Josh Fox, Digital Smoke Signals
2017, 1 hour 29 min
While many may know the details, AWAKE, A Dream from Standing Rock captures the story of Native-led defiance that forever changed the fight for clean water, our environment and the future of our planet. … It is a labor of love to support the peaceful movement of the water protectors.
Christopher Miles,
1977, 54 min 16 sec
Alternative 3 is a television programme, broadcast as a fictional hoax, an heir to Orson Welles’ radio production of The War of the Worlds. Purporting to be an investigation into the UK’s contemporary “brain drain”, Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the Moon and Mars habitable in the event of climate change and a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth.
The programme was originally meant to be broadcast on April Fools’ Day, 1977. While its broadcast was delayed until 20 June, the credits explicitly date the film to 1 April. Alternative 3 ended with credits for the actors involved in the production and featured interviews with a fictitious American astronaut.
Matt Coolidge, The Center for Land Use Interpretation
2008, 2 min 35 sec
An interview segment with Matt Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation about American places developed as commodities, such as Disneyland, explaining his approach to developing regional exhibits about land uses and their impacts on the environment.
Sue Williams, Ambrica productions
2016, 1 min 51 sec
Filmmaker Sue Williams investigates the underbelly of the international electronics industry, revealing how even the tiniest devices have deadly health and environmental costs. Language: English Writer: Sue Williams Director: Sue Williams Producer: Hilary Klotz Steinman, Sue Williams myNK is a curated OTT platform for World Cinema. Join our Beta Test and help us build an engaged community.
Jeremy Scahill, Johan Grimonprez, Excerpt from THREE THOUGHTS on TERROR
2018, 40 sec
In Three Thoughts on Terror, investigative journalists Robert Fisk, Jeremy Scahill and Vijay Prashad approach the concept of terror from their respective angles. Fisk dismantles terror as a term that is rendered meaningless to alienate political movement from its origins: justice and injustice. Scahill points out that terror is a relative term, as its interpretation depends on which side of the bombing you’re on. Using the absurd example of the ‘The Hague Invasion Act’, he shows how the US sticks its thumb in the eye of international law: “Some republicans in the US Congress were discussing putting forward legislation that they referred to as “The Hague Invasion Act”, the idea that if US personnel were ever to be brought to The Hague on war crimes charges, the US could deploy military forces to The Hague to snatch those personnel and liberate them from the evil clutches of international law.” Vijay Prashad takes rather a philosophical approach, reciting Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz: “what you see around you, leaves you with no obligation but to feel something. And if that feeling cannot be controlled, you have to do something about it. You can’t refuse this world.”
Akinori Ito, Our World 2.0; United Nations University
2009, 5 min
We are all well aware of plastic’s ‘rap-sheet’. It has been found guilty on many counts, including the way its production and disposal raises resource issues and lets loose extremely negative environmental impacts. Typically made from petroleum, it is estimated that 7% of the world’s annual oil production is used to produce and manufacture plastic. That is more than the oil consumed by the entire African continent. Thankfully, there are those who fully appreciate that plastic has a higher energy value than anything else commonly found in the waste stream. A Japanese company called Blest created a small, very safe and easy to use machine that can convert several types of plastic back into oil.
Though Japan has much improved its ‘effective utilization’ rate over the years to 72% in 2006, that leaves 28% of plastic to be buried in landfills or burned. According to Plastic Waste Management Institute data, ‘effective utilization’ includes not just the 20% that is actually recycled, but also 52% that is being incinerated for “energy recovery” purposes, i.e., generating heat or electric power. “If we burn the plastic,
we generate toxins and a large amount of CO2. If we convert it into oil, we save CO2 and at the same time increase people’s awareness about the value of plastic garbage,” says Akinori Ito, CEO of Blest.
Blest’s conversion technology is very safe because it uses a temperature controlling electric heater rather than flame. The machines are able to process polyethylene, polystyrene and polypropylene but not PET bottles. The result is a crude gas that can fuel things like generators or stoves and, when refined, can even be pumped into a car, a boat or motorbike. One kilogram of plastic produces almost one liter of oil. To convert that amount takes about 1 kwh of electricity, which is approximately ¥20 or 20 cents’ worth.
The company makes the machines in various sizes and has 60 in place at farms, fisheries and small factories in Japan and several abroad. “To make a machine that anyone can use is my dream,” Ito says. “The home is the oil field of the future.” Perhaps that statement is not as crazy as it sounds, since the makeup of Japanese household waste has been found to contain over 30 % plastic, most of it from packaging.
Continually honing their technology, the company is now able to sell the machines for less than before, and Ito hopes to achieve a product ‘that any one can buy’. Currently the smallest version, shown in the videobrief, costs ¥950,000 (US $9,500). [Note of 30 November 2010: Blest informs us that, since we visited them last year, improvements have been made to the machine and the price is now ¥1,06o,000 (around US$12,700) without tax.]
Dr. Miltin Saier, Planet Green; San Diego, USA
2008, 2 min 30 sec
Dr. Milton Saier is a professor at the University of California, San Diego. He saves over 10.000 dollars a year getting his food from dumpsters. Get a crash course in dumpster diving from this accomplished biology professor who demonstrates the lifestyle of a freegan. Freeganism is a movement that minimizes waste by using what we already have. They believe in minimal participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. The food is collected out of dumpsters of retailers, residences, offices and restaurants. They follow some common sense ground rules about food safety and end up with plenty of perfectly edible free food. Blemishes on our Sell-By-Date laws ensure that a criminal amount of edible food is placed in the dumpster every day. This is not just for freaks or homeless people. Meet an employed college professor who’s been doing this for 30 years and teaching his students to follow suit.
Paul Stamets, TED2008
2008, 17 min 30 sec
Mycologist Paul Stamets believes that mushrooms can save our lives, restore our ecosystems and transform other worlds. He lists 6 ways the mycelium fungus can help save the universe: cleaning polluted soil, making insecticides, treating smallpox and even flu…
Entrepreneurial mycologist Paul Stamets seeks to rescue the study of mushrooms from forest gourmets and psychedelic warlords. The focus of Stamets’ research is
the Northwest’s native fungal genome, mycelium, but along the way he has filed 22 patents for mushroom-related technologies, including pesticidal fungi that trick insects into eating them, and mushrooms that can break down the neurotoxins used in nerve gas.
There are cosmic implications as well. Stamets believes we could terraform other worlds in our galaxy by sowing a mix of fungal spores and other seeds to create an ecological footprint on a new planet.