Last fall, journalist, literary critic and proud atheist Christopher Hitchens went on a debating tour with Pastor Douglas Wilson. The topic: "Is Christianity good for the world?"
The argument started with the release of Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great. Instead of a regular publicity tour, Hitchens wanted to debate the thesis of his book with anyone willing to take on the challenge. Wilson answered the call.
They filmed their debates, and then edited them for a new documentary called Collision.Last fall, journalist, literary critic and proud atheist Christopher Hitchens went on... more
We Live in Public explores the effect the internet is having on our society through the eyes of the greatest internet pioneer you’ve never heard of: visionary Josh Harris. Award-winning director Ondi Timoner (DIG!), documented Harris’s tumultuous life for more than a decade and created a riveting, cautionary tale of what we can expect as the virtual world inevitably takes control of our lives. For more information, visit the movie’s website.We Live in Public explores the effect the internet is having on our society through... more
A Look at Fracking: Documentary Explores Environmental Consequences of Gas Extraction Method
by Mark Collins
If you own land in Colorado, your rights could end a few feet from the surface.
"Split Estate," a new documentary by filmmaker Debra Anderson, explores the boom in drilling by oil and gas companies on privately owned land in the Rocky Mountain states in recent years. Anderson discovered U.S. law favors those who hold mineral rights over landowners.
"I could not believe that an energy company could come in on land that you own and drill at will without your permission, as close as 150 feet from your front door," said Anderson, a Santa Fe, N.M.-based filmmaker who grew up in Boulder and graduated from Fairview High School in 1982.
In Colorado, state law gives power of use to mineral rights owners, too.
"As long as someone has the mineral interest, then Colorado common law gives them the right to the reasonable use of the surface," said Kim Sanchez, planning division manager for Boulder County. "That's where we get into issues because oftentimes, when the (oil and gas company) owns the mineral interests the surface owner may not even be aware that someone else has those rights on their property."
More specifically, "Split Estate" details the oil and gas industry's controversial method of extracting minerals, called "fracking," and the adverse health effects many people claim they have suffered because of the drilling method.
Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing, a process that includes injecting a mixture of sand, water and chemicals underground in order to release the desired oil or gas. According to the film, fracking was first developed in the 1940s by Haliburton, the energy-services company whose former CEO was Dick Cheney.
"Split Estate" premieres at 6 p.m. Saturday during Discovery's Reel Impact series on Planet Green. It will repeat at 9 p.m. Oct. 22.
The film includes several interviews with people who have suffered significant health problems after oil and gas companies began drilling on or near their land. The affected families speculate that toxic chemicals used in fracking, or natural gas released during the drilling, leaked into their water supply and led to their illnesses. Oil and gas firms say such assertions are unproven.
Amy Mall, senior policy analyst with the Natural Resource Defense Council, said air quality has been negatively affected due to increased drilling in recent years, too.
"In the Denver-metro area it's become an issue with ozone which is harmful to human health," Mall said.
Much of "Split Estate" was shot in Rifle, Colo., and Garfield County commissioners there delayed a decision on proposed fracking legislation last month so they could view the film and take more time to explore the issue.
Closer to home, Weld County, east of Boulder County, is the second-busiest county in Colorado for drilling nowadays, according to statistics from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. More than 3,200 permits for new drilling in Weld County were filed during the past 20 months.
In Boulder County, there are roughly 270 currently producing wells, according to the COGCC. Most are in the northeastern part of the county. That's because the Wattenberg Field, the country's sixth-largest underground deposit of natural gas, stretches into that corner of the county.
Roughly 115 oil and gas wells are currently operating on Boulder County Open Space.
more at link....Colorado: Thought your land was your land?
A Look at Fracking: Documentary... more
There are things that you hardly see on television. Not only the hyper-censored Italian television, which responds only to the logic of political affiliation, with very few exceptions, but in televisions around the world, because there are truths that displease too many people. So it happens that some beautiful and very interesting documentaries have a notoriety far lower than they'd deserve.There are things that you hardly see on television. Not only the hyper-censored... more
New York City based content producers for motion pictures, broadcast television, and the internet via webisodes.New York City based content producers for motion pictures, broadcast television, and... more
Against all the odds an individual manages to create an annual global 'Peace Day'; but can he inspire an actual ceasefire and silence the cynics by proving the day can actually save lives?
