It's the economy, stupid. It was true in 1992, but the economy has never been more front and center in American's minds than it is now. The extraordinary $700 billion financial rescue plan that President Bush signed into law on October 3rd is at best only the start of a journey to an unknown destination. For some perspective, watch these wide-ranging documentaries that tackle essential elements of our economic crisis, from a look at our nation's addiction to debt, to the struggles of living paycheck to paycheck--from the unbridled corruption on Wall Street, to the environmental impact of profits-first industrial policies.
A divorced mother of two returns to her home and children in Bolivia after 15 years of struggling for a better life in Israel, only to find her family members have become strangers. A WORKING MOM is a story that demonstrates the extremes that individuals will go to in order to save their families--sometimes saving and losing them in the same act.
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Posted 07/08/09 by Jason F.
Sarah Palin, the former Vice Presidential candidate has been making news since the election, most of it not really noteworthy. However, now there’s some Sarah Palin news that’s at least worth a little attention. She has announced that she will resign her post as Governor of Alaska. There hasn’t been a reason given specifically as to why she has resigned the post as Alaska Governor, but it’s rumored that she’s doing it to concentrate on being the frontrunner for the 2012 Republican Candidate, and she’s probably also looking into some instant payday loans for campaign funding. Sarah Palin is loved by some, detested and ridiculed by others, and secured loans for a 2012 Presidential run might not be ill spent.
AUTUMN’S EYES is a compelling documentary about a 3-year-old girl who tries to navigate through the harsh reality of severe poverty, her teenage mother’s incarceration and looming foster care. Charming, obedient, and unable to fully comprehend the severity of her environment, Autumn is shielded from her own reality. Caught between the innocence of childhood and the growing necessity to be an adult, she represents hope to a family of women caught in the cyclical web of abuse, incarceration and poverty. AUTUMN’S EYES captures this impressionable time in this child’s life, and ask the greater question: is there truly hope for a child growing up in these circumstances? Through the perspective of a little girl, AUTUMN’S EYES explores this perilous state of hope.
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Posted 03/01/10 by katie
Honestly this film made me cry, I dont think many realize the stress that is put on our young. Autumn is a very wonderful little girl, but with such negativity in her life will she be able to really succeed. I hope she does, God bless her.
In America’s earliest days, there were barn-raising parties in which neighbors helped each other build up their farms. Today, in some churches, there are debt liquidation revivals in which parishioners chip in to free each other from growing credit card debts that are driving American families to bankruptcy and desperation. ‘In Debt We Trust’ is the latest film from Danny Schechter, “The News Dissector,” director of the internationally distributed and award-winning WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception), an expose of the media’s role in the Iraq War. The Emmy-winning former ABC News and CNN producer’s new hard-hitting documentary investigates why so many Americans are being strangled by debt. It is a journalistic confrontation with what former Reagan advisor Kevin Phillips calls “Financialization"--the “powerful emergence of a debt-and-credit industrial complex.” While many Americans may be “maxing out” on credit cards, there is a deeper story: power is shifting into fewer hands. And with frightening consequences.
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Posted 12/13/09 by Filthy
This film is a perfect foreshadow to the SUBPRIME morgage meldown that we’re facing today. We still haven’t got it yet. The ‘bail out’ package went to the financial institutions that created this preditory cycle. When will we wake up?
“Skid Row” is a 50-square block area in downtown Los Angeles where an average of 90,000 homeless and transient people live on any given night. More than just a place - it’s a way of life, a mind set, the last resort for those who have given up on society and, in many cases, themselves. In the feature documentary SKID ROW, Pras Michel - one third of the successful hip-hop band The Fugees - lives on the streets of Skid Row for nine straight days and nights as a homeless person. The entire time he and his crew are undercover, using surveillance cameras. His journey is a difficult one, riddled with hunger, exposure to the elements, criminals, drugs and danger. It is also life-changing...as Pras learns not only how to fend for himself, but discovers the dark, very human and, at times, humorous underbelly of Los Angeles.
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Posted 01/09/10 by agsdiamond
What an amazingly informational documentary.
Props to Pras and co. for doing this and informing us all that this occurs (only 8 MILES away from one of the richest places to live in the world - Beverly Hills)!
I accidentally got of a bus once a bit too late and ended up in Skid Row, i was petrified! I put my cell phone in my sock, covered my polo tshirt with my arm and practically ran out of there! I know it sounds pretty prejudice but society sometimes makes you feel that way… this doc really makes you think twice about it…
In this first of its kind “dramatic-documentary-musical,” essayist Lewis Lapham and an all-star cast (including Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Altman, James Baker and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.) take two young Ivy-League graduates on a tour of the corridors of power. This “astonishing”, “coruscating” satire poses the question: Is it better to rule the world, or to save it?
Appearing on the screen are a range of leaders and commentators from across the political spectrum, among them: the late Robert B. Altman, James A. Baker III, Bill Bradley, Harold Brown, Hodding Carter III, William T. Coleman, Jr., Walter Cronkite, Barbara Ehrenreich, Vartan Gregorian, Doug Henwood, Mike Medavoy, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., John Perkins, (a.k.a., the economic hit-man) Samuel Peabody, Pete Seeger, Lawrence H. Summers, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., William Howard Taft IV, the late Kurt Vonnegut and Howard Zinn.
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Posted 02/17/10 by MCadogan
This was an excellent documentary on the American classes. Very thoroughly presented from all perspectives to include the history of our country. We are a democracy and based on the Declaration of Independence for which we are founded, societal change is “we the people for the people” to alter changes within the government. The American dream has always been opportunity to become part of the ruling class. We can either own or be a spectator. The economics of the rich is definitely dependent on the abundance of the poor. There is always the power of money but to be fulfilled in life one has to do good.
WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY? follows Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir as they go on a cross-county mission to save the Holidays from the Shopocalypse: the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt! The Shopocalypse is upon us...Who will be Saved?
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Posted 03/07/10 by Joel
Through the silliness and drama, the message is clear.