I once submitted several questions to the online discussion platform for social and environmental change www.droppingknowledge.org (a platform which I helped build). One of these questions raised the issue of whether it makes sense to spend so much money on space exploration when so much needs to be done on earth. I asked the question because this theme is of interest to me, although I have never believed that reducing our investment in space programs would directly and positively affect problems such as poverty or pollution. It is not more money that we need to overcome these problems. It is commitment and sacrifices of another type. Nonetheless, I have encountered many social thinkers and environmentalists who see no purpose in space exploration and regard it as a waste of resources and while I can see their point to a certain extent, I remain fully convinced in the beauty and mystery of space exploration. I also believe that man’s destiny lies in the stars and that it will not be long before some of us begin to leave the blue planet behind.

In the Shadow of the Moon is a outstanding documentary film on the Apollo Space Program (the Mercury Program is briefly mentioned, referencing The Right Stuff, the book by Tom Wolf, which was turned into an excellent film by Philip Kaufman in 1983), narrated by the small group of men who had the privilege, and courage, to be the first humans to step on an alien world. The film is remarkably well put together and adroitly combines the fascinating tales and emotional insights of the astronauts with some amazing footage from NASA. It all feels so real that one immediately forgets that the film is an assemblage of original footage taken 35 years ago by cameras in cockpits or attached to spacecrafts and lunar modules. This footage is so skilfully intertwined with the narrative that one could be forgiven for thinking that the film crew shot additional footage to serve the storyline. What can not be forgiven however, after watching this brilliant and intensely touching film, is to continue thinking that the moon landings were a creation of the US government and that they in fact never took place. I believe there is plenty of proof in In the Shadow of the Moon to dispel any such absurd notions.

But what stands out the most for me after watching this film is the spirituality that these men developed after experiencing not only the beauty of the cosmos but also the serenity and fragility of our planet as seen from space. Some of the shots of Earth taken by the astronauts during the various Apollo flights have become omnipresent in our media over the past 30 years and, more importantly, have become synonymous in certain circles with a visualization of our planet as the self-regulating homeostatic organism named Gaia. First proposed by Dr. James Lovelock (who incidentally started developing his theory while working for NASA) in the early 70s, but already hinted at by Vladimir Vernadsky in the 20s in his seminal book The Biosphere, the Gaia theory has been embraced by most people who feel empathy towards our planet and who regard it as a connected and living organism that deserves our respect and attention. And while Gaianism has been around for a while, and has even regained some of its momentum in the past few years in connection with the increased number of environmental issues facing our planet, a new belief has emerged, one that merges a deep respect for the Earth and all of its living creatures with a conviction in the powers of technology to help us overcome these issues and to, in the process, achieve a deeper spirituality and a global consciousness. Drawing, among others, on the work of the French monk Teilhard de Chardin who believed that technology would help us reach The Omega Point which is a higher state of global consciousness, these believers, and i am one of them, in TechnoGaianism tend to also be transhumanists with a social agenda and a democratic slant (James Hughes’ Citizen Cyborg is a particularly good reference on this latter subject).

Perhaps we do need Space and to get closer to the stars to remind us not to forget our duties towards Earth. Where some people might detect an irony or even an incompatibility between space exploration and the preservation and love of our planet, I see an interconnectedness following its logical progress and taking the human race to its next step in evolution, clearly driven for the first time in history by Man itself and in agreement with a desire to see all living and non living creatures existing in perfect harmony with this or any other planet and thus, with the cosmos as a whole.

A sometimes poorly structured and organized documentary with a moderator whose voice would put you to sleep if the topic wasn’t so interesting, The Future of Food nonetheless provides an interesting look into the dangers of genetically modified foods and is a good companion piece to the better We Feed the World (2005).