Appearances by Angelina Jolie, Jude Law, MIchael Douglas, Jane Goodall, the UN Security Council, the UN secretary General, and more
One hour seventeen minutes.Against all the odds an individual manages to create an annual global 'Peace Day'; but... more
“Hamburger Eyes” is a 4-min. short documentary by Nick Fogarty about the photographers who put together the black and white photo-zine “Hamburger Eyes.” The photo-zine is centered on a collective of photographers living in San Francisco; it represents a movement that’s come to be known as “Lifestyle” photography, meaning that both the photographers and subject matter seem to be in their natural environment. The documentary captures images in a brilliant way. It’s very unique and certainly not your ordinary, boring photography.
This piece presents a number of remarkable black and white photographs, as well as the brilliant documentary short, “Hamburger Eyes.“Hamburger Eyes” is a 4-min. short documentary by Nick Fogarty about the... more
The picturesque town of Taijii, Japan, has a dark, horrifying secret that it doesn’t want the rest of the world to know.The picturesque town of Taijii, Japan, has a dark, horrifying secret that it doesn’t... more
We stopped the Vietnam war, purportedly with two pictures, Execution by Eddie Adams, and Nick Út's photo of a naked girl running with her clothes burned off by napalm. We were so outraged by these photos that we pressured our government to get out of Vietnam.
Your government, the U.S. government, has learned that to wage war they must censor all media. There are virtually no images of the current wars. The ones you do see are approved by the Pentagram so as to convey your perception that things aren't all that bad. But as you read accounts of the many atrocities committed by the U.S. you find that we are waging a racist preemptive genocide and torture against Muslims with horrors far beyond anything we've ever seen or known about, outside of the Holocaust. 1.5 million innocent Iraqis have been killed, mostly by U.S. troops. If it were not for public pressure and the election of President Obama, we would be at war with Iran right now, as well.
You can do something. What we the people can do, what you can do, to stop war is to increase your awareness, public awareness, of the reality of the facts that the United States of America does not stand for your freedom, the freedom of it's own people or anyone else's. Our troops do not protect your freedom.
They endanger your freedom by killing innocent Muslims and thereby motivating their survivors to join the Taliban and other ant-U.S. insurgencies. Your troops fight and die in vain. A third of them come home with illness and injuries, lost limbs, deformed faces and bodies, and damaged minds from the experience of killing innocent women, children, babies, boys, and men who are very much like their own family. They don't realize this when they are at war. They are following orders and acting under tremendous peer pressure to kill, kill, kill, which is the extent of military training.
But once they return to civilized society, they are faced with their memories of the faces of those they killed. Many end up committing suicide or are so mentally debilitated they can't hold a job. These brave men and women put their lives on the line honorably in what they thought was a fight for your freedom. They were duped by the lies of recruiters and of your government in illegal unjust wars.
The Taliban never attacked the U.S. Iraq never attacked the U.S. But Osama Bin laden, a CIA operative under the tutelage of George H.W. Bush, is free. Why?
You can support your troops. It is your duty as the fourth branch of government to proliferate images and stories of the truth about war and about your racist genocidal military. Join the Stop War Project or simply read our blogs to learn more about how you can help.
Iranians avoid worse atrocities than there could be by using the internet and Twitter. You can do the same by spreading news. Tweet the body counts that come in almost daily. The media largely ignores body counts. But you have the power to remind people by posting and re-posting images of war and torture, stories of body counts, atrocities, and genocides. It worked for Vietnam.
Visit us to find feeds, lists of ant-war veterans groups, media websites, other anti-war organizations and books. Do something.We stopped the Vietnam war, purportedly with two pictures, Execution by Eddie Adams,... more
With his new movie, Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen has once again succeeded in making people laugh — and think.
Best-known for the faux documentary Borat, in which he played a bumbling reporter from Kazakhstan, Cohen plays a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion reporter in his new film Bruno.
