VIDEO LIBRARY

Affluenza is a groundbreaking film that diagnoses a serious social disease - caused by consumerism, commercialism and rampant materialism - that is having a devastating impact on our families, communities, and the environment. We have more stuff, but less time, and our quality of life seems to be deteriorating. By using personal stories, expert commentary, hilarious old film clips, and "uncommercial" breaks to illuminate the nature and extent of the disease, AFFLUENZA has appealed to widely diverse audiences: from freshmen orientation programs to consumer credit counseling, and from religious congregations to marketing classes.

Everyone has heard about NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, but almost no one has heard about one of NAFTA's obscure provisions - except for multinational corporations who are using it to challenge democracy. This is the first television investigation of NAFTA's Chapter 11 - what has been called "an end run around the Constitution." Corporate investors are using Chapter 11 to attack public laws that protect our health and our environment - and even challenge jury verdicts. The cases are not heard in open court, but before international trade tribunals that rule in secret. The program details a system of private justice that is enabling companies to obtain covertly what they would be unlikely to achieve publicly in America's legislatures or courts.

Hugo Chavez has emerged as an iconic figure in anti-imperialist and social justice movements. More than just a symbol, his contribution and the development of the social revolution in Venezuela deserve close study and examination. "Chavez, Venezuela and the New Latin America" features an extended interview with Hugo Chavez by Aleida Guevara, Che Guevara's daughter. The documentary also features a dramatic interview with Jorge García Carneiro, head of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, as well as interviews with some of the thousands of Cuban doctors involved with the Barrio Adentro project in Venezuela.

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.

Flag Wars is a stark look inside the conflicts that surface when black working-class families are faced with an influx of white gay homebuyers to their Columbus, Ohio neighborhood.

Filmed over four years, Flag Wars' "as-it-is-happening" verite style captures the raw emotions and blunt honesty of unguarded moments as tensions mount between neighbors.

From porch conversations and family dinners to public hearings and street protests, Flag Wars provides a rare and extraordinarily intimate account of the social and human consequences of capitalism and the pursuit of the "American Dream" told through the lives of residents in a community confronted by gentrification.

This film takes as its subject Jamaica's economic decline in the 20th century. The story has reverberations in the plight of other third-world nations blindsided by globalization, like Ghana and Haiti. After England granted Jamaica independence in 1962, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) stepped in with a series of loans. These loans came with strings attached--the kind that would eventually plunge the country $7 billion into debt, stranded without the resources to dig themselves out. Jamaica Kinkaid (A Small Place) penned the narration, while the soundtrack features some of the "imports" with which this island nation remains mostly closely associated: Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Mutabaruka, who performs the title track.

In order to examine the true effects of globalization, award-winning journalist John Pilger turns the spotlight on Indonesia, a country described by the World Bank as a model pupil until its globalized economy collapsed in 1998. The film examines the use of sweatshop factories by famous brand names, and asks some penetrating questions. Who are the real beneficiaries of the globalized economy? Who really rules the world now? Is it governments or a handful of huge companies?

Pilger travels to Indonesia and Washington, asking challenging questions seldom raised in the mainstream media and exposing the scandal of globalization, including revealing interviews with top officials of the World Bank and the IMF.

No Logo, based on the best-selling book by Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein, reveals the reason behind the backlash against the growing economic and cultural reach of multinational corporations.

Author Juliet Schor scrutinizes what she calls "the new consumerism" -- a national phenomenon of upscale spending that is shaped and reinforced by a commercially-driven media system. She argues that "keeping up with the Joneses" is no longer enough for middle and upper-middle class Americans, many of whom become burdened with debilitating debt as they seek to emulate materialistic TV lifestyles.

"The Take" is a political thriller that turns the globalization debate on its head. The film follows Argentina's radical new movement of occupied businesses: groups of workers who are claiming the country's bankrupt workplaces and running them without bosses.