As people across the globe slowly become accustomed to hearing about genetically modified corn, canola or soybeans and fail to fully understand how it impacts them, corporations such as Monsanto are busy patenting seeds (and thus life; a horrifying thought to ponder. Big pharma is now beginning to patent genes), developing and planting new genetically modified crops, unbeknownst to most, and suing farmers in an effort to pressure them to use these corporations’ seeds. These corporations are also consolidating the food supply, thereby reducing the diversity of our crops and produces and driving many farming communities out of business, both in the Western and Third Worlds. In a word, everything awful that you have ever heard about what motivates corporations is unfortunately also applicable to the world of agriculture and genetically modified foods.

But this is not new. Monsanto’s main pesticide and herbicide, which has been used widely for decades in numerous countries, is based on military technology from World War Two, particularly on nerve gas and on the famous Agent Orange. Has Monsanto ever bothered to try to really understand what this means in the long term for the people eating crops or eating the animals that eat the crops sprayed with this stuff? Probably not. As one Monsanto executive stated about genetically modified foods, their only responsibility is to sell their product and to make money, not to ensure their safety, which they regard as the responsibility of the government. Unfortunately for all of us, most of the individuals with the real power in the two branches of the government that are supposedly looking after our safety (Federal Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture) are ex-Monsanto employees or are directly affiliated with the corporate world, in a manner reminiscent of the Bush’s administration’s various ties to many corporations that benefited from the war in Iraq. We live at a time when compassion and empathy are badly needed, but these are clearly not a corporation’s forte.

Therefore, it is up to us to ensure the safety of our food by living an organic lifestyle, by informing ourselves and by putting pressure on these corporations to increase the safety of their products and to provide us with more transparency on their actions and on which foods contain GMOs. The most naïve thing people can do is to assume that their voice or actions do not count. In the same way that something as simple and easy as replacing the light bulbs in your house can make a difference and reduce your energy consumption, buying organic produces, supporting your local farmers and encouraging sustainable farming can have an impact on the system, as well as on your health.

As I have stated before, we live at what I consider to be the most important and interesting time in our history. Our mastery of science is increasingly enabling us to consider new horizons and to change our destiny in ways that would have seemed impossible not so long ago. I believe in technology and I believe that it can have a positive impact on society. As a futurist, I also believe in the inevitability of progress and that whatever we fear today, we will accept tomorrow. For this reason, I am not opposed to genetically modified foods in the long run, in the same way that I am not opposed to genetic engineering in general. Yet, I believe that we are at the early stages of these developments and that they are currently not safe. Consequently, it is out duty to ensure their safety by pressuring the system. A year ago, driving back from the G8 demonstrations in Northern Germany, a friend asked me why I resisted GMO’s if I loved technology. I answered that I fight it to ensure its safety as quickly as possible, before it does too much damage, rather than to try to ensure that it never happens. I also do it because corporations are out of control and are ruling too many aspects of our lives. Their power must be reduced and their greed controlled. It is our choice to decide if we want to try to make a difference.

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto

http://www.thecampaign.org/

http://www.monsantowatch.org/

http://www.ucsusa.org/

No End in Sight, a winner of several film prizes and on the top 10 lists of many critics in 2007, differentiates itself from the multitude of other documentaries that have come out over the past few years about the Iraq war in that it focuses on why things went wrong once the war started. It does offer the usual evidence that the war had been planned for a long time, at least on the surface, by the neo-cons and that 9/11 and Sadam were just convenient excuses to put this plan into action, but this accounts for only a small part of the documentary.

And what Charles H. Ferguson uncovers and exposes through this precise and meticulous documentary is that the mismanagement of the Iraq occupation is as enraging as are the reasons for going to war in the first place. The arrogance, selfishness and naïve overconfidence of a few key people in the Bush administration have led to one of the most grotesque and unjust travesty of our generation. Regardless of whether one believes in the merits of this war, after watching No End in Sight, it should be clear to anyone that Iraq would probably be a better place today had the Bush administration not acted like children entering a new playground.

