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Current Concerns: Videos on issues in the news
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Extreme-right British National Party wins two seats at the European Parliament
As European countries are voting to elect their European Parliament representatives, Great Britain is shaken by the victory of far right party BNP, gaining two seats for the first time, as reported by the AFP. The BNP is known for its anti-immigration stance and has been referred to as a racist and fascist organization, even though its leaders deny these accusations.
ALL WHITE IN BARKING offers a snap shot of the current situation in a working class suburb of London where older white residents, including a supporter of the BNP with a mixed-race grandson, learn to live with their new neighbors, immigrants from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Balkans.
The New York Times reports that scientists in Brooklyn, NY are experimenting with a drug that will have the ability to erase specific memories such as traumas and chronic fears.
For an accessible, yet very informative, introduction to the circuitry of the brain and how memory and fear work, THE HIDDEN FACE OF FEAR studies the traumatic impact of 9/ll on New Yorkers featuring interviews with leading researchers, including neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and Nobel Prize-winning neurobiologist Eric R. Kandel.
Accompanying an article on the ways malls are trying to stay in business and relevant, The New York Times also features a discussion on deserted malls and their future with, among other contributors, Helene Klodawsky, director of MALLS R US, and Peter Blackbird, founder of deadmall.com, featured in the film.
As the words "foreclosure" and "credit crunch" are on everyone's mind and in every other news report, Icarus Films has acquired the documentary WE ALL FALL DOWN: THE AMERICAN MORTGAGE CRISIS, a clear and accessible explanation of what led to the current downfall.
Twelve months in the making, this film documents the evolution of America's mortgage finance from its origins in the 1930s to its recent degeneration into a nationwide pyramid scheme that sparked a global financial collapse.
The DVD is scheduled to be released by April 1, but you can pre-order your copy now!
The New York Times reports that the Obama administration is sending two senior officials to Syria to begin discussions with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Experts consider Syria to be the key to unlock some of the major challenges in the Middle East, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iran's nuclear threat.
SYRIA: CHESS MATCH AT THE BORDERS offers a close look at the country's history, geography and politics, and what led to its position as a major player and stake in the Middle East.
Director Ilan Ziv on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Ilan Ziv, director of JESUS POLITICS, released an article with journalist Daoud Kuttab on the conflict between Israel and Palestine and how the region could be saved by an international tribunal.
The Associated Press reports that Iranian authorities shut down the office of a human rights group led by Nobel Peace Prize winnerShirin Ebadi on Sunday as the group was preparing to honor a political activist who spent 17 years in prison in the Islamic republic.
Learn more about Ebadi and her endeavors in the documentary SHIRIN EBADI, A SIMPLE LAWYER as it features an in-depth interview conducted in her Tehran office, speeches at numerous international conferences, and a visit to the children's center she founded.
Anand Patwardhan's Statement on the Tragedy in Mumbai
Award-winning Indian filmmaker Anand Patwardhan released a statement on the recent terror attacks in Mumbai.
Patwardhan has been making political documentaries for nearly three decades. He has relentlessly pursued diverse and controversial issues that are at the crux of social and political life in India.
The Washington Post reports that scientists have found that happiness is contagious and can spread like a virus. The study was conducted over 20 years on more than 4,700 people and demonstrates that people who are happy or become happy boost the chances that someone they know will be happy.
In HOW HAPPY CAN YOU BE?, filmmaker Line Hatland, who admits to not being as happy as she'd like to be, seeks answers to this question by interviewing and showing the work of some of the world's leading researchers on happiness, or "objective well being," including psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and neuroscientists.
Reuters reports that DNA fingerprinting could be used to uncover the last name of male suspects or victims in forensic investigations, as men with the same patronym are highly likely to be genetically linked. TRACKED DOWN BY OUR GENES examines the breakthrough of DNA mapping and how it has ushered in a new age of genetic awareness, with hundreds of companies offering tests to determine ancestry, paternity, and hereditary diseases.
This month Icarus Films is releasing the film JESUS POLITICS by Ilan Ziv. A very timely and compelling documentary about the prominent role of religion in the 2008 American presidential campaign. Rather than follow the candidates, Ziv decided to meet with religious activists supporting the Democratic and Republican candidates, hence offering a different point of view on the race for the White House.
INTERNATIONAL / EUROPE August 17, 2008 A Push to Increase Icebreakers in the Arctic By ANDREW C. REVKIN A growing array of military leaders, Arctic experts and lawmakers say the United States is losing its ability to patrol and safeguard Arctic waters.
We will be releasing a new documentary film STRAIT THROUGH THE ICE on September 2nd which investigates how climate change, and modern icebreakers, are making it possible to open the long-frozen Northwest Passage to international shipping, and what the ecological and geopolitical ramifications might be. Check back in September for more information on this timely film!
Monday, May 19, 2008
Anniversary of the Catonsville Nine action
NPR remembers the anti Vietnam war protest that took place 40 years ago. On March 17th, 1968, in Catonsville, MD, nine members of the Catholic Church stole hundreds of draft records and set them on fire with homemade napalm. The group came to be known as the Catonsville Nine and later that year was prosecuted and convicted.
INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME is an intimate look at this unlikely, disparate band of resisters who broke the law in a poetic act of civil disobedience.
A recent article in The New York Times, "Love on Girls' Side of the Saudi Divide", examines the lives of young Saudi women under the strict Islamic laws of their country. With attitudes ranging from rebellious pranks such as dressing as men to venture outside, to an outspoken admiration for their devout brothers and the religious police, these young women offer an interesting portrait of women's place in Saudi society and the effects of the segregation between male and female populations.
In SAUDI SOLUTIONS, filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak, the first Western filmmaker ever granted permission to film the lives of Saudi women, takes us inside this closed society where fewer than five percent of women work. She profiles several women with professional careers and asks them to explain what it means to be a modern woman in a fundamentalist Islamic society.
The article "The New Geopolitics of Energy" in The Nation highlights how the struggle over energy resources, rather than ideology or politics, has come to dominate the martial landscape and is now the world leaders' main concern.
The film ENERGY WAR reveals precisely how the economic importance of fossil fuels affects international politics and becomes a powerful tool of foreign policy.
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