In the wake of Argentina's dramatic economic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The Forja auto plant lies dormant until its former employees take action. They're part of a daring new movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and creating jobs in the ruins of the failed economic order. Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale.

With "The Take", director Avi Lewis, one of Canada's most outspoken journalists, and writer Naomi Klein, author of the international bestseller No Logo, champion a radical economic manifesto for the 21st century. But what shines through in the film is the simple drama of workers' lives and their struggle: the demand for dignity and the searing injustice of dignity denied.

"Stirring!" - New York Times -- "Extraordinary!" - The New Yorker

Is water part of a shared "commons," a human right for all people? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold, and traded in a global marketplace? THIRST tells the stories of communities in Bolivia, India, and the United States that are asking these fundamental questions, as water becomes the most valuable global resource of the 21st Century. In many ways, the Bolivian city of Cochabamba, India's Rajasthan state, and Stockton, California, occupy very different rungs of the global economic ladder. But in one respect at least, these communities are strikingly similar. They each found themselves threatened with losing public control of their water resources to multinational corporations. And they each fought long odds in resisting the juggernaut of globalization, which is driving the worldwide privatization of public resources, utilities, and services. "Thirst" dramatically reveals this growing storm through charismatic characters, tense confrontations, and cinema vérité footage.

A co-production of the Seattle Independent Media Center and Big Noise Films, This Is What Democracy Looks Like is a 56 minute documentary capturing the events of the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle.

"Dynamic... hip... packs a wallop. 'Democracy' exemplifies creative professionalism within verite bounds." - Variety

In India, nearly 400 million people live in poverty. Believing that responsible journalism can help to change things for the better, Palagummi Sainath wrote a series of 70 newspaper articles for The Times of India chronicling the living conditions in the ten poorest districts of the country. For two years Sainath lived in the communities he wrote about; he traveled across India, often on foot, in hill areas, drought-prone areas, and tribal areas to put the issue of poverty back on the national agenda.

After nearly a decade of work and dozens of awards, Sainath remains as passionately committed as ever. According to Sainath the shift from hard-hitting, truth-seeking journalism to innocuous, promotional stenography goes hand in hand with the increase of globalization. This, he believes, has also contributed to the 1990s becoming "the time of the most gross social inequality since the Second World War."

A Tribe of His Own follows Sainath to the Indian villages he writes about and explores his contention that "journalism is for people, not shareholders."

One hour away from Miami the elected President of the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation was twice removed from office with the complicity of the international community. "Aristide and the Endless Revolution" is a feature documentary that explores through investigative lenses the events that led to the removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected President of Haiti. Filmmaker Nicolas Rossier takes the viewer into a journey of political intrigues, armed criminals posing as freedom fighters and economic fiascos. What emerges is a young democracy being constantly tested and ultimately destroyed.

The film features renowned physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer, President Aristide himself, actor and UN goodwill ambassador Danny Glover, Political commentator and linguist Noam Chomsky, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and many Haitian voices.

"Taut, well-balanced, insightful... A probing look into Haiti's contentious modern history." - Laura Kern, New York Times

"Informative and enraging film. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the fate of the world's downtrodden." - Gregg Rickman, San Francisco Weekly

A riveting visit into a temporary cemetery on the sand in Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, Oceanside, and other locations around the U.S.. The ever-expanding field of crosses provides a powerful setting for interviews with soldiers and Marines en route to and returning from the war in Iraq and family members, some of whom have lost loved ones in Iraq. (video website)

This documentary, by award-winning journalist John Pilger, shows some of the human consequences of the American attacks on Afghanistan, and also questions the motives behind the "war on terror" through interviews with Washington officials.

The Cost of War is a new documentary by local filmmaker Patrick Phillips which relates the experiences and observations of soldiers, veterans of conflicts since Korea, and their families.