No End in Sight is not an anti-war documentary. Although it provides plenty of ammunition to those already against Bush and the Iraq war, it also shows us that there were plenty of capable and well-intentioned people who went into Iraq hoping to make it a better place for the Iraqis. This is a fact that is often forgotten and this documentary reminds us that we must not too easily assume that anyone involved in the Iraq conflict must have by default shared the thinking of the Bush administration. Yet, it also proves once again that Bush and his cohorts are some of the most dangerous men in the world today and that many continue to have power over matters that can impact us all.

This channel 4 documentary, narrated by Christopher Sykes provides an overview of Aubrey de Grey’s efforts to defeat aging. An interesting look at the man who believes that we can perhaps abolish death within the next three decades and whose SENS research into aging is the source of much controversy, it nonetheless offers little new information for those of us who follow de Grey’s work on a regular basis.

I personally even found the selection of shots and angles to be at times purposely unflattering towards the various people that make up the anti-aging group by depicting them as a bit wacky and outside of the ‘norm’. In most cases, the pro-de Grey individuals are interviewed in their home or in a ‘non-institutionalized’ setting, which provides more opportunity for personal judgement and subjective conclusions, whereas the anti-longevity group is mainly seen in laboratories or expensive offices filled with books, as if to tell us that these people know what they are talking about and thus, that they should be trusted.

Does one need to be weird to want to live forever? That seems to be what this documentary would want you to believe. It also reinforces the cliché that if you are not within the norm (whatever this means) then you are strange and eccentric.
As I already explained when I reviewed Radical Evolution, it is interesting that the people who tend to be opposed to a drastically increased or to an unlimited lifespan tend to view those who seek to abolish death as mad geniuses who will do the world more harm than good. They also believe that today’s definition of normal is the one that must be upheld forever, the one that must endure. This obviously implies a complete disregard for what used to be considered normal (a very slippery concept when appraised in the context of history and within cultural considerations), and naturally, for what could become normal. It also implies, in my view, a total selfishness and narrow-minded belief that what we have today is as good as it is ever going to get and that our 20th and 21st century values (or rather, their values) are better and more appropriate than past or future values.

The ‘humanistic’ and preferred angle chosen by many who are opposed to eternal life is that death is what gives meaning to it all (see my review of The Fountain). Without death, one wouldn’t fully be alive. Quoting Freeman Dyson, ‘our humanity depends on the old ones getting out of the way’. Perhaps it is so; perhaps our definition of humanity today depends on newer generations replacing the old ones. But at the centre of these discussions is the word humanity. The anti-aging camp, and futurists in general, accept the idea that our humanity, which is what defines us in terms of values, belief systems, qualities and characteristics, can continue to evolve, even if it means abandoning today’s definition. The critics, on the other hand, seem incapable of accepting a future that will have redefined what it means to be human, especially not if we are the ones who have taken over the process of evolution.
Leave it to nature they say. Do not interfere with the natural order of things. But many of the humans race’s great accomplishments have occurred due to its interference with the natural order of things. If this were not the case, we would be living in a very different world today. I believe it is in the nature of Man to seek control over its own destiny. We live at a time when technology has given us the tools to do so with unparalleled assertion, confidence and power. We are now in control and to negate this potential would be foolish. Rather than negation, what we need is proper monitoring and ethical management of these issues and for the sceptics to apply their knowledge and concerns towards ensuring, not that this research does not happen since it will regardless, but rather, that it does happen in the safest and most beneficial way for all.

Documentaries can be very manipulative and can often play to the already established opinions and beliefs of its viewers. While watching ‘Do you want to live Forever?’, I couldn’t help using my own biases to filter the information I was absorbing. And in doing so, I found Sherwin Nuland and Preston Estep’s (despite Etep’s role in anti-aging research) opinions and arguments against de Grey to be filled with the exact same fear, envy and selfishness that they accuse him of. I tremble when I hear Nuland stating that the world could be destroyed by people such as de Grey and I fear that it is instead the Nulands of this world, the people who keep telling others what is best for them and who keep referring to the norm as the ideal mode of living, as if stuck in some 1950’s suburban ideology, whom we must fear the most.

