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How poor people survive in the USA

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 12:14:09 +0000

Homelessness, hunger and shame: poverty is rampant in the richest country in the world. Over 40 million people in the United States live below the poverty line, twice as many as it was fifty years ago. It can happen very quickly. Many people in the United States fall through the social safety net. In the structurally weak mining region of the Appalachians, it has become almost normal for people to go shopping with food stamps. And those who lose their home often have no choice but to live in a car. There are so many homeless people in Los Angeles that relief organizations have started to build small wooden huts to provide them with a roof over their heads. The number of homeless children has also risen dramatically, reaching 1.5 million, three times more than during the Great Depression the 1930s. A documentary about the fate of the poor in the United States today.

How Billie Eilish and Her Family Make Music

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 16 Aug 2019 10:55:34 +0000

The fastest-rising pop star of the moment is 17 and writes off-kilter hits with her older brother from their parents’ house. Breaking down Billie Eilish’s “Bury a Friend,” we show a new model for making it big.

Kolyma – Birthplace of Our Fear

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 11:35:26 +0000

Film about the brutal Soviet penal camps under the rule of the dictator Josef Stalin. The 32-year-old Juir Dud travelled from Magadan on the Pacific to Jakutsk in Siberia to speak with descendants of Gulag prisoners. Gulag is an abbreviation for "main administration of the camps" and still symbolizes the reign of terror of Stalin. Prisoners had to build roads in all weathers and also mine gold or uranium. 20 million prisoners were accommodated in the camps, about two million people died.

It’s Getting Harder to Spot a Deep Fake Video

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 12:11:13 +0000

Fake videos and audio keep getting better, faster and easier to make, increasing the mind-blowing technology's potential for harm if put in the wrong hands. Bloomberg QuickTake explains how good deep fakes have gotten in the last few months, and what's being done to counter them. Video by Henry Baker, Christian Capestany

Discovering a stolen artwork after 32 years

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 26 Aug 2018 10:01:11 +0000

It is rather the exception that the theft of a work of art is resolved after 32 years. This happened in the USA, where at the end of November 1985 a painting by Willem de Kooning was stolen from a public collection and found itself undamaged in August 2017 with an old goods trader.

An Open Secret

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 11:08:10 +0000

For three years, Amy Berg's documentary "An Open Secret" about paedophilia in Hollywood was virtually invisible. If you see it now, you know why. In light of the long awaited revelations of sexual abuse in Hollywood finally being reported ESPONDA PRODUCTIONS presents AN OPEN SECRET for free for a limited time . A film about the sexual abuse of children in the entertainment industry in Hollywood. Please support our efforts of raising awareness by sharing with your friends and colleagues. #AnOpenSecret #BeCourageus #ReportIt #LifeGetsBetter. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook @AnOpenSecret. BE COURAGEOUS. REPORT IT. LIFE GETS BETTER. Esponda Productions LLC is the author of this motion picture for purposes of copyright and other laws. Ownership of this motion picture is protected by copyright laws and other applicable laws, and any unauthorized duplication of this motion picture could result in certain criminal prosecution and civil liability.

Drone wars: Recruited video gamers become killers

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 12:14:14 +0000

In tiny bunkers in the United States, young pilots are operating unmanned drones targeting 'bad people' in Pakistan. The military visits video game fairs to recruit video players. Through specially developed games they try to reach young players. The traumatic experiences that these people are going through stay. Often the young new soldiers have no idea what to expect. This video highlights the effects on their actions

Can Universal Basic Income End Our Cultural Obsession With Work?

