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Science, Technology, Society


Science, Technology, Society



DIGITAL DISCONNECT: HOW CAPITALISM IS TURNING THE INTERNET AGAINST DEMOCRACY

Featuring Robert McChesney
Based on the book Digital Disconnect by Robert McChesney
Directed by Jeremy Earp

Digital Disconnect trains its sights on the relationship between the internet and democracy in the age of fake news, filter bubbles, and Facebook security breaches. Moving from the development of the internet as a publicly funded project in the late 1960s to its full-scale commercialization today, renowned media scholar Robert McChesney traces how the democratizing potential of the internet has been radically compromised by the logic of capitalism and the unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies. Along the way, McChesney examines the ongoing attack on net neutrality by telecom monopolies like Comcast and Verizon; explores how internet giants like Facebook and Google have amassed huge profits by surreptitiously collecting personal data and selling it to advertisers; and shows how these companies have routinely colluded with the national security state to advance covert mass surveillance programs. Even more urgently, the film details how the rise of social media as a leading information source is working to isolate people into ideological filter bubbles and elevate fake news at the expense of real journalism. While most debates about the internet continue to focus on issues like the personal impact of internet addiction or the questionable data-mining practices of individual companies like Facebook, Digital Disconnect digs deeper to show how capitalism itself is turning the internet against democracy. The result is an indispensable classroom resource -- a vital tool for helping students make sense of a technological revolution that's radically transforming virtually aspect of human communication.


DVD (With English Subtitles) / 2018

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CELLING YOUR SOUL

Directed by Joni Siani

An examination of our love/hate relationships with our digital devices from the first digitally socialized generation, and what we can do about it.

In one short decade, we have totally changed the way we interact with one another. The millennial generation, the first to be socialized in a digital world, is now feeling the unintended consequences.

CELLING YOUR SOUL is a powerful and informative examination of how our young people actually feel about connecting in the digital world and their love/hate relationship with technology. It provides empowering strategies for more fulfilling, balanced, and authentic human interaction within the digital landscape.

The film reveals the effects of "digital socialization" by taking viewers on a personal journey with a group of high school and college students who through a digital cleanse discover the power of authentic human connectivity, and that there is "No App" or piece of technology that can ever replace the benefits of human connection.


DVD / 2017 / (Grades 6-12, College, Adult) / 48 minutes

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CRACKING CANCER

Directed by Judith Pyke

A clinical research trial at the Personalized OncoGenomics Program is changing the way scientists think about the future of cancer care.

Six years ago Zuri Scrivens, the mother of a toddler, was very ill with incurable breast cancer that had spread to her liver and lymph nodes. Today Zuri has no signs of cancer, not because of a miraculous new cancer drug, but thanks to a diabetes medication.

CRACKING CANCER follows a group of patients with incurable cancer on a trailblazing journey through a highly experimental clinical trial at the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver called POG -- Personalized OncoGenomics.

The trial compares patients' normal DNA -- each cell's complete set of instructions -- with that of their tumors, to find the genetic mutations causing their cancer. Zuri's cancer driver was a mutation that caused a very high growth factor. The team plowed through decades of data to isolate which drug in all of medicine, not just cancer, might block that growth factor. They zeroed in on a diabetes medication. Zuri received the drug and standard hormone treatment. Within 5 months, her cancer became undetectable.

POG offers a radical new way of treating cancer, not according to where it originates in the body, but rather as a disease of genetic mutations. Thousands more will join the trial, all hoping for their own salvation, all helping science to crack the cancer code.


DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 44 minutes

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DANGEROUS IDEA, A: GENETICS, EUGENICS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

Directed by Stephanie Welch

Examines the history of the US eugenics movement and its recent resurrection, which uses false scientific claims and holds that an all-powerful "gene" determines who is worthy and who is not.

There is a dangerous idea that has threatened the American Dream from the very beginning. It is a strong current of biological determinism which views some groups, races and individuals as inherently superior to others and more deserving of fundamental rights. Despite the founders' assertion that "all are created equal," this idea was used to justify disenfranchising women, blacks and Native Americans from the earliest days of the Republic.