Coverup exposes several of the most disturbing chapters in the history of U.S. covert foreign policy. It presents a tale of politics, drugs, hostages, weapons, assassinations, covert operations and the ultimate plan to suspend the U.S. Constitution. Presenting many of the stories suppressed from the Iran Contra hearings, Coverup puts the entire Iran Contra affair into a meaningful political and historical context.

CBC NEWS interviews journalists, camera operators and photographers from news organizations around the world, who discuss topics such as the lethal risks they faced and the untold horrors they witnessed during the U.S./UK invasion of Iraq. (video website)

In January of 2001, American director James Longley traveled to the Gaza Strip. His plan was to stay for two weeks to collect preliminary material for a documentary film on the Palestinian Intifada. It was during his stay that Ariel Sharon was elected as Israeli Prime Minister. As violence erupted around him, Longley threw away his return ticket and filmed for the next three months, acquiring nearly 75 hours of footage. Gaza Strip, his first feature documentary, is an extraordinary and painful journey into the lives of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip struggling with the day-to-day trials of the Israeli occupation. Filmed in verité style and without narration, Gaza Strip at last gives voice to a population largely ignored by mainstream media.

Haiti: Harvest of Hope was originally planned as a documentary about democracy coming to Haiti with the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in December 1990. During the final editing of the original (late September 1991) Haiti was struck by yet another military coup. Editing of the first version came to a halt as Kevin Pina (the filmmaker) returned to Haiti and spent the next three weeks chronicling the brutality and machinations of Haiti's new military leaders and their supporters.

Kevin Pina returned to Haiti in late July 1993 just after the negotiation of the Governor's Island Accord between the Haitian Government in exile and General Raoul Cedras. Pina returned again in 1994 to film Aristide's return to Haiti. The world television premiere of Harvest of Hope was in Haiti on Mother's Day, March 28, 1994. The broadcast was dedicated to the mothers of Haiti who sacrificed so much during the years of the coup to restore democracy to Haiti.

A courageous and startling film, Peter Davis' landmark documentary Hearts and Minds unflinchingly confronts the United States' war against the people of Vietnam. Using a wealth of sources - from interviews to newsreels to documentary footage of the conflict at home and abroad - Davis constructs a powerfully affecting portrait of the Vietnamese people's tireless struggle for independence and the devastation wrought when the United States took its turn as the global power that would stand in the way of this dream. Explosive, persuasive, and shocking, Hearts and Minds is an overwhelming emotional experience and the controversial winner of the 1974 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Narrated by Julian Bond, "Hijacking Catastrophe" features interviews with more than twenty prominent political observers, including Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who witnessed first-hand how the Bush Administration set up a sophisticated propaganda operation to link the anxieties generated by 9/11 to a pre-existing foreign policy agenda that included a preemptive war on Iraq. At its core, the film places the deceptions of the Bush Administration within the larger frame of questions seldom posed in the dominant media: What, exactly, is the agenda that drove the administration's pre-war deceptions? How is 9/11 being used to sell this agenda? And what are the stakes for America, Americans, and the world if this agenda succeeds in being fully implemented during a second Bush term?

Produced at the height of the Vietnam War, Emile de Antonio's Oscar-nominated 1968 documentary chronicles the war's historical roots. With palpable outrage, De Antonio (whose other films include Point of Order and Underground) assembles period interviews with journalists, politicians, and key military personnel along with international newsreel and archival footage to create a scathing chronicle of America's escalating war against the people of Vietnam, strugglingly tirelessly for their independence from global powers. The savage and horrific images speak for themselves in perhaps the most controversial film of de Antonio's career, and the film he cites as his personal favorite.

In a series of extraordinary interviews with both Palestinians and Israelis, John Pilger weaves together the issue of Palestine. He speaks to the families of suicide bombers and their victims; he sees the humiliation of Palestinians imposed on them at myriad checkpoints and with a permit system not dissimilar to apartheid South Africa's infamous pass laws. He goes into the refugee camps and meets children who, he says, "no longer dream like other children, or if they do, it is about death."

