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Eco-Movies

Here is a selection of movies to help inform and inspire you on your quest to save the world. The video images and reviews were kindly supplied by Alice in Videoland.

Cnr Tuam and High Streets, Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone +64 3 365 0615 | alice@aliceinvideoland.co.nz

Alice in Videoland


Zeitgeist


Duration: 122min | Country: USA | Year: 2007

'Zeitgeist, The Movie' and 'Zeitgeist: Addendum' were created as Not-for-Profit expressions to communicate what the author felt were highly important social understandings which most humans are generally not aware of. The first film focuses on suppressed historical & modern information about currently dominant social institutions, while also exploring what could be in store for humanity if the power structures at large continue
their patterns of self-interest, corruption, and consolidation.

View the movie online via the Zeitgeist website - click here

Mark’s take on it: Still to come

Zeitgeist


The Great New Zealand Fishing Scandal - TV Doco


Country: NZ | Year: 2009 | Director: Guye Henderson

The Great New Zealand Fishing Scandal exposes the use of foreign factory trawlers by large NZ companies and Iwi to catch their fish quota. 45% of all Deepsea quota is caught by foreign boats.

Paying third world wages to their crews,these foreign boats are having a devastating impact on the NZ domestic fishing fleet whose numbers have dropped by over 50% in the last 10 years.

This documentary also exposes the immoral fishing practices of these foreign boats that deprive NZ fishermen of catching what is arguably their own fish.

View the movie online via the director's website - click here

Mark’s take on it: Still to come
Great NZ Fishing Scandal


The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil


Rating:Rating E | Duration: 53min | Country: USA | Year: 2006

A look at how Cuba transitioned from a highly industrial society to a more sustainable one, having lost access to Soviet oil in the 1990s. This is a story of the Cuban people's ingenuity and triumph over adversity - through cooperation, conservation and community; a valuable look at addressing the challenge of reducing our energy use and living in a sustainable environment.

Mark’s take on it: This is a must see. It shows us how when the conventional systems of our modern way of life break down (as we are rapidly now experiencing...) that there are simple and effective solutions to solving the problems of meeting the necessities of life for all.
Power of Cummunity


The Real Dirt on Farmer John


Rating: M Rating Contains low level offensive language. | Duration: 82min | Country: USA | Year: 2007 | Director: Taggart Siegel

