When we think of China and the internet the majority of us will immediately think of censorship next, this tends to seem quite backward and is the opposite of what the internet stands for. But in at least one area of the internet revolution China appears to be setting taking the first steps forward, defining the boilerplate many other countries may soon copy.China has become the f
Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer and activist who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.Early in her career, Roy worked for television and movies. She wrote the screenplays for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989), a movie based on her experiences as a student of architecture, directed by her current husb
A love of nicotine unites all peoples across the globe, regardless of colour, wealth or creed. Where religion and politics have failed tobacco has succeeded, but at what cost? For over 50 years people have been knowingly paying for the pleasure of tobacco with their lives, making man’s fatal tryst with the cigarette one of the strangest love affairs ever. But as smoking bans in the US and Europe a
Every day in Vienna the amount of unsold bread sent back to be disposed of is enough to supply Austria's second-largest city, Graz. Around 350,000 hectares of agricultural land, above all in Latin America, are dedicated to the cultivation of soybeans to feed Austria's livestock while one quarter of the local population starves. Every European eats ten kilograms a year of artificially irrigated gre
We Are Traffic! chronicles the history and development of the "Critical Mass" bicycle movement-- one of the most spirited and dynamic social/political movements of the apathetic 90's. In over 200 cities in 14 different countries, Critical Mass has now become a monthly ritual of reclaiming the streets by bicycle activists riding en masse.With traffic congestion, pollution, and road rage on
We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists" is a documentary that takes us inside the world of Anonymous, the radical "hacktivist" collective that has redefined civil disobedience for the digital age. The film explores the historical roots of early hacktivist groups like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic Disturbance Theater and then follows Anonymous from 4chan to a full-blown movement with a g
The superb documentary War/Dance reveals the redemptive power of music, even in the most horrific places. Focusing on three children in their early teens in war-torn Uganda--stoic Nancy, driven Dominic, and soft-spoken Rose--War/Dance tracks the efforts of the school of a refugee camp called Patongo to compete in Uganda's countrywide music competition.The contrasts are staggering; in interview
A film about the American photographer James Nachtwey, about his motivation, his fears and his daily routine as a war photographer. If we believe Hollywood pictures, war photographers are all hard-boiled and cynical old troopers. How can they think about ‘exposure time' in the very moment of dread? Swiss author, director and producer Christian Frei followed James Nachtwey for two years into the w
War on Whistleblowers is a 2013 documentary film made by Robert Greenwald and it highlights several recent cases where employees of the United States government and contractors such as Edward Snowden took steps to release or leak sensitive material in order to expose the fraud or abuse being carried out within the administration of government. Even with president Obama commuting to improving