This Academy Award winner for best documentary feature tells the untold story of the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, the events which led to it, the excessive force used, the enormity of the death and destruction, and the devastating aftermath. The film presents a view of the invasion which widely differs from that portrayed by the U.S. media and exposes how the U.S. government and the mainstream media suppressed information about this foreign policy disaster.

Among the film's excellent reviews are: "meticulously researched" (Hal Hinson, Washington Post); "outstanding" (Betsy Sherman, Boston Globe); "tough....provocative....moving....beautifully edited" (Vincent Canby, New York Times); and "lays out simply and forcefully the case against the 'official' version" (Peter Rainer, Los Angeles Times).

This new documentary details striking contrasts between American and British coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The film also provides an historical overview and an examination of factors that have distorted U.S. media coverage and, in turn, American public opinion. Robert McChesney, media critic and professor at University of Illinois, says of the film: "I cannot recommend this documentary too highly. It should be required viewing for every student, for every taxpayer who is subsidizing the Israeli military machine, for every citizen in the United States."

Shot during the early 90's, this video explores aspects of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. U.S. economic and military aid to Israel is also addressed.

What is the aim of "Plan Colombia," U.S. military aid to the Colombian government? This question is explored with interviews and analysis from Noam Chomsky, the late Senator Paul Wellstone, Colombian Presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, Rep. John Conyers and others.

The National Security Strategy released by the White House in September of 2002 lays out a plan for preventive warfare in which the US government reserves the right to attack any nation that aspires to what the government perceives to be a potetial military rival or threat. Preventive Warriors is a documentary project that takes an in depth look at this document--its goals, its origins and its potential consequences. Through interviews with intellectuals, academics, and representatives from leading Washington based think tanks, the film expleres the key theoretical and practical underpinnings of a document that encapsulates the current direction of US foreign policy. Touching on the most current debates effecting global security including terrorism, rogue states, and weapons of mass destruction, the film addresses the US response to these international crises in a unipolar world.

Elected in 1999, President Hugo Chavez faced powerful enemies both inside and outside Venezuela. In 2002, two Irish documentary-makers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain travelled to Venezuela to make a film about this charismatic world leader. They secured his permission to have full access to film, what was to be, an up close and personal profile. It turned out to be something completely different. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is a thrilling insight into Chavez, a new icon of the left and a thorn in the side of the US Administration, charting the last seven months in the run up to the coup and his dramatic return to power some 48 hours later.

"...undoubtedly one of the finest pieces of journalism within living memory" - Sunday Independent

"A fascinating account of history in the making that plays like a cinematic whiplash." - Robert K. Elder, Chicago Tribune

"Sir! No Sir!" provides a bit of history that the people in power would prefer remain forgotten -- the GI resistance to the Vietnam War. Many GIs came to criticize the war not simply because it cost too much in blood and treasure, but because it was immoral. Questions of empire, race, and class animated the forceful protest that emerged in Vietnam and on military bases throughout the U.S., including at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. Filmmaker David Zeiger, who was himself involved in running the Oleo Strut, an off-base coffee shop at Fort Hood which was part of a large and active antiwar network, weaves together an insightful political critique with the raw emotional memories of the front-line soldiers, sailors, and airmen who came to understand that the principles they thought they were fighting for were dwarfed by the cynical power games of elites.

"Taliban Country" is a disturbing snapshot of American actions in Afghanistan. Award-winning journalist Carmela Baranowska spent three weeks embedded with the marines in a remote area of Afghanistan. She then returned to the same village to gather testimony on her own. It's a story of prisoners abused and villagers humiliated. "They fingered us, beat us and humiliated us," alleges villager Wali Mohammad. "No Muslim should suffer that." He was imprisoned for three days by the marines after soldiers raided his village and accused him of providing food and shelter to al-Qaeda. His elderly father, Noor Mohammad Lala, was also arrested. "They took my clothes. I could not do anything," Noor confides. Both men claim they were sexually abused and forced to pose for photographs. "I was so humiliated I couldn't see for my pain," states Noor. As the village leader summed up "Enough is enough ... These Americans must be accountable to someone."