A DANGEROUS IDEA: GENETICS, EUGENICS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM reveals how this dangerous idea gained new traction in the 20th century with an increasing belief in the concept of an all-powerful "gene" that predetermines who is worthy and who is not. The film reveals how this new genetic determinism provided an abhorrent rationale for state sanctioned crimes committed against America's poorest, most vulnerable citizens and for violations of the fundamental civil rights of untold millions.

Featuring interviews with social thinkers including Van Jones and Robert Reich as well as prominent scientists in many fields, A DANGEROUS IDEA is a radical reassessment of the meaning, use and misuse of gene science. Like no other film before it, this documentary brings to light how false scientific claims have rolled back long fought for gains in equality, and how powerful interests are poised once again to use the gene myth to unravel the American Dream.


DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 106 minutes

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ANTIBIOTIC HUNTERS, THE

Directed by Bruce Mohun

Scientists are hunting urgently for new antibiotics -- a challenge that is taking them to some remote and unusual places.

Increasing resistance to antibiotics has been called the most pressing global health problem of our time. Medical experts are predicting a post-antibiotic era, in which people will die of infections easily treated just a few years ago -- unless we find more of these miracle drugs.

THE ANTIBIOTIC HUNTERS follows drug researchers as they investigate the slimy green fur of sloths, the saliva of Komodo dragons, the blood of alligators, and the bacteria in British Columbia caves and on the ocean floor off the coast of Panama -- all part of the urgent hunt to find the building blocks of new antibiotics.


DVD / 2015 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 44 minutes

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DEATH BY DESIGN

Directed by Sue Williams

Debunks the notion that electronics is a 'clean' industry by revealing the human and environmental cost of electronic gadgets that are designed to die.

Consumers love - and live on - their smartphones, tablets and laptops. A cascade of new devices pours endlessly into the market, promising even better communication, non-stop entertainment and instant information. The numbers are staggering. By 2020, four billion people will have a personal computer. Five billion will own a mobile phone.

But this revolution has a dark side that the electronics industry doesn't want you to see.

In an investigation that spans the globe, award-winning filmmaker Sue Williams investigates the underbelly of the international electronics industry and reveals how even the tiniest devices have deadly environmental and health costs.

DEATH BY DESIGN tells the stories of young Chinese workers laboring in unsafe conditions, American families living with the tragic consequences of the industry's toxic practices, activists leading the charge to hold brands accountable, and passionate entrepreneurs who are developing more sustainable products and practices to safeguard our planet and our future.

From the intensely secretive electronics factories in China, to the high tech innovation labs of Silicon Valley, DEATH BY DESIGN tells a story of environmental degradation, of health tragedies, and the fast-approaching tipping point between consumerism and sustainability.


DVD / 2015 / (Grades 7-9, College, Adults) / 73 minutes

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SLINGSHOT

Director: Paul Lazarus

SlingShot focuses on Segway inventor Dean Kamen, his fascinating life and his work to solve the world's water crisis. Eccentric genius, Kamen lives in a house with secret passages, a closet full of denim, and a helicopter garage. His latest passion: the SlingShot water purification system created to obliterate half of human illness on the planet. SlingShot is about an indomitable man who just might have enough innovative thinking to create a solution for a crisis affecting billions.


DVD / 2015 / 88 minutes

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IRON MINISTRY, THE

By J.P. Sniadecki

Filmed over three years on China's railways, THE IRON MINISTRY traces the vast interiors of a country on the move: flesh and metal, clangs and squeals, light and dark, language and gesture. Scores of rail journeys come together into one, capturing the thrills and anxieties of social and technological transformation. THE IRON MINISTRY immerses audiences in fleeting relationships and uneasy encounters between humans and machines on what will soon be the world's largest railway network.


