The true story of the rise to power and brutal assassination of the formerly vilified and later redeemed leader of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Using newly discovered historical evidence, Haitian-born and later Congo-raised writer and director Raoul Peck renders an emotional and tautly woven account of the mail clerk and beer salesman with a flair for oratory and an uncompromising belief in the capacity of his homeland to build a prosperous nation independent of its former Belgium overlords. Lumumba emerges here as the heroic sacrificial lamb dubiously portrayed by the international media and led to slaughter by commercial and political interests in Belgium, the United States, the international community, and Lumumba's own administration; a true story of political intrigue and murder where political entities, captains of commerce, and the military dovetail in their quest for economic and political hegemony.

Sometime in the 1960's, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced in to Lake Victoria as a little scientific experiment. The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world. Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo…Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the centre of the continent. This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world's biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots.
http://www.darwinsnightmare.com

Utilizing excerpts from the award-winning non-fiction text "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid, Life & Debt is a woven tapestry of sequences focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas. By combining traditional documentary telling with a stylized narrative framework, the complexity of international lending, structural adjustment policies and free trade will be understood in the context of the day-to-day realities of the people whose lives they impact.
http://www.lifeanddebt.org

Funny, provocative and surprisingly accessible, MANUFACTURING CONSENT explores the political life and ideas of Noam Chomsky, world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist. In a dynamic collage of new and original footage, biography, archival gems, imaginative graphics and outrageous illustrations, the film highlights Chomsky’s probing analysis of mass media. A mammoth two-part project, MANUFACTURING CONSENT is nonetheless light on its feet, favoring a style that encourages viewers to question its own workings, as Chomsky himself encourages his listeners to extricate themselves from the “web of deceit” by undertaking a course of “intellectual self-defense.”

The Corporation explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation's grip on our lives. Taking its legal status as a "person" to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.
http://www.thecorporation.com

Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years, so too has the suburban way of life become embedded in the American consciousness. Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge about the sustainability of this way of life. With brutal honesty and a touch of irony, The End of Suburbia explores the American Way of Life and its prospects as the planet approaches a critical era, as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply. World Oil Peak and the inevitable decline of fossil fuels are upon us now, some scientists and policy makers argue in this documentary. The consequences of inaction in the face of this global crisis are enormous. What does Oil Peak mean for North America? As energy prices skyrocket in the coming years, how will the populations of suburbia react to the collapse of their dream? Are today's suburbs destined to become the slums of tomorrow? And what can be done NOW, individually and collectively, to avoid The End of Suburbia ?
http://www.endofsuburbia.com

Globalization" and "the new world economy" are trendy terms. Whether we like it or not, the global economy now affects us as consumers, as workers, as citizens, and as members of the human family. For those with wealth and power, the global economy has meant big benefits. But what does it mean for the rest of us? Are we destined to be its victims? Or can we shape its future--and our own? This film, narrated by Edward Asner, seeks to answer these and other provocative questions.

Although the global textile business is booming and its markets seem to be liberated, the industrialized world has tightened its economical and political pressure. Africa faces new possibilities. Since German colonial times – lasting more than one hundred years – the people of Muhenda have lived from cotton. But the changes during the past 15 years have brought poverty and even hunger into the tiny village in Tanzania. In the center of “economic chronicle” is a portrait of the elderly cotton farmer Mzee Gwao Mbogo, whose life author Peter Heller portrayed earlier in his successful 1979 documentary “Mbogos Harves.” The film Cotton Money maximizes its impact by showing the contrast between various eras and locations and by looking at different people involved in the cotton and textile business around the globe, thus showing economic interactions. By providing a private story in the historical context, Cotton Money will provoke reflections on the ongoing development and understanding of the problems of global trade.

As Philip Morris and other tobacco companies in the U.S. and Germany find their allies turning against them, they seek to maintain their addictive hold by whatever means possible. As advocates in more developed nations resist the tobacco conglomerates, the corporations are turning to Africa, where the growing of tobacco crops promises rich rewards. But this change in venue is taking an immediate toll upon the African nations, their land, and their people.
The drying process has led to massive deforestation in East Africa. Tanzania is losing between 25,000 and 40,000 acres of forest each year, while Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Malawi are also suffering similar deforestation damage. The impact is also felt on once thriving industries in these nations. Honey production has severely decreased, because bees can’t find trees. Tourism has also dropped as the natural beauty of the country has been devastated.
In this chronicle of the continued plight of African nations, a Tanzanian journalist seeks to expose the reckless and immoral acts of tobacco giants who are willing to maintain profits no matter what the cost—including targeting women in countries where female smokers were once a rare sight.