Tag Archives: war on terror

Freedom is a Big Word: After Guantanamo

Guantánamo Bay, and then what? After 13 years, a 38-year-old Palestinian named Muhammad is released from the notorious detention camp, where he was starved, tortured and humiliated. He gets the chance to start a new life in Uruguay, where he’ll get a home and welfare money. He has two years, then he’ll be on his own.

We follow Muhammad, a calm and very devout man, as he goes about his daily life, starting with his arrival in his new homeland and continuing until the end of the two years. He studies Spanish, learns to drive, prays, takes courses, calls his mother, and together with his Uruguayan wife looks for clothes for the baby they’re expecting. He’s resigned as he grapples with the local bureaucracy, but his eyes speak volumes.

At well-timed moments, we hear him talking in voice-over about his traumatic experiences in Guantánamo. Most of all, we see him looking for work, but who will take him on?

Freedom Is a Big Word shows how goodwill can descend into a sense of impotence in this confrontation with reality.

Eminent Monsters

Eminent Monsters traces the roots of western governments love affair with torture.

In  1950s Montreal Scottish born psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron experimented on his patients, using sensory deprivation, forced comas and LSD injections. Covertly funded by the Canadian government and the CIA, his techniques have been used in Northern Ireland, Guantánamo and 27 countries around the world.

Including extraordinary first hand testimony from Guantanamo survivors, the Hooded Men from Northern Ireland and senior American psychologists and military personnel, Eminent Monsters shows how the collusion of doctors to aid and abet torture began in the 1950s and continues to this day.

Programming the Nation

Programming the Nation is a feature documentary about the history of subliminal messaging in America. According to many authorities, since the late 1950′s subliminal content has been delivered through all forms of mass-media. The modern military has even been accused of these practices in the War on Terror. Director, Jeff Warrick, leads this journey through the subconscious mind while examining the reported history, scientific research and potential effects of such techniques on society.

With eye-opening footage, revealing interviews, humorous anecdotes, and an array of visual effects, this fast-paced film explores the alleged use of subliminals in advertising, music, film, political propaganda and the military. It takes in the entire history of alleged subliminal messages, from hidden sexual imagery in Disney cartoons and satanic messages in rock music, to the James Vicary experiment where “drink coca-cola” was flashed between frames at a cinema, and the infamous Republican “RATS” campaign that won Bush the presidency.

Warrick makes it his mission to determine if these manipulative tactics have succeeded in Programming the Nation, or if subliminal programming belongs in the category of what many consider an urban legend. Now, you be the judge…

Zeitgeist: The Series

The Zeitgeist documentaries are an international sensation, with over 1,000 theatrical screenings in 60 countries and 30 languages, viewed by millions on the internet and even spawning a movement.  For the first time they are now available to broadcast audiences and other license opportunities, as individual films or as an eleven part series.

Zeitgeist: The Movie is a treatment on Mythology and Belief in society today, presenting uncommon perspectives of common cultural issues.

Part One presents historical data relating to the astronomical/astrological origins of the Judeo-Christian theology (which can be extended to Islam as well), along with the understanding that these respective stories, beliefs & traditions are really an adaptation-extension of prior Pagan beliefs.

Part Two presents a controversial view of the events of Sept. 11th 2001. It describes how the event has been transformed into a sacred, near religious act and to challenge the orthodox view, regardless of the quality of the contrary arguments, is considered blasphemy and rejected.

Part Three presents a shotgun tour through the subjects of Central Banking, War Pretexts, Banking Panics, the Military Industrial Complex, Media Culture and ultimately the mental neurosis and deadly addiction known as “Power.”

The central theme is how society is often misled when it comes to certain pivotal historical events, what those events serve in function, along with how the overall social conditioning patterns we see today function to create values and perspectives which support and perpetuate the static, established order/power structure, as opposed to fluid social change and productive evolution for the betterment of the society as a whole.

Zeitgeist: Addendum was born out of public interest in possible solutions to the cultural issues presented in Zeitgeist: The Movie.

Building upon the topics of social distortion and corruption, Addendum moves to also present possible solutions. Featured in the work is former “Economic Hit-man” and New York Times bestselling author, John Perkins, along with The Venus Project, an organization for social redesign created by Social Engineer and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco.