DVD (Color) / 2014 / 83 minutes

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PRINT THE LEGEND

Directors: Luis Lopez & J. Clay Tweel

3D printing is changing the world - from printing guns and human organs, to dismantling the world's industrial infrastructure by enabling home manufacturing. It's "the next Industrial Revolution." With unprecedented access to the visionaries building an industry, Print the Legend follows the people and companies racing to bring 3D printing to your desktop and into your life. For the winners, there are fortunes - and history - to be made. Print the Legend is both the definitive 3D Printing Documentary - capturing a technology in the midst of its "Macintosh Moment" - and a compelling tale about what it takes to live the American Dream in any field.


DVD / 2014 / 100 minutes

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CERN

By Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Multi-award winning director Nikolaus Geyrhalter (HOMO SAPIENS, OUR DAILY BREAD, ELSEWHERE) delivers stunning imagery and fascinating insight into the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Inside the immense Large Hadron Collider, operated by world-renowned research organization CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), the big bang scenario is recreated in search for the smallest particle.

Including interviews with the leading experts who operate and maintain this gigantic Big Bang machine, the film provides fascinating insights into this complex experimental research institution and the quirky geniuses behind the scenes.

For those who do not know a proton from a neutron, CERN provides a chance to learn more about physics from the best and brightest in the field.

Featuring some of the world's leading physicists, including: Beniamino Di Girolamo, Tatuso Kawamoto, Yves Schutz, Pauline Gagnon, and Christophe Grojean.


DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2013 / 75 minutes

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DRONES IN MY BACKYARD

Directed by Alan Snitow

How comfortable should Americans be with the growing use of drones by all segments of society?

DRONES IN MY BACKYARD is a funny and scary video mash-up about the coming of aerial drones to the United States.

One day a drone appears in the filmmaker's backyard, hovering over his head. It's the catalyst for an extended meditation and free association on the presence of drones in war-making, the role of drones in surveillance, and the thrill of flying when you put on goggles to see what the drone sees.

Whether it's the Predator, the Argus, or cute little Hummingbirds, drones of all shapes and sizes are flying to a rock and roll beat. We see them following us...and listen to the incessant buzzing of cameras overhead.


DVD / 2013 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 13 minutes

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GOOGLE & THE WORLD BRAIN: THE AUDACIOUS ATTEMPT TO CONTROL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

In 1937, the science fiction writer H. G. Wells imagined a "World Brain" containing all of the world's knowledge, accessible to all people, that would be "so compact in its material form and so gigantic in its scope and possible influence" that it could transcend even nation states and governments. Seventy years later, Google set about realizing Wells's vision, launching a massive project to scan millions of books from university library collections. But when it was discovered that over half of the first ten million books Google scanned were still in copyright, authors from around the world joined together to wage a fierce legal battle against the Internet giant, culminating in a dramatic courtroom showdown in 2011. In gripping detail, Google & the World Brain tells the fascinating story of this complicated struggle over intellectual property and access to human knowledge, offering crucial insights into broader debates surrounding data-mining and privacy, downloading and copyright, fair use, freedom and surveillance.

DVD (With English Subtitles) / 2013 / 93 minutes

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INREALLIFE

Director: Beeban Kidron

InRealLife asks what exactly is the internet and what is it doing to our children? Taking us on a journey from the bedrooms of teenagers to Silicon Valley, filmmaker Beeban Kidron suggests that rather than the promise of free and open connectivity, young people are increasingly ensnared in a commercial world. Beguiling and glittering on the outside, it can be alienating and addictive. Quietly building its case, Kidron's film asks if we can afford to stand by while our children, trapped in their 24/7 connectivity, are being outsourced to the net?

While newspapers alternately praise and panic about the glittering world of the Internet, there is a generation of children who have grown up with a smart phone in their hand, connected to the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Public discourse seems to revolve around privacy, an issue that embodies the fears and concerns of adults. What is less discussed is what it really means to always be online, never alone and increasingly bombarded by a world that has something to sell you and appears to know you better than yourself. A world that is so ubiquitous that it is the first thing you see as you wake up in the morning and the last thing you see before you go to sleep at night.

For adults there was a 'before' the net. But for the current generation, at the time of their most rapid development they have no other experience and few tools with which to negotiate the overwhelming parade of opportunity and cost that the internet delivers directly into their hands.

