BORN AGAIN is the story of Director Markie Hancock’s evangelical upbringing and her 20-year struggle to get out.  Excerpts from Hancock’s journals, home movies and student films reveal the strong grip of fundamentalist religion.  As a child, she revels in the security that promises of eternal salvation bring to both her and her family.  Hancock only slowly begins to question the narrow path she has fervently followed when she falls in love with a woman.  It is in Berlin when she finally begins to free herself from religion and from the family she loves.  Ultimately, BORN AGAIN asks, at what price do we believe what we believe and how do we live with others who believe differently?

On the afternoon of September 16, 2004, a joyous 18-year-old, Lynn Gordon Bailey Jr., pledged Chi Psi Fraternity at the University of Colorado. The next morning he was found dead, a victim of an irresponsible hazing ritual involving alcohol. A sad situation, but made even worse because it was so preventable.

Every year, a staggering 1,700 college students face the same fate. Another 100,000 are victims of sexual assault as a result of heavy drinking. But no one working on a national level to change a culture that puts our young people in peril. Until now.

HAZE is a feature documentary, created with the intent of placing a focus on the issues of binge drinking, alcohol-laden hazing rituals, and rapid-fire drinking games. Simply stated, the film’s goal is to save lives and prevent harm.  Harm that would never have happened if a few crucial steps had been followed by friends, by fraternity brothers and sisters, family members or peers. HAZE won’t end irresponsible drinking but it will be the first chapter in an educational process for parents and young adults--teaching us what to do and what to look out for in order to “save a life.”

Click Q&A for an interview with Pete Schuermann (Director, Haze) and Michael Lanahan (Executive Producer, Haze).

Twenty-Five miles from town, a million miles from mainstream society, a loose-knit community of eco-pioneers, teenage runaways, war veterans and drop-outs, live on the fringe and off the grid, struggling to survive with little food, less water and no electricity, as they cling to their unique vision of the American dream…

PEACE ONE DAY is the story of one man’s attempts to persuade the global community via the United Nations to officially sanction a global ceasefire day; a day of non-violence; a day of Peace.  This documentary charts the remarkable 5-year journey of the filmmaker as he meets heads of state, Nobel Peace Laureates, aid agencies, freedom fighters, media moguls, the innocent victims of war and, eventually, everyone who was anyone at the UN. An individual genuinely can make a difference: The UN International Day of Peace is now fixed in the calendar on 21st September annually. The real challenge has now begun - to get the world to unite on a day fast approaching.

We are headed toward a surveillance society. Today, technology allows for all our daily transactions to be tracked and all the intimate details of our lives to be electronically monitored. Artificial intelligence programs can sift through our data trail to make judgments about us or detect unusual behavior. The emerging technologies promise to make our world more efficient and more secure, but at what price?

PETER JENNINGS REPORTING: NO PLACE TO HIDE looks at cutting-edge surveillance technologies, and examines the challenge of balancing security and freedom in the digital age.

The 9/11 attacks signaled a desperate need for the government do a better job using technology to “connect the dots.” The information industry quickly rushed to the government’s aid with solutions for hunting down the terrorists: access to billions of records containing personal information on most Americans; profiling systems that could analyze consumer behavior to detect terrorist activities; and facial recognition programs that could scan crowds to pick out terrorists.

Companies like Acxiom and ChoicePoint use advanced artificial intelligence programs to sift through our data trail to target consumers, perform background checks, but also to make judgments about us—and detect unusual behavior. These companies’ supercomputers hold information on more than 90% of the households in America—and law enforcement and intelligence agencies are increasingly turning to their databases to hunt down criminals and terrorists.

NO PLACE TO HIDE documents the government’s attempts to implement these new technologies and its failure to inspire public confidence with programs like MATRIX and the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness project. Jennings reports that despite the highly publicized setbacks and demise of some of these and other programs, efforts to create a domestic intelligence capability quietly continue.

Can government and the private sector be trusted to effectively and responsibly use these tools? In search of an answer, Jennings goes to an unlikely place—Las Vegas, where the casino industry has pioneered an approach to surveillance that may have lessons to teach the government on how to confront the terrorist threat, while at the same time, not place ordinary citizens unnecessarily under the microscope.

This project is a collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting and Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., the author of a book also titled “No Place to Hide.”

In a stunning indictment of sweeping policy changes during the Bush years, best-selling author Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth) makes a chilling case that American democracy is under threat. Investigating parallels between our current situation and the rise of dictators and fascism in once-free societies, Wolf uncovers a number of deeply unsettling similarities-from the use of paramilitary groups and secret prisons to the targeted suspension of the rule of law. With this galvanizing call to arms based on her recent book, she urges regular citizens to take back our legacy of freedom and justice.

Baghdad, September 2003: In a middle class house on a quiet street, a family is fast asleep. Without warning, the front door is crashed and American soldiers storm the house looking for weapons and bomb-making material.  Cameraman Michael Tucker documents the event as the men in the house are cuffed and forced to kneel in the garden. A search of the house uncovers no incriminating evidence, however Yunis Khatayer Abbas and three of his brothers are taken and detained.

Bent on forcing Yunis to confess to crimes he did not commit, his captors press him with bizarre questions about music tastes, sexual preferences and Harrison Ford. His intelligence value exhausted, he is then transferred to Abu Ghraib Prison. The charge: Planning the Assassination of Tony Blair.