Part One (four in the series) explains the process of Money Creation and Expansion through the Fractional Reserve System. It explains how Debt and Bankruptcy are not mere byproducts of our current system, but rather are underlying realities of our existence with periodic failures guaranteed.

Part Two (five in the series) exposes various levels of international corruption via the financial/corporate system, including the manipulation of public leaders to further the interests of corporate institutions.

Part Three (six in the series) changes gears and depicts a possible solution to the growing social problems in the world today by the introduction of a new social concept known as a “Resource-Based Economy”.

Part Four (seven in the series) gives a philosophical perspective in the hope to inspire change in the viewer and enable action to affect society for the better.

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward focuses on the very fabric of the social order: Monetary-Market Economics.

The majority of the world today have come to see basic flaws in the economic system we share. Large scale debt defaults, inflation, industrial pollution, resource depletion, rising cancer rates and other signposts have emerged to bring the concern into the realm of “public health”.

The tendency is to demand reform in one area or another, avoiding the possibility that perhaps the entire system is intrinsically flawed at the foundational level.

Part One (eight in the series) presents a treatment on “Human Nature”, with the argument that society is out of line with what Science has taught us about positive human development, enabling distortions of health and behavior that could be thwarted if the social system was changed.

Part Two (nine in the series) details the central inherent flaws of the Monetary-Market System of economic conduct and how this system is destroying ourselves and the planet in a very direct way.

Part Three (ten in the series) begins a thought exercise where the Earth and Natural Law is considered a starting point for human decision-making rather than politics, with the subject explored from all sides.

Part Four (eleven in the series) ends with a prediction of what is to come as the society becomes more destabilized due to our outdated traditional practices.

 

download PDF onesheet – ‘The Movie’>
download PDF onesheet – ‘Addendum’>
download PDF onesheet – ‘Moving Forward’>
download PDF onesheet – ‘The Series’>

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Awards:

WINNER: Award of Excellence; LA Movie Awards, USA. Best Visual Effects; LA Movie Awards, USA. Best Documentary; Image Gazer, USA. Honourable Mention; Indie Gathering, USA. USA. First Documentary, LA Arthouse, USA. Best Cinematography, LA Arthouse, USA. Best Documentary, LA Arthouse, USA. Best Political Documentary, Action on Film, USA.

Official Selections:

Marbella International Film Festival, SPAIN. Salt lake City, USA. White Sands International Film Festival, USA.

Human Terrain

Human Terrain tells two stories. The first exposes the US effort to enlist the best and the brightest of American universities in a struggle for the hearts and minds of its enemies. Facing long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has adopted a controversial new program, ‘Human Terrain Systems’, to make cultural awareness a key element of its counterinsurgency strategy. Designed to embed social scientists with combat troops, the program swiftly comes under attack by academic critics who consider it misguided and unethical to gather intelligence and target potential enemies for the military.

Gaining rare access to wargames in the Mojave Desert and training exercises at Quantico and Fort Leavenworth, Human Terrain takes the viewer into the heart of the war machine and the shadowy collaboration between American academics and the armed services.

The second story is about a brilliant young scholar who leaves the university to join a Human Terrain team. After working as a humanitarian activist, Michael Bhatia returned to Brown University to conduct research on military cultural awareness and a year later, he left as a Human Terrain member in Afghanistan. On May 7, 2008, en route to mediate an intertribal dispute, his humvee hit a roadside bomb and Bhatia was killed.

Is this a genuine attempt at cultural awareness in the battlefield or a cynical new strategy to achieve the same ends? Human Terrain asks what happens when war becomes academic and academics go to war.

Ghosts

Three Canadian men of Muslim faith were detained and tortured during a three-year period in Syria and Egypt. Upon their release, they return to Canada struggling to find answers to why this happened to them.

An internal inquiry was struck into their cases in order to determine the role of Canadian agencies and officials in their detention and torture. The inquiry was conducted almost exclusively behind closed doorsand the findings of this inquiry were made public in late 2008, revealing that the Canadian government was complicit in their detention and torture.

Ghosts follows the lives and cases of these men for a year and a half as they – with the help of lawyers, organisations and regular Canadians – fight to leave the horrors behind them, to receive an apology and compensation, and to see accountability as they attempt to rebuild their lives.

A portrait of life after experiences of torture, this is a powerful and intimate documentary about the fragile balance between democracy, human rights and national security fears in the post 9/11 era.