From the bedrooms of five disparate teenagers and then into the companies that profit from the internet, InRealLifetakes a closer look at some of the behavioral outcomes that come from living in a commercially driven, 'interruption' culture.

Following the physical journey of the internet, from fiber optic cables through sewers and under oceans, from London to NYC and finally to Silicon Valley, the film reveals that what is often thought of as an 'open, democratic and free' world is in fact dominated by a small group of powerful players. Meanwhile our kids - merely pawns in the game - are adapting to this new world - along with their expectation of friendship, their cognition and their sexuality.


DVD / 2013 / 90 minutes

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LIFE APPS: FAVELA FARM (BRAZIL)

Directed by Rodrigo Mac Niven

In Brazil can Pedro build a Life App to help the secret world of urban farms and gardens in Rio's shanty towns?

Pedro is part of a collective of young people in Rio de Janeiro working on new mobile phone technology. Social network apps can serve a dual purpose: They can increase awareness about a cause, and enable users to take action. Social apps help users feel they're making a difference. Pedro goes to Rio and meets Cadu and Dinho, who work on community projects in the Mare and Alemao favelas.

The massive and uncontrolled growth of favelas is a major environmental issue in Rio. In Alemao and Mare alone there are more than 200,000 people, with few proper facilities. Cadu and Dinho are taking Pedro to meet young people from Rio's North Zone, learn about their lives, and research the possibilities for a new "Life App" that can help with green business initiatives in the favela community.


DVD / 2013 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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LIFE APPS: MOBILE HARVEST

Directed by Arjun Pandey

In India can Sachin build a Life App to help stem the tide of farmer suicides?

Sachin Gaur is an award-winning software engineer and world-class expert in mobile security. In 2010 he cofounded the technology collective MixOrg, which aims to develop apps to help people at the bottom of the pyramid -- people like the many millions of India's poor farmers whose lives are often blighted by multiple problems.

LIFE follow Sachin as he heads off to Andhra Pradesh to meet farmers and hear first-hand about the major obstacles they face in their lives -- from changing weather patterns and unreliable rainfall, to rising costs of seeds and fertilizers. With a firm grasp of some of their real-life problems, he's ready to start working on a "Life App" to help spread farmers' ideas.


DVD / 2013 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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LIFE APPS: ONCE A NOMAD (NAMIBIA)

Directed by Abius Akwaake

In Namibia can Dalton and Lameck build a Life App to help the illiterate and isolated Himba people market their goods?

Otjomitjira village lies amidst a breathtaking landscape in northwestern Namibia. The Himba population here is less than seventy people; another of Namibia's tribes, the Herero, also live here alongside oases of fresh water, making a living off the land with their own cattle. You can't get more isolated than the Himba people. They wear few clothes, some jewelry...and carry cell-phones! They're dubious that LIFE APPS can help them: elephant warning systems, tracking cattle -- there are plenty of potential applications.

Poor signal strength is one problem; another is that many phones are only 2G. And although the women can't read, they use icons to recognise numbers. Software developers Dalton and Lameck, from Namibia's capital Windhoek, are determined to persuade the Himba that they can help them with a mobile phone app that will help them market their goods and communicate more effectively.


DVD / 2013 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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LIFE APPS: SILICON SAVANNAH (KENYA)

Directed by Toni Kamau

In Kenya can Muniu build a Life App to help William be as good a farmer as he can be?

Muniu Kariuki is an app developer living in Nairobi. With friends, he runs Bityarn Consult, a small technology start-up. In this program, Muniu takes up the challenge of seeing if he can develop a "Life App" that can help small Kenyan farmer William, who runs a subsistence farm in rural Ugenya, 300 miles from Nairobi. William is an expert on cultivating traditional African vegetables, but would like his modest farm to be more productive and profitable.

In western Kenya, the Technology Adoption Through Research Organization (TATRO) has mobilized farmers into growing traditional indigenous vegetables, but the old physical problems of communication make it a tough challenge. Can Muniu come up with an app that can help William reach out for new business opportunities?