Through interviews with CIA, Pentagon and foreign service experts, this film details the lies, misstatements and exaggerations that served as the reasons to fight a "preemptive" war. The focus of this documentary is the distortion of intelligence and the "spin and hype" presented to the American people, the Congress and the press.

"War Takes" is a personal and engaging documentary made by two Colombian women -- producers of both political documentaries and popular children's television programs. Turning the cameras on themselves and their families for four years (1998-2002), the filmmakers explore the impact of Colombia's decades-old civil war on their own middle class circles as well as on the rural peasant class, which suffers violence and displacement on a large scale. From conversations in the jungle with guerillas to dinner parties with society's elite, "War Takes" challenges North American stereotypes and provides a framework to better understand the current situation in Colombia and the U.S. relationship with its ruling government.

"The World Stopped Watching" is a sequel to the award winning "The World Is Watching", a cinema verité look at foreign news coverage of a climactic moment in the US-financed Contra war against Nicaragua's revolutionary government.

Fourteen years later, filmmakers Peter Raymont and Harold Crooks return to Nicaragua with two American journalists who were in the original film - and a Canadian journalist from La Presse - to discover what became of the first revolution to be conducted in the glare of the world media. They question the role and responsibility of journalists and their employers who first put Nicaraguans under the microscope, and then rushed off to the next hot spot.

Much has changed. The country is now replete with strip malls, prostitutes and MacDonald's. Literacy is down. Infant deaths are up. Many NGOs and UN agencies are doing useful development work, particularly in the area of women's health and housing. But, according to recent UNESCO reports, 26% of Nicaraguan children never set foot in a classroom, a figure twice as high as the 13% average in the rest of Latin America.

Winter Soldier documents the "Winter Soldier Investigation" conducted by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Detroit, Michigan in the winter of l971. A call went out from VVAW to veterans all over the country saying, in effect, 'everyone is talking about the war that you know from the inside. If you want to have anything to say about it, come to Detroit and tell it like you saw it.' At the investigation, over 125 veterans representing every major combat unit to see action in Vietnam, gave eyewitness testimony to war crimes and atrocities they either participated in or witnessed. The purpose of the investigation was to bring to light the nature of American military policy in Vietnam. Winter Soldier is the only audiovisual record of this historic turning point in American history. Now, thirty-five years after the hearings in Detroit, the veterans' courage in testifying and their desire to prevent further atrocities and regain their own humanity, remain deeply moving and provide a dramatic intensity that makes this film an unforgettable experience.

The Ad and the Ego traces advertising's development from its largely descriptive 19th century origins through today's ads which eschew rational arguments for symbols and imagery playing directly to our emotions. Sut Jhally describes ads as "the dream life of our culture" and explains the persuasive techniques they use to invest commodities with powerful properties magically able to transform the mundane lives of their purchasers.

The Ad and the Ego goes on to demonstrate the link between our debased public discourse and a culture which defines freedom as consumer choice rather than civic deliberation. It analyzes the "selling" of political beliefs to demonstrate how citizenship has increasingly been replaced by spectatorship, civil society by consumer culture.

Focusing directly on the world of commercial images, Sut Jhally asks some basic questions about the cultural messages emanating from this market-based view of the world: Do our present arrangements deliver what they claim-- happiness and satisfaction? Can we think about our collective as well as our private interests? And, can we think long-term as well as short-term?

Drawing from the broad arena of commercial imagery, and utilizing sophisticated graphics, Advertising & the End of the World addresses the issues these questions raise, encouraging viewers to reflect on their own participation in the culture of consumption.

Making the connection between society's high-consumption lifestyle and the coming environmental crisis, Jhally forces us to evaluate the physical and material costs of the consumer society and how long we can maintain our present level of production.