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 11:46:03 +0000

In 1948, German philosopher Josef Pieper predicted that society was headed for a dystopia he called 'Total Work'. With most of us in 2017 working too long, missing social events, working on weekends, and egging on our older years just for the retirement, practical philosopher Andrew Taggart believes we have reached the verge of that dystopia. He describes the conditions that are tightening around us—our lives are scheduled around the needs of our jobs, our time with family and friends is subordinated to it (in a 5:2 ratio!), and our free time increasingly resembles work, in vocabulary and in action: we run errands, aim to have "productive" days, try to rest so that we are fresh for Monday—the start of another week. Taggart thinks Universal Basic Income is the ideological push we need to begin questioning how we can cut loose from our cultural obsession with work, and how we might live in a world without it. Are we human beings, or instruments of productivity? Has our intense focus on work become pathological? Transcript:'Total work' was a term coined by Josef Pieper, a lesser known German philosopher from the 20th century, and he was concerned that after World War II there would be a time of total work. By that I take him to mean that work comes to be the center around which the world turns. Human beings start to see themselves chiefly as workers, and the entirety of life becomes more and more work, or work like. To see this we can begin to examine a number of what I might call tightening conditions. So the first condition would be the centrality of work. We've come to think that work is actually the center and everything else begins to turn around it. To see this more clearly we can think about the fact that we woke up to go to work today or that we are going home from work today. That we are preparing for work. That we are preparing to leave work. And this is happening all the way around the world. Meanwhile we’re adjusting our schedules, the rest of our lives, so that they are turning about it. So that would be the first condition. The second condition is subordination. That everything else in life comes to seem as if it’s subordinate to, and to be put in the service of, work. We can think of sleeping: the idea is that we wish to sleep well today in order to be focused and prepared for work. And that when we’re at work we wish to be as productive as possible. So sleep becomes that which is an instrument in the service of productivity. And we can play that game with all sorts of different instances. The third condition is the resemblance claim. It seems as if everything else in life comes to resemble work, more and more. So you can think of, on a day off you are wanting to be as productive as possible, thinking about how much you got done. You can begin to think about all the ways in which you plan and schedule time with children. The terms that begin to mark out our lives even when we’re not actually working sound more and more work like. And the last condition I think is the most intense and that’s what I might call cultural forgetfulness. Well suppose there were to come to pass Universal Basic Income. And suppose, for the sake of argument, that that were sufficient to meet our material needs—that is, those concerned with having enough food, proper shelter, sufficient warmth, sufficient coldness, and the like, so that it was enough. As one philosopher, Harry Frankfurt, calls it we have doctrine of sufficiency. So suppose basic income allowed us all to have enough. Then once again I think we would need to think about what we would do with ourselves. Aristotle in 'Politics' says, really quite famously, that we non-leisure in order to have leisure. And that was the way that it would be translated: we non-leisure in order to have leisure. The question is how are we going to dwell on our leisure?And I think we’ve been educated to a point at which we really don’t know how to answer that question. People, I think, are struck by a very difficult condition, which is a medieval condition, called acedia.

The collapse of Venezuela, explained

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 14:05:50 +0000

The collapse of Venezuela and President Maduro's rise to dictatorship. Venezuela was once the richest country in Latin America. It has the largest known oil reserves in the world. And its democratic government was once praised world wide. But today, Venezuela’s democratic institutions and its economy are in shambles. The country has the highest inflation in the world, making food and medicine inaccessible to most Venezuelans. Over the last four years, its GDP has fallen 35%, which is a sharper drop than the one seen during the Great Depression in the US. The country’s murder rate has surpassed that of the most dangerous cities in the world. These conditions have sparked months of protests against the president, Nicolas Maduro. And it’s easy to see why: the country has become measurably worse since his election in 2013.

Rebranding White Nationalism: Inside Richard Spencer’s Alt-Right

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 09:03:52 +0000

Richard B. Spencer greeted an audience of more than 200 at an alt-right conference in Washington D.C. last month with the cry, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” He was met with enthusiastic cheers and Nazi salutes, and The Atlantic’s clip made headlines. In this documentary, we go further inside Spencer’s ethnocentric worldview to understand what his plans are for the so-called alt-right—namely, to bring white nationalism out of the shadows. "I don't see myself as a marginal figure who's going to be hated by society. I see myself as a mainstream figure,” he said. Spencer and other alt-right leaders see Donald Trump’s rise as the first step towards a whites-only state. "Our lived experience is being a young, white person in 21st century America, [and] seeing your identity be demeaned,” Spencer said. “I’ve lived in this multicultural mess for years and I’m trying to get out of it." Author: Daniel Lombroso

The Happiest People on Earth. North Korea: Rulers, citizens & official narrative

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 05:28:23 +0000

North Koreans say they’re the happiest people in the world. Their great leader is like a father who takes care of them and all their needs. They’re told that he’s made their country the most powerful and economically developed on the planet. A quick look at the World Wide Web or any international media might lead to a different conclusion but in North Korea, they’re banned.