The characters of both Bruno and Borat originated on Cohen's cable television show Da Ali G Show.
This interview was originally broadcast Jan. 4, 2007.With his new movie, Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen has once again succeeded in making people... more
“Revenge” is a crushingly tension-filled, animated short film. It's part of a series of short films created as part of a 2-hour documentary about revenge, commissioned by the Netherlands’ national public broadcast company,VPRO television. As “Revenge” moves toward its grand climactic finale, the tension becomes overwhelming and crests with a magnificent ejaculation!
This piece includes a number of great photographic prints from the film, as well as the riveting animated short, “Revenge.”“Revenge” is a crushingly tension-filled, animated short film. It's part of a... more
Published on Friday, July 3, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
The Film Big Coal Does Not Want You to See
by Jeff Biggers
As a groundbreaking clean energy counterpart to this summer's extraordinary Food, Inc. documentary on the agribusiness, the long-awaited "Coal Country" film on the cradle-to-grave process of generating our coal-fired electricity will be hitting the theatres next week with the big bang of an ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosive.
And Big Coal ain't happy.
After a year-long campaign of threats and intimidation, the Big Coal lobby plans to have its Friends of Coal sycophants out in force to picket the premiere of the film on July 11, 7pm, at La Belle Theater in the South Charleston Museum in Charleston, West Virginia.
Why is Big Coal so afeared of this documentary film by native Appalachian daughters Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller, producer and director of three-part award-winning landmark PBS series, "The Appalachians"?
If anything, Coal Country goes out of its way to include the views and voices of the Big Coal lobby and its executives, engineers and miners. This, in fact, might be why Coal Country is so compelling; far from any hackneyed agenda, Coal Country simply allows the coal industry and those affected by its mountaintop removal operations and coal-fired plants to tell their personal stories. The end result is devastating. In a methodical and deliberate fashion, Coal Country brilliantly takes viewers on a rare journey through our nation's coal-fired electricity, from the extraction, processing, transport, and burning of coal.
Once you see the breathtaking footage by cameraman Jordan Freeman, and the unaffected and heart-rending portraits of coal mining families, you will never flick on your light switch again without thinking about Coal Country.
From the git-go, West Virginia governor and coal peddler Joe Manchin declares: "There is no replacement for coal. There might be 30 or 50 or 100 years from now, but there's not today."
A French engineer cheerfully proclaims, "Coal is a wonderful resource. It's too bad it's dirty."
As one coal company executive coldly states, the millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives that rip through the Appalachian mountains and poison the watersheds and air of local communities daily, "might make some people uncomfortable."Published on Friday, July 3, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
The Film Big Coal Does Not Want... more
If Snag Films fulfills its promise, it will spawn millions of virtual movie theaters streaming documentaries. Independent documentary films are experiencing a creative boom, yet theatrical distribution channels have gone bust, Snag could solve the bottleneck in distribution for quality documentaries that has left many great films unable to reach their potential audience or to provide a viable financial return. It also offers established media companies with deep libraries a way of getting “long-tail” documentaries out of the vaults and before a worldwide, on-demand audience.
Snag brings the best nonfiction films to a global web audience, promotes viral web distribution through virtual movie theater widgets, and encourages users to engage with the films’ issues and supporter communities.
The new service features award-winning titles from some of the greatest names in documentary film production and distribution, including PBS, National Geographic, United Nations, Sundance Preserve, IndiePix, Peter Jennings Productions, Arts Alliance America, ITVS, Koch Lorber Films, and many others. Many of the most prominent documentary filmmakers are participating not only by having their films distributed via SnagFilms, but by engaging with their audience through blogs and offering special “bonus” material, as well as suggesting nonprofit organizations that viewers motivated by these films can link to and support via charitable contributions, volunteering or spreading the word.