For marketers who wish to reach the lucrative youth market, the relatively uncluttered medium of the school environment represents the final frontier - access to a captive audience of millions of students. Meanwhile dwindling federal, state, and local funding for education has left many schools vulnerable to the advertiser's pitch. As a result, commercialism has steadily increased in America's public schools in recent years, often with little or no public awareness.

Captive Audience examines this growing phenomenon through numerous examples of in-school advertising; interviews with teachers, students, parents, and activists; and a case study of community action to oppose an exclusive soda contract in the Pittsburgh school district.

Al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices were shut down by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi government. Their Kabul and Baghdad offices have both been bombed by the U.S. military. What is Al-Jazeera's journalists' crime? Apparently their habit of reporting the news from an Arab perspective doesn't sit well with Washington's policymakers, especially when those journalists show the effect of war on civilians. For U.S. viewers eager to learn more about this news source that has become crucial not only in the Middle East but around the world, director Jehane Noujaim's "Control Room" is essential. Her cameras go inside Al-Jazeera and follow the channel's reporters through briefings of U.S. military spinmeisters during the 2003 Iraq War, providing insights not only into the work of journalists but also the military's propaganda system. Perhaps most importantly, "Control Room" gives us a glimpse into the workings of U.S. news media as well. After seeing this film, it's hard to take seriously the U.S. news media's claim to "objectivity" during wartime.

Former Annenberg School of Communication dean Dr. George Gerbner uses information gathered in the Cultural Indicators Project in this video, illustrating how the storytelling function found in all human societies has been taken over by corporate media. By focusing on images of gender, class and race, Gerbner describes how modern media affect what we think about ourselves and our world. Produced and directed by Sut Jhally.

In the public's eye, reporters will do anything for a story. Fear and Favor in the Newsroom takes viewers behind the scenes to shatter this myth. Narrated by Studs Terkel, Fear and Favor in the Newsroom shows for the first time on film how ownership of the press by a small corporate elite constricts the free flow of ideas and information upon which our democracy depends.

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." Appearing in the film are major journalists and critics, including Bill Moyers, William F. Buckley, Jr., Tom Wolfe, Peter Jennings, Jeff Greenfield, philosopher Michel Foucault, White House reporter Sarah McClendon, New York Times editorial writer Karl E. Meyer and revisionist author Robert Faurisson.

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky take on one of the central tenets of our political culture, the idea of the "liberal media." Instead, utilizing a systematic model based on massive empirical research, they reveal the manner in which the news media are so subordinated to corporate and conservative interests that their function can only be described as that of "elite propaganda."

If a key indicator of the health of a democracy is the state of its journalism, the United States is in deep trouble. In Rich Media, Poor Democracy, Robert McChesney lays the blame for this state of affairs squarely at the doors of the corporate boardrooms of big media, which far from delivering on their promises of more choice and more diversity, have organized a system characterized by a lack of competition, homogenization of opinion and formulaic programming.

Through numerous examples, McChesney, and media scholar, Mark Crispin Miller, demonstrate how journalism has been compromised by the corporate bosses of conglomerates such as Disney, Sony, Viacom, News Corp, and AOL Time Warner to produce a system of news that is high on sensationalism and low on information. They suggest that unless citizen activism can reclaim the commons, this new corporate system will be characterized by a rich media and an ever impoverished, poor democracy.

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, Tell the Truth and Run, the dramatic story of muckraking journalist George Seldes (1890-1995), is a piercing examination of American journalism.

Eighty years a newspaperman, Seldes was a noted foreign correspondent who became America's most important press critic. Through Seldes's encounters with Pershing, Lenin and Mussolini; the tobacco industry, J. Edgar Hoover and the "lords of the press," Tell the Truth and Run provides a fresh perspective on Twentieth-Century history while raising profound ethical, professional and political questions about journalism in America.