Money, happiness and eternal life – Greed

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 15:50:33 +0000

Can money and power ever make us happy? How much is enough? Our constant desire for more is part of our human nature.But is greed getting the better of us? Find out in GREED - A FATAL DESIRE. From Buddhists and bankers to Eskimos and psychologists, we explore the phenomenon of greed with people from all walks of life. How can it be defined? What makes us greedy? And what are the repercussions? People like to have a lot of stuff because it gives them the feeling of living forever," says American social psychologist Sheldon Solomon. He thinks we have to come to terms with our own mortality before we can break the cycle. Are there other ways to feel happy and content? Can we simply stop being greedy by changing the way we think? 2 parts video

The real value of your personal data

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 15:43:42 +0000

The personal data that is being collected by internet companies has turned into a goldmine. The applications for this enormous mountain of data is endless, from health care uses to marketeers who can accurately predict your behavior. But who is making money from your data? And who owns your personal data? Personal data is being collected constantly. Smartphones send your location data, internet browsers store which websites you visited and credit card companies carefully register your buying patterns. One would say that all this personal data is being used to send you advertisements and banners. But that’s just the start. Your data is not only used to understand who you are right now, but also what your life will look like in the future, because that is where the big money is. Could we regain the control over our own personal data, so that we can share in the profits? Due to huge flow of information, one can tell who we are today and what we will do tomorrow. Can we get control of our own data? Information is collected and stored on your behalf. Via mobile phone and computer, every step you take is saved and analyzed. By companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter, among others. This precious personal data is not just saved. There are now new valuable uses for your data, giving your personal data the worth of gold. Data centers full of your personal data are the heart of what is called Big Data. A treasure of valuable new insights, derived from your location data, emails, photos, text messages, and more from your digital production. Because your personal data is not only used to send customized ads. Your data is used to predict your future behavior. Through smart analyzes of all your behavior that you leave behind on your mobile phone and computer, it’s easy to find out who you are. And that's not that hard, it turns out. For example, the University of Cambridge just by looking at which buttons you click on Facebook, can see if your parents are divorced, whether you are gay, and so on. Predicting human behavior, possible thanks to all your personal data, can help to design cities better, combat diseases and prevent wars. But if all of your personal data is so valuable, then shouldn’t it be time for you to get control of it? And also take part of that profit for yourself? Credits: Directed by: Martijn Kieft Research: Marijntje Denters/ Jasper Koning/ Chris Vijn Production: Jenny Borger, Hellen Goossens Editors in chief: Henneke Hagen/ Frank Wiering English, French and Spanish subtitles: Ericsson. French and Spanish subtitles are co-funded by European Union.

Gaming Through New Eyes: Born Blind, Gamer with Passion

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 23 May 2017 11:35:55 +0000

This is a short documentary about Toby Ott, a man who was born with Bilateral Anopthalmia, or in other words, without eyes. This didn't stop him from discovering the medium of video games, and his childhood interest grew into a lifelong passion. This is a whole new perspective on video games, from the imagination of someone who has never known what it is to have sight. Berk Icel was inspired to shoot this documentary when Toby emailed him to express how much he enjoyed the content on his channel. After he learned that he had been blind since birth he wanted to know more, and as their correspondence progressed he felt compelled to visit him to hear his story and share it with the world. This was a solo 0 budget filmmaking project whose core premise was to tell Toby's story in the hope that it might encourage developers to add greater accessibility features for the blind.

A Taste of New York

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 21 May 2017 11:09:25 +0000

It took 10 days, a lot of burgers and one helicopter ride to produce this video. 10 days is very little time to discover this city of endless opportunities, so we hardly slept anything and shot day and night for this time lapse film. The city that never sleeps indeed! The Taxishot: Over the 10 days we took photos of yellow cabs whenever we had time to from as many different angles as possible. So we gathered 2000 (!) photos in total we had to sort afterwards and compile to a hyperlapse around a cab in post production. It took us 5 whole days in post production to get this one shot. Technical Details: In 10 days we shot 65.000 Photos taking up 2,6 TB of our hard drives. The final 3 minute video took 36h to render on the best equipped iMac available.