De Grey is an enigmatic character who has made it his purpose to defeat aging. Whatever his reasons are (and this is another aspect of the documentary that I had problems with; this need to connect de Grey’s quest with a lack of love as a child or with some kind of egomaniac drive), his passion is undeniable and his approach, as unorthodox and threatening as it may be to some of the established scientific community, can only bring freshness, challenge, increased awareness and interest, and, let us hope, faster results.

Related websites:

www.Mprize.org
www.ImmInst.org
www.sens.org
www.longevitymeme.org
www.fightaging.org

One would be hard-pressed these days to not notice the ever-increasing role that China is playing in all affairs of the world. The hunger of this industrial juggernaut for more consumption and production seems to be constantly rising, swallowing in the process so much energy and raw materials that an increasing number of people around the world are now asking about the human and environmental cost of this manufacturing escalation. Naturally, the Chinese are responding that these people should also question the same cost produced by their own countries over the past 100 years, that China has a right to augment its productivity and the ‘well-being’ of its people and that the country is doing more than any others to combat the negative environmental effects of its alarmingly fast entry into the world of mass consumption and production.
Still, the statistics are alarming: 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, coal production to double until 2020, 400 new cities planned over the next 20 years (including 233 Eco-cities, if the Dongtan model proves successful), around 14,000 people dying per year in industrial accidents (Corpwatch), about 60 percent (700 million people) of the population are poor peasants, the second largest producer of CO2 after the US, which it will overtake next year, the list goes on…
How can such an incredibly growth take place without triggering a chain reaction of negative consequences for many of the Chinese people, for the planet and thus, for all of us?

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Documentaries have the capacity to expose their filmmaker’s partiality, willingly or unwillingly, in a much stronger fashion than feature films can, for the simple reason that documentaries claim to portrait reality and to expose the truth. But what is the truth? Is one person, in this case, a filmmaker, capable of exposing the entire truth of a topic? Or do they simply expose mainly one side of it, their preferred side, their own understanding of the truth, which is usually a counterpoint to a dominant view or ideology? How effectively do documentaries reach out to people who do not share the views of the filmmaker and to the people who truly need to be made aware of a different angle to a certain situation? Many decent documentaries such as Why We Fight and Iraq for Sale end up mostly preaching to the choir, which certainly makes the choir feel good about their already more-or-less established convictions, but it does not do enough to make the other side question their own beliefs.

Therefore, it could be argued that some of the best documentaries are the ones that try to not convince the viewer of any truth, either by equitably showing both sides of an argument without adding a biased conclusion, or by skillfully threading the middle line between both sides, never really taking sides. Brilliant examples of this are Errol Morris’ The Fog of War and Marcel Ophüls’ The Memory of Justice. I suppose one could argue that there is always a trace of bias in all films or documentaries. Godard’s typical Godardian statement that ‘a tracking shot is a moral issue’ demonstrate that all aspects of filmmaking, from the location and movement of the camera, to the order in which the scenes are scripted to the final editing decisions, are all part of a deliberate decision by the filmmaker to tell a story according to his or her own opinion.

Michael Moore chose early on in his career to dispense with any attempt to hide his bias. He has embraced the documentary style as a means to fully express his opinion and to punch the side that he is trying to expose. In a sense, he has appropriated the truth and made it his. He also seems to know a thing or two about marketing and film promotion, which has allowed him to take the documentary style into a new realm of profitability and mass viewing. Throughout this process, he has made a lot of enemies, from the people he attacks in his films to others who simply do not enjoy the manipulative style of his work.

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War is an ugly thing and the business of profiting from death is even uglier. Iraq for Sale, directed by Robert Greenwald who previously took on the Fox TV channel with Outfoxed, exposes the lies, deceit and stratagems that took place during the Iraq war to ensure that a few large corporations with ties to the Bush administration would reap billions of dollars in profit by taking over several aspects of the war support operations in Iraq.