Seldes at age 98 is the centerpiece of the film: remarkably engaging,witty and still impassioned about his ideas and ideals. Ralph Nader,Victor Navasky, Ben Bagdikian, Daniel Ellsberg, Nat Hentoff and Jeff Cohen, among others, provide incisive commentary. Stunning archival footage and over 500 headlines, photographs and articles provide a rich historical backdrop.

Tell the Truth and Run raises fundamental questions about the recorded history of the Twentieth Century; about freedom, fairness and diversity in the media; about power and abuse of power; and about public citizenship and the democratic process.

While advertising is the visible component of the corporate system, perhaps even more important and pervasive is its invisible partner, the public relations industry. This video illuminates this hidden sphere of our culture and examines the way in which the management of "the public mind" has become central to how our democracy is controlled by political and economic elites. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You illustrates how much of what we think of as independent, unbiased news and information has its origins in the boardrooms of the public relations companies.

In India, nearly 400 million people live in poverty. Believing that responsible journalism can help to change things for the better, Palagummi Sainath wrote a series of 70 newspaper articles for The Times of India chronicling the living conditions in the ten poorest districts of the country. For two years Sainath lived in the communities he wrote about; he traveled across India, often on foot, in hill areas, drought-prone areas, and tribal areas to put the issue of poverty back on the national agenda.

After nearly a decade of work and dozens of awards, Sainath remains as passionately committed as ever. According to Sainath the shift from hard-hitting, truth-seeking journalism to innocuous, promotional stenography goes hand in hand with the increase of globalization. This, he believes, has also contributed to the 1990s becoming "the time of the most gross social inequality since the Second World War."

A Tibe of His Own follows Sainath to the Indian villages he writes about and explores his contention that "journalism is for people, not shareholders."

Truth Merchants enters the twilight world of public relations - part propaganda, part showbiz, part advertising - and explores the symbiotic relationship between PR people and journalists.

An executive gets lessons in public speaking from a communications consultant. NASA does damage control on an unsuccessful space mission involving dead lab animals. A PR agent for Starbucks receives an industry Oscar for having carefully shepherded her client through a difficult period of public scrutiny.

Truth Merchants provides a disturbing and intriguing behind-the-scenes look at the growing influence of the PR professionals, and the journalists they court in an uneasy alliance.

There were two wars going on in Iraq -- one was fought with armies of soldiers, bombs and a fearsome military force. The other was fought alongside it with cameras, satellites, armies of journalists and propaganda techniques. The independent documentary film Weapons of Mass Deception explores this story with the findings of a former network journalist (ABC/CNN), Danny Schechter, who is now one of America's most prolific media critics. Schechter monitored media coverage of the Iraq, asking the questions that his media colleague refused to confront before, during and after the war. Weapons of Mass Deception tracks the media war on Iraq through February 2004, featuring footage from inside Iraq and inside the media. Winner of Best Documentary Film at the 2004 Austin Film Festival and Starz Denver International Film Festival.

In Color Adjustment, Marlon Riggs - Emmy winning producer of Ethnic Notions - carries his landmark studies of prejudice into the Television Age.

Color Adjustment traces 40 years of race relations through the lens of prime time entertainment, scrutinizing television's racial myths and stereotypes. Narrated by Ruby Dee, the 88 minute documentary allows viewers to revisit some of television's most popular stars and shows, among them Amos and Andy, The Nat King Cole Show, I Spy, Julia, Good Times, Roots, Frank's Place and The Cosby Show. But this time around, Riggs asks us to look at these familiar favorites in a new way. The result is a stunning examination of the interplay between America's racial consciousness and network primetime programming.

The story, told with wit, passion, and verve, shows how African Americans were allowed into America's primetime family only insofar as their presence didn't challenge the mythology of the American Dream central to television's merchandising function. It demonstrates how the networks managed to absorb divisive racial conflict into the familiar non-threatening formats of prime-time television.

This Emmy Award winning video takes the viewer on a disturbing voyage through American history, for the first time tracing the deeply-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-black prejudice. Through these images we can begin to understand the history of race relations in America.