Archive for the 'Online videos' Category
Two international charities have released a 10 min. documentary on Darfur in an effort to raise awareness about the continuing humanitarian crisis, and to show the difficulties that locals face in dealing with the trauma incurred by the war. The charities - Action by Churches Together (ACT) and Caritas - produced the film as part of a joint Darfur relief and development programme.
As is well known, human rights NGOs and international organisations are increasingly turning to the documentary format to get their messages to wider publics. The UN documentary catalogue includes over a hundred films in active distribution, and many of the films produced by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs have been made available online. Just on Darfur, over a thousand independent clips have been uploaded to Google Video.
The filmmakers behind the cult internet documentary, “Loose Change” are re-editing the film in the hope of getting a distribution deal by September 11, 2007. By now, the film has become the foundation of the post-9/11 “Truth Movement” in the US, which is assembling convincing evidence to detroy the US government’s official version of the truth.
Today, the Guardian runs an interesting article about the story of the film, taking us into the Catskill Mountains in Oneonta, four hours North of Manhattan, to meet the makers of the film (whose average age is still around 22). So far, the film has been viewed over 4 million times on the internet; shown on television to up to 50 million people in 12 countries; and a 100,000 DVDs have been sold.
Watch the film on the web: Googe Video - Loose change (55 min.) or buy the DVD from the filmmakers.
Related posts: “Loose change - 9/11 documentary update”, July 20, 2006
It is now official - a BBC film on the 1980s computer game Tetris has become a documentary hit on Google Video. “Tetris - From Russia with Love” presents the story of the Russian-invented game as an entertaining and compelling footnote to the Cold War. In it, a tale of high stakes, intimidation and legal feuds unfold against the backdrop of Cold War tensions between East and West.
“Everything about [the game’s] development links so closely into that era’s political and economic context. If it hadn’t been for that moment in history Tetris would have been nothing. For a start it needed a certain level of technology to have ever been developed but it also needed that moment of political opening up to creep across the Iron Curtain and become a success in the West,” said director Magnus Temple in an interview on BBC Four. Read the full interview, and watch the film on Google Video.
After a quarter century of political denial and social stigma, of stunning scientific breakthroughs, and inadequate prevention campaigns, HIV/AIDS continues to spread rapidly throughout much of the world, particularly in developing nations. An extensive 2-part documentary by PBS’s Frontline, made for the 25th anniversary of the first diagnosed cases of AIDS, looks at the state of the disease which has killed over 25 million people to date.
“It’s a very human virus, a very human epidemic. It touches right to the heart of our existence,” says Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS. “When you think of it, that in let’s say 25 years, about 70 million people have become infected with this virus, probably coming from one [transmission] … it’s mind blowing.”
Continue reading ‘Online documentary: The Age of AIDS’
As the US looks for an exit strategy, FRONTLINE examines the initial, critical decisions of the US-led regime in Baghdad.
From the same team that produced Rumsfeld’s War, The Torture Question and The Dark Side, the film is based on more than 30 interviews, most of them with the officials charged with building a “new and democratic” Iraq.
The Lost Year in Iraq begins on April 9, 2003, as American troops help a crowd of Iraqis topple a statue of Saddam Hussein. In Washington there was celebration, but in Baghdad the looting was beginning. Jay Garner, the retired general picked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to lead reconstruction, was forced to wait in Kuwait for authorization to enter Iraq. He and his team had arrived from Washington without computers, telephones or a plan.
“Everybody was focused on the war; they were focused on regime change,” Garner tells FRONTLINE. “That took all of their energy. I wasn’t the central focus.” On the day Garner finally arrived in Baghdad, he received a phone call from Rumsfeld: He was being replaced by L. Paul Bremer.
Continue reading ‘Online documentary: The Lost Year in Iraq’
The second edition of “Loose Change” is now out out on DVD, for those who want a high-quality version of the provocative 9/11 documentary which has been a Top 100 Google Video success since its first upload in April 2005.
The film implicates the US government in the planning and execution of 9/11, using evidence derived from news footage, and interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors. The film unwraps a very convincing version of the truth using common sense logic. It was made by 22-year-old Dylan Avery of Oneonta, New York, on a string budget of $8,000.
The inspiration for the film came from a photograph of a controlled building explosion seen alongside the collapse of the Twin Towers - and the similarities were just too obvious for Avery to ignore. With over 3 million views on the internet, the film has been subtitled into several languages by volunteers, and released on DVD.
Watch the film for free at: Googe Video - Loose change (55 min.)
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has launched a website to air its documentary shorts on conflict. Uganda, Darfur, Angola, and Niger are among the featured countries, while female genital mutilation, malaria and the Pakistan earthquake are the focus of some thematic pieces.
Visit the film site and watch videos.