“There has never been a time when so many high-quality socially relevant documentary films have been made, yet even though tens of thousands of documentaries are submitted to film festivals every year, only a handful find theatrical distribution. SnagFilms was created so that anyone who has a website, publishes a blog, or participates in a social network can open an online multiplex theater, giving others an opportunity to watch one or more of the films we’ll stream, to distribute these films by snagging them for their own sites, and to support the causes promoted by these films by linking to participating nonprofits. Through SnagFilms, everyone on the web can be a theater owner and a film distributor if they just donate their pixels and enable these incredible documentaries to be seen,” said SnagFilms founderTed Leonsis.
Each film is available in a widget that easily allows viewers, bloggers and others to take the film and accompanying material with them (hence the name “SnagFilms”) and place it on their own website, blog, or social network page.If Snag Films fulfills its promise, it will spawn millions of virtual movie theaters... more
This video takes an authentic and exciting look at the monthly Downtown L.A. Art Walk. The Downtown L.A. Art Walk is a self-guided tour that showcases the numerous outstanding art exhibition venues and artists in Downtown Los Angeles.This video takes an authentic and exciting look at the monthly Downtown L.A. Art Walk.... more
Description: America the most secure anti-terrorist nation in the world has been taken over by secret societies but How? The blueprints for the takeover of America are going to be exposed and this blueprint wouldn't have been possible without Alex Jones revealing many of their plans I decided to put together the blueprints on how they did it, on how they can overthrow our government and take over our country. They do it through secrecy and very well thought out blueprints or else they would have failed on the spot and so I try to reveal their step by step plan for United States control which is leading as well into the NWO. I will reveal 6 sections (was 5 but added another important part of their plan) of how they have taken over our country.
This used to be a screener but because of good reviews with a little constructive criticism which is fine I have decided to release this as now a public video. lease await on the filesharing networks for the it to be released there as well. It should be on ThePirateBay, Mininova, Vuze, Vertor, and others.
Warning: Please share this and spread this out to many sheeple or copy because it creates backups in case we get silenced by the govt. We won't condone commercial use or selling of this documentary, so if anybody decides to sell it you will be held responsible for not obeying fair use copyright laws, and I can't be held liable since I don't condone commercial selling of this documentary.
If you want to give me donations just to support me I will accept that or gifts but I won't make money, but I do need more money to upgrade my camera equipment and give USWGO a better host. So only donations are allowed but no commercial use of my documentary.
Now if you want to support my documentary and get me a better web host (a cheap paid host with less limitations) please support me by donating to my USWGO Moneybomb which is located at:
If you support me then I will be happy! I don't really want to make money but I kinda have to because hosts keep causing problems with my sites because they want me to pay for premium, and so I need money so I can have a good and more efficient website.Description: America the most secure anti-terrorist nation in the world has been taken... more
They don't give their names, but viewers can see their faces plainly and what these teens are saying is shocking parents.
"I ended up having sex with more than one person that night and then in the morning I was trying to get morning-after pills," one of the girls said. "I was, like, 14 at the time." http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/story?id=7693121&page=1They don't give their names, but viewers can see their faces plainly and what these... more
Not quite six months in, this has been a pretty strong year for releases. Seen some fantastic stuff, not all of which I’ve been able to cover on MMP. (If they come your way, be sure to check out SUMMER HOURS, a smart, subtly turned French film, and BIG MAN JAPAN, a delirious, kick-ass send-up of Japanese kaiju.)
But to date, none of the documentaries I’ve seen have quite blown me away like BURMA VJ: REPORTING FROM A CLOSED COUNTRY. It’s a combination of factors, here — the idea of the video journalists who work for the Democratic Voice of Burma, under constant threat of torture and lifetime imprisonment; the prime focus of the film on the Saffron Revolution, an uprising of Buddhist monks that crystalized into large-scale protests and resulted in a shockingly brutal response from the military junta; and director Anders Ostergaard’s way of mixing documentary footage smuggled out of the country with reenactments of events that happened outside the country — that makes the film such a compelling revelation of the struggle to disseminate truth in the face of repression.
The film has the backing of HBO, and so should be showing up on the network at some point. It’s well worth keeping an eye out for. In the meantime, here’s my interview with Ostergaard and Democratic Voice of Burma’s deputy director, Khin Maung Win.Not quite six months in, this has been a pretty strong year for releases. Seen some... more