DVD / 2013 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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LIFE APPS: WORLD OF APPS (UK/SOUTH AFRICA)

Directed by Paul Zisiwe, Gautam Lewis

Young people are writing apps to solve problems from reproductive health care in South Africa to helping young minority adults in London who are "stopped and searched."

The final episode of the series profiles Apps For Good, an organization originally started in Brazil to harness young people's ideas and energies to develop apps that can benefit local communities. In South Africa, LIFE visits with creative artist Nanziwe, who works for the mobile start-up company Bozza and is trying to develop an "app" to provide young people with sexual and reproductive health information and advice.

In London's East End, LIFE films one young entrepreneur who has developed an app that helps young minority adults who are "stopped and searched" by the police, recording their locations and their accounts of the treatment they receive. We also visit with Amarah, a young student from Central Foundation Girls' School, who has developed her own "app" to send messages to friends with an alarm call.


DVD / 2013 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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TAKE BACK YOUR POWER: INVESTIGATING THE SMART GRID

By Josh Del Sol

Utilities around the world are racing to install "smart" utility meters, which are emerging as anything but smart. Josh del Sol's award-winning feature documentary TAKE BACK YOUR POWER uncovers shocking evidence of in-home privacy invasions, increased utility bills, health & environmental harm, fires and unprecedented hacking vulnerability... and lights the path toward solutions.

With compelling insight from whistleblowers, researchers, government agents, lawyers, doctors and environmentalists, learn why hundreds of local governments are standing against the rollout of this technology. What you'll discover will surprise, unsettle and ultimately empower you.

Includes interviews with scientists, researchers, and whistleblowers.


DVD / 2013 / 88 minutes

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ELECTRIC SIGNS

By Alice Arnold

New screen-based sign systems are putting TV-style advertising into the public domain in cities around the globe. These electronic signs are re-shaping urban environments and re-defining areas of public space by intensifying the commercialization of the public sphere.

In addition to the explosion of screens in public spaces, screens are ubiquitous in work spaces and in people's daily life activities. These seamless, illuminated electronic surfaces are becoming the devices through which we frame our experiences. ELECTRIC SIGNS explores this new screen culture as it unfolds in the global city.

The film's narrator, a city observer modeled on the critic Walter Benjamin, takes us on a journey through a variety of urban landscapes, examining public spaces and making connections between light, perception and the culture of attractions in today's consumer society.

The film is structured as a documentary essay in the spirit of city symphony films, and features footage in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities around the world. Also featured are interviews with prominent lighting designers; advertising and marketing professionals; urban sociologists and visual culture experts; and community activists.

The filmmakers traveled around the world to collect footage of electronic signs and media facades from cities on four continents. The film captures the beauty and excitement of these illuminated signs while examining their messages, and looks at city life from many perspectives, so as to capture the intensification of urban life amidst the vast spaces beneath the skyscrapers.


DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2012 / 58 minutes

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FACEBOOK FOLLIES

With nearly a billion people all over the world having signed on, Facebook has fundamentally changed the way millions of people connect and communicate - but not without consequences.

Facebook Follies looks at some of the unexpected results and impact, negative and positive, of people sharing their personal information on social media sites. Our relationships, our thoughts, our pastimes, our memories, our lives and deaths are all now routinely posted online. Social media represents a paradigm shift in the way we communicate, and inevitably, such change is accompanied by mishaps and trouble, as we learn new limits.

Facebook Follies introduces us to people whose lives were dramatically changed for the worse because of indiscreet or questionable posts, or as the victims of online criminal activity -- they lost their jobs, their marriages, their dignity, or even ended up in jail. The film also profiles positive stories of people?who found love, were able to reconnect with long-lost family members, or used the platform to publicly mourn the memory of the deceased. The film includes some well-known stories, as well as others not very well-known, and commentary from experts in social media and journalism.


DVD (Region 1, Closed Captioned) / 2012 / (Grades 9-Adult) / 97 minutes

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LOGIN 2 LIFE

By Daniel Moshel

Centered around two people homebound by their disabilities who have found community online, LOGIN 2 LIFE explores the growing number of people who spend much of their lives in online virtual worlds.