In most cases, it would seem that these contracts were awarded without a proper and fair bidding process to corporations that are somehow connected to the current administration, and that the services that these companies offered to the soldiers in Iraq were much below the quality levels of what would normally be expected. Examples are given of terrible living conditions for the soldiers, contaminated water supplied by the company hired to purify it, substandard food served to cut costs, empty trucks driving endlessly on the roads of Iraq so that the cost of driving and of gasoline can be billed back to the taxpayers, Halliburton executives driving leased luxury cars in nearby Kuwait (used as a training centre for their employees) at a cost of 250,000 dollars per vehicle for a three year lease…the list goes on. Ultimately, Halliburton, only one of several companies that have profited enormously from the war (others are CACI, TITAN, Blackwater…), has made billions of dollars in profit since 2001, by gratuitously overcharging a Bush government (and thus the taxpayers) that was more than willing to turn the blind eye. Why isn’t anyone made accountable?

http://iraqforsale.org/
HalliburtonWatch
http://www.robertgreenwald.org/
CorpWatch: War Profiteers site

SourceWatch: War Profiteering

Robert Greenwald is a busy man. Over the past several years, he has directed, produced or helped bring to the screen a slew of documentaries and films with a social angle, garnering award nominations by the dozens. Some of these titles include: Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (2002), Uncovered: The Iraq War (2003), The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron (2003), Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005), Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006), and Outfoxed, Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2005).

As is always the case with these documentaries, I hope they reach the right audience. I was already well aware of Murdoch’s deceptive tactics and techniques, and particularly, of his main messenger in the US, the Fox News Network. I also got to experience another Murdoch property, the Sun newspaper in London, which was enough to make me ponder human nature and the true meaning of intelligence.

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Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance festival in 2005, Why We Fight is a well crafted documentary that unfortunately offers little new information regarding the dominance of the ‘military-industrial complex’ in the US and the plans of the neo-cons in Washington to control the Middle-East, with Saddam Hussein being simply an excuse for implementing this strategy of control and power (see also Fahrenheit 9/11).

Such a documentary would be incredibly useful if one could somehow manage to get the sceptics to watch it. But it seems that most people who will hear about it and will indeed watch it are the people who believe already and simply want to be reminded of the absurdity and sadness of it all.

For more information on this sad state of affairs, read Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival and read the American Empire Project blog.

A fascinating look into the life and actions of Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defence under Kennedy and Johnson and the man many have come to associate with the absurdity of the Vietnam war. Yet, as this documentary reveals, war is a complicated and often irrational affair, whereby even the most rational man can make illogical and unreasonable decisions. That being said, I am still not sure that McNamara was a reasonable man in those days, but the point which is made brilliantly by the documentary, is that Man can sometimes be caught up in events that are bigger than he is, and in this process, the lines between good and bad, between our beliefs and our actions, can easily be blurred. Errol Morris, the famed documentary filmmaker, does not try by any means to excuse McNamara. On the contrary, he wants to expose him, but rather than wanting McNamara to simply say ‘I am sorry’, Morris wants him to open up and to uncover what makes a man such as him do the things he did. And this technique works brilliantly. McNamara reveals an ambiguity, a paradox, a certain sadness that one can’t help but associate with something bigger than just McNamara, something that goes deep into human nature…

It was with great interest that I started watching this channel 4 documentary, a response to Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and, really, a response to what the producers and director (a certain Martin Durkin, who, 10 years ago was chastised by the Independent Television Commission for misleading some of the people he interviewed in his anti-environmentalist documentaries, something he apparently did again in this case with Carl Wunsch, who claims to have been deceived) of this anti-propaganda piece of propaganda see as an increasingly dangerous global warming bio-fool movement.

