West Bank Story: Parody for Peace

in Current Affairs, Film | July 7th, 2010

With Ben­jamin Netanyahu vis­it­ing Barack Oba­ma this week, we’ll hear some chat­ter about get­ting the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian peace talks back on track. But, let’s be hon­est, no one is expect­ing any real break­throughs here. Peace, love and under­stand­ing – the rad­i­cals and reac­tionar­ies won’t give you that these days. Only movie mak­ers will, which brings us to West Bank Sto­ry, a 21 minute film that par­o­dies the 1950s clas­sic musi­cal, West Side Sto­ry, a pro­duc­tion which is itself adapt­ed from Shake­speare’s Romeo and Juli­et. Direct­ed by US film­mak­er Ari Sandel, West Bank Sto­ry pre­miered at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val in 2005, and then won an Acad­e­my Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2006. In mak­ing the film, Sandel had three main goals: to make peo­ple laugh, to advo­cate peace, and to por­tray the Israelis and Pales­tini­ans in a fun­ny but bal­anced way. You can learn more about the direc­tor’s approach here.

Oth­er than watch­ing the film above, you can view it direct­ly on Google Video or down­load a copy here. Also find it list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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The Crisis of Capitalism Animated

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | July 5th, 2010

The economic/financial pic­ture is look­ing ugly once again. Indeed, just yes­ter­day, the most emailed New York Times arti­cle warned that the stock mar­ket might be on the verge of an epic crash, one that will bring the Dow below 1,000. So how did we wind up in this glob­al cred­it mess? We’ve heard var­i­ous expla­na­tions, most assum­ing that our cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem did­n’t quite func­tion as it should, and that a few reg­u­la­tions will take care of the prob­lem. But this is not the posi­tion tak­en by David Har­vey, an impor­tant social the­o­rist and geo­g­ra­ph­er (now at CUNY). Draw­ing on Marx­i­an analy­sis (it’s still alive and well some­where), Har­vey sug­gests that the cri­sis is built into cap­i­tal­ism itself. It’s not the result of too few reg­u­la­tions. Rather it’s part of cap­i­tal­is­m’s inter­nal log­ic. (Mark Man­call, an emer­i­tus Stan­ford his­to­ry prof, echoes some of these basic thoughts on “Enti­tled Opin­ions” by the way.) The ani­mat­ed video above is an out­take from a longer lec­ture pre­sent­ed by Har­vey at the Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce in the UK. You can watch the video in full here. Mean­while, David Har­vey has also made avail­able online a free, 26 hour course that offers a close read­ing of Karl Marx’s Cap­i­tal. It appears in the Eco­nom­ics sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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Move Over Oil, Algae is Coming

in Current Affairs, Science | July 1st, 2010

We’ve entered the “Age of Tough Oil.” Hav­ing tapped out the easy oil, we’re now left drilling in geo­log­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly risky places. And, of course, this makes BP-style oil spills more an inevitabil­i­ty than a one-time fluke. Lis­ten to today’s NPR inter­view with Michael Klare for more on this.

Find­ing reli­able sources of renew­able ener­gy is now the order of the day. Hap­pi­ly, researchers at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty have iden­ti­fied an unlike­ly fuel source. Algae. Watch above.

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Document the World’s Story on 10.10.10.

in Current Affairs, Film | June 28th, 2010

Aspir­ing (or even casu­al) film­mak­ers, get ready for One Day on Earth. On Octo­ber 10th, 2010, thou­sands of peo­ple world­wide will shoot film and pro­duce a crowd­sourced doc­u­men­tary show­cas­ing “the diver­si­ty, con­flict, tragedy, and tri­umph that can occur in one 24-hour peri­od on Earth.” You’re invit­ed to take part in poten­tial­ly the largest glob­al media event ever. The video above spells out the con­cept, and you can learn how to take part here.

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Soccer’s Lost Boys

in Current Affairs | June 18th, 2010


As the World Cup kicked off this week in South Africa, Cur­rent TV aired the lat­est episode of Van­guard called “Soccer’s Lost Boys.” It’s a sober­ing piece of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism that digs into the dark side of the world’s most pop­u­lar game. Mov­ing from Ghana to Moroc­co to even­tu­al­ly Paris, Van­guard cor­re­spon­dent Mar­i­ana van Zeller details how preda­to­ry agents sell African teenagers on the hope of land­ing big con­tracts with elite Euro­pean teams. The next thing they know, the young play­ers find them­selves des­ti­tute and strand­ed in an unfa­mil­iar coun­try, some­times home­less and forced into pros­ti­tu­tion, and mean­while their fam­i­lies get fleeced of their life sav­ings. It’s a grim real­i­ty tak­ing place in the shad­ow of the sport’s show­case event. Run­time is 45 min­utes.

Thanks to Rob for send­ing this along. We have added Cur­rent to our list of Intel­li­gent Video Sites.

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What the Big Spill Means for Sea Life

in Current Affairs, Science | June 11th, 2010

The BP oil spill has tak­en us into some unchart­ed waters. We still don’t know how much oil is pour­ing into the ocean each day. (Here’s the lat­est esti­mate.) Nor do we know the exact toll this dis­as­ter will take on the ecosys­tem of the Gulf. We only know that things are mov­ing in a very dis­cour­ag­ing direc­tion. Above Dr. Lisa Sua­toni, a marine expert at the Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil, answers some basic ques­tions: “Where is the oil?  What is it harm­ing?  What unique habi­tats and bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty are at risk?” You can keep abreast of these issues at the NRD­C’s Dis­as­ter in the Gulf blog, and also help save Gulf Coast wildlife by mak­ing a dona­tion to the NRDC.

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For Neda: The New HBO Documentary Now Online

in Current Affairs, Film | June 6th, 2010

Almost a year ago, the Green Rev­o­lu­tion was ignit­ed in Iran when Ahmadine­jad and the rul­ing cler­ics stole an elec­tion from Mir-Hos­sein Mousavi and his mil­lions of sup­port­ers. A young gen­er­a­tion, intent upon putting Mousavi in office, took to the streets en masse. Protests broke out across the nation … until the holy men decid­ed they had had enough. Ulti­mate­ly, bul­lets put an end to the nascent demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment (at least for now), and the bru­tal­i­ty of the regime was cap­tured in mov­ing images watched world­wide: they showed us a young woman, Neda, get­ting indis­crim­i­nate­ly gunned down by a sniper, her eyes star­ing at us as she lay dying in the streets. Above, we’re fea­tur­ing a new­ly released HBO doc­u­men­tary that intro­duces you to Neda Agha-Soltan and her life sto­ry. Writ­ten and direct­ed by the award win­ning film­mak­er Antony Thomas, the 70 minute film was cre­at­ed with a fair amount of risk, and it includes inter­views with Neda’s fam­i­ly in Iran. The Iran­ian regime, nat­u­ral­ly doing its best to stop cit­i­zens from see­ing the film, plans to release its own doc­u­men­tary, putting the offi­cial spin on the mur­der.

For Neda has been added to our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. You can learn more about the film on the HBO web­site.

via 3quarksdaily. H/T to Mike.

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Birds in the Oil

in Current Affairs, Life | June 3rd, 2010

So far, the BP oil spill has remained fair­ly abstract. We’ve seen it depict­ed in graphs and satel­lite images. Now we get to see it right up close. These pho­tos show in bru­tal detail exact­ly what’s hap­pen­ing to the wildlife in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. Con­sid­er the pho­tos a very quick glimpse into the larg­er envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter caused by this spill. Spread these pic­tures far and wide. BP does­n’t deserve to keep this mess a dis­tant idea.

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