Elaborate digital platforms like Second Life and World of Warcraft offer novel opportunities for friendship, sex, employment, and aesthetic experience in virtual communities populated by cartoon-like avatars. While these simulated worlds are often treated with contempt by the general media, LOGIN 2 LIFE takes a more sympathetic approach, profiling seven people deeply immersed in these worlds, and attempting to understand what each gets from their virtual life.

Paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident, 27 year-old Corey spends most of his days playing World of Warcraft, exploring a virtual landscape with far greater ease than he can move through his physical one. Alice, 60, has limited mobility due to multiple sclerosis. In Second Life, she is able to draw on her skills as an educator and volunteer to run an in-game business that provides resources to other disabled people.

We also meet a diverse cast of characters from around the world, whose different online engagements illustrate the range of motivations for choosing a largely virtual existence. Kevin, a middle-aged family man in Florida, makes his living selling virtual sex devices within the Second Life universe. Philippe, in France, is an award-winning director of World of Warcraft machinima who has turned is hobby into a career. In China, a family of World of Warcraft "gold farmers" toil endlessly online, earning in-game currency that can be sold for real money.

LOGIN 2 LIFE reconsiders the demarcation usually drawn between physical and online worlds. The film asks us to consider whether the people we have met are exceptions, driven to digital immersion by particular needs, or if they are pioneers of a lifestyle that will soon become commonplace.


DVD (Color) / 2012 / 86 minutes

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INTO ETERNITY

Directed by Michael Madsen

The world's nuclear power plants have generated an estimated 300,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste that must be safely stored for 100,000 years or more. Every year, they generate another 12,000 metric tons of high-level waste.

Into Eternity is the first feature documentary to explore the mind-boggling scientific and philosophical questions long-term nuclear waste storage poses.

Structured as a message to future generations, the film focuses on the Onkalo waste repository now under construction in Finland, one of the first underground storage facilities. Onkalo is a gigantic network of tunnels being carved out of bedrock that will start receiving Finland's nuclear waste in 2020. Once the repository is full, in about 100 years, it will be closed and hopefully remain sealed for at least 100,000 years.

Into Eternity takes viewers deep into the Onkalo facility as it is being constructed and asks Onkalo representatives, scientists, theologians and others to address fundamental but challenging questions.

How can our civilization know what the world will be like in 100,000 years? The first modern homo sapiens appeared about that long ago and no human structure has survived more than 5000 years. How can we anticipate climate and geologic changes that far in the future? What will life on our planet be like then? How do we warn distant generations of the deadly waste our civilization left behind? What languages or signs will they understand? How do we prevent them from thinking they have located the pyramids of our time or some other treasures?

With its stark, stylistic approach, Into Eternity not only raises questions about the possibility of long-term nuclear waste storage, but also invites reflection on the limits of science and human knowledge, along with our responsibility to future generations.


DVD (Region 1, Closed Captioned) / 2011 / (Grades 9 - Adult) / 133 minutes

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FACEBOOK'S ADORNO CHANGED MY LIFE

By Georg Boch

Theodor Adorno was an influential member of the Frankfurt School of social theory - a German-born intellectual who fled Nazi Germany for America, and whose work anticipates and informs much post-modern theory. In this revolutionary "participatory documentary," digital filmmaker Georg Boch, one of more than 200 people that belong to a Facebook group called "Adorno Changed My Life," sets out to learn how Adorno's work has touched the group's lives.

For the film, Boch solicits videos and Skype conversations. Unlike the traditional documentary, this approach allows each of the participants to frame how they want to be perceived and to direct their own conversations.

For art historian Travis English, who shamelessly multitasks on camera, reading Adorno for the first time was like "swallowing a stick of dynamite." Australian intellectual Ivan Krisjansen (who uses a portrait of Adorno as his Facebook profile photo) compares it to "climbing Mount Everest, standing on the peak and being able to see forever."