Now, I happen to be one of these bio-fools, but with what I hope is an open mind. So if I hear that some people are saying that global warming is a hoax, I am interested in finding out why they are saying it.
The GGWS starts strongly enough, with some interesting, albeit not new, evidence proving that severe temperature fluctuations have been with us as long as there has been an earth. The documentary then goes on to show that CO2 emissions play only a minimal role in raising temperatures, and that, in fact, temperatures affect CO2 emissions rather than the other way around. Finally, the point is made that solar flares are the source of the current rise in temperatures and that man-made CO2 emissions have, therefore, pretty much nothing to do with the global warming of the earth.

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A high budget and overlong documentary on the rise of the corporation over the past 150 years. It could have been 45 minutes shorter and still be as effective.

Nevertheless, this documentary has plenty to offer and enough to, hopefully, make even pro-business and pro-capitalism viewers think about the negative implications of a world dominated by greed, money and power.

The Corporation, unlike many documentaries, provides different points of view and gives both sides a chance to express themselves. That I found the pro-business speakers ridiculous (with the exception of the ex-CEO of Shell) is either a reflection of my own bias or an indication that the producers of the documentary selected these people for their self-defeating image and rationale.
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Aaron Russo’s documentary starts as a noble attempt to expose, if true indeed, a mind-boggling and little-known fact: that there is no law stating that Americans need to pay income tax.

Russo throws a fair amount of evidence at us and puts forth a strong case depicting the American Government and the Banking industry as a bunch of megalomaniac Big Brother types who want nothing more than to rule the entire world (that part some of us had figured out already).

What i found to be a truly interesting point in the film is that the Federal Reserve Bank is in fact a private organization, not a governmental one, a star chamber of sorts composed of a group of bankers who, having the power to print money, can therefore control much of what happens in the world.

These financial gods have the power, and more importantly, the will and desire, to play with the economies of the world and to try to shape the future of mankind to their liking.
Unfortunately, after that point is made, the documentary starts to drag, suffers from too many repetitions and attempts to make too many points, thereby diluting the initial concept.

It was with great anticipation that i watched the most popular documentary (’ever’) at the US box office. Or is it docu-film now, to reflect the increasing popularity of documentaries in cinema? March of the Penguins is beautiful to look at and tells an amazing tale. It has all the ingredients to be a crowd pleaser. Yet, i found it much less satisfying and rather blend compared to high quality nature docu-films such as Le Peuple Migrateur (01), Microcosmos (96), Deep Blue (03) or even to some of the documentaries i have seen on British TV.

If you liked Fahrenheit 9/11, you will like this. Control Room is a film made by a reporter of Al-Jazeera, the largest TV network in the Middle East. This is their view on the reporting of the Iraq war, and the film intelligently discusses, not only the merit of the war, but also what the media’s responsibility is in reporting the truth, or in altering it.

Ken Loach’s influential docu-drama, made for the BBC in 1966, is an emotional downward ride into despair. Extremely effective, it helped raise awareness to the cause of the homeless and that of housing conditions in Britain, considerably lower at that time than in many European countries. Unfortunately, the political agenda sometimes overpowers the film, and we can’t help but feeling a little manipulated…

Remarkable in intensity, poignant in veracity, this 4 1/2 hours documentary by one of the masters of the genre explores how people and cultures deal with the concept of guilt. It is a fascinating look at what makes some people act, or not act, when confronted with certain events and situations and how they decide to deal with their decisions in the years that follow.

Nathaniel Kahn, son of one of the 20th century most famous architect -Louis Kahn-, sets on a journey to discover the father he barely knew and to try to understand how such a brilliant man could end up dead in the men’s toilets of Penn Station in 1974. While we get to see some of Kahn’s most interesting buildings, such as the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla and the National Capital of Bangladesh Assembly Hall, the film is much more about a son looking for his father than it is about architecture.

Yes, Michael Moore is a master manipulator and i do sometimes get confused, and concerned, by his tactics and do wonder about his true intentions. But in the end, who cares. Someone out there is doing something about a situation that can use all the help it can get, and is doing it, cinematographically, in a way that is accessible and just plain good fun to watch.