million viewers. Each of the broadcasters – an A-Z which includes everyone from Al Arabiya to ZDF – will be producing a locally-based seasons of film, radio, debate and discussion to tie in with the global broadcast of the Why Democracy? films.
The films are made by independent award-winning filmmakers from around the world, including China, India, Japan, Liberia, USA, Bolivia, Denmark, Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan and Russia. With subjects ranging from US torture methods to the election of a class monitor in a Chinese primary school to the Danish Cartoons scandal, the films take a wide-ranging and in-depth look at the world we live in today.
That’s not all. We are creating 20 thought-provoking short films, dealing with personal, political and rights issues around the theme ‘What does democracy mean to me?’ These films will be available to view on whydemocracy.net.
Please take some time to watch all ten episodes online. Highly recommended. And it provides you with insights you hardly find in most of the mainstream media (reports).
More? Official Homepage
Another excellent documentation from the PBS Frontline crew! It’s about the current Iran and USA situation – and how the current Shrub administration once again missed the chance for diplomacy.
You can watch the whole show online.
See also BBC News Iran vs USA timeline for some background.
American TV show about a Christian white male trying to be a Muslim for 30 days. This is fun … more or less …
I recently found this rather disturbing news reel about the still lingering possibilities of a nuclear war. It shows that almost all the atomic nations have learned nothing.
[21 Minutes]
Sir David Attenborough is one of the greatest film makers ever. His documentaries are stunning, insightful and brilliant. In the year 1976 he produced "The Tribal Eye". A great series about native art and culture all over the world.
Thanks to the wonders of the intranets it can be found on Torrents via Mininova.org. When you like it BUY it – via Amazon for example.
One more thing: Attenborough has this incredibly soothing voice. He could read anything to me and I would find it reassuring. Is it just me?!