Digital culture critic Dennis Redmond - who at times speaks in front of a shelf full of teddy bears - sees parallels between Adorno's work and the digital commons. Redmond encourages viewers to read random pages from Adorno to see how they seamlessly fit into a whole in the same way that fragments of digital culture mesh.

It's also a metaphor for the film itself: far-flung, isolated members of an online group whose individual contributions are transformed into a cultural product. The film also makes no attempt to hide its digital roots. Rather than cleaning up time lags or sharpening focus, it celebrates the imperfections of digital communication.

FACEBOOK'S "ADORNO CHANGED MY LIFE" resists the temptation to offer a potted guide to the philosopher's thought. Instead, it allows its participants to set the terms of the conversation, and to reveal their relationships to Adorno's work. Even if they feel, as does Moldavian emigrant Vitalie Bezdiga, that "Theodore Adorno is of no great help when it comes to jobs or employment."


DVD (Color) / 2010 / 28 minutes

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FULL SIGNAL

Full Signal talks to scientists around the world who are researching the health effects related to cellular technology; to veteran journalists who have called attention to the issue for decades; to activists who are fighting to regulate the placement of antennas; and to lawyers and law makers who represent the people wanting those antennas regulated. Filmed in Ten countries and Six US states, Full Signal examines the contradiction between health and finance, one of the many ironies of the fight to regulate antenna placement.

DVD / 2009 / 52 minutes

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SURROUNDED BY WAVES

By Jean-Christophe Ribot

As wireless technology keeps expanding the debate surrounding the health impacts of electromagnetic waves keeps growing. Filmed in France, Israel, Sweden, and the United States, the new documentary Surrounded by Waves uses an elegant blend of interviews, archives, experiments and 3D animation to investigate what is known, and unknown, about the potential risks.

Around the world scientists are exploring areas as cognitive troubles, sleep disturbances, risks of neurodegenerative diseases, brain tumors, cardiac rhythm abnormalities, disturbances of the immune system, and even decreases in fertility. In Surrounded by Waves we meet a number of experts in the field, including Dr. Andrew Marino of Louisiana State University's Health Services Center; Joe Wiart, a physicist employed at Orange Labs in France; and Professor Rony Seger, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. In Sweden, Olle Johansson, professor of neuroscience at The Karolinska Institute studies electro hypersensitivity, officially recognized in Sweden as a disability.

From the fields produced by electrical appliances to Wi-Fi, our daily environment exposes us to all sorts of radiation, the ramifications of which we are still discovering. And as we wait for an accurate evaluation, Surrounded by Waves provides both a subtle observation of society's growing distrust of its industries, and the crucial role of science in the debate.


DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2009 / 52 minutes

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CYBORGS AMONG US

Director: Rafael Duran

In just a few years, technology will merge with our bodies in unimaginable ways and push the boundaries of what it is to be human. While medical technology still aims at re-mediating disabilities, cyborgs strive to something else: a merging of man and machine with the goal of enhancing human capabilities.

The first cyborgs are already crossing the boundaries of their human limits just for the sake of it - at home, in basement workshops and tattoo parlors, using low-tech equipment and a do-it-yourself attitude. They are a tiny minority, seen by many as weird or crazy experimenters, but in the near future we may call them pioneers. In this film, we meet some of these explorers. We also look at research in medical technology to assess how close science is to creating cyborgs, and ponder the social and ethical dilemmas of a cyborg society.


DVD / 75 minutes

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NEW RADICAL, THE

Director: Adam Bhala Lough

Making a printable gun landed Cody Wilson on the U.S. government's watch list. Together with British programmer Amir Taaki, they founded a Bitcoin app that allows its users to "go dark" - because for this pair of crypto-anarchists, ensuring freedom of information and challenging economic structures they view as corrupt is mandatory. Adam Lough glimpses a rarified world, where these new radicals revel in questioning everything from gun control to encryption, even if it means incarceration. Yet the question remains: Are they freedom fighters or criminals? This captivating encounter examines how their distinct group came about and what their existence says about the economic, cultural, and technological landscape.


DVD / 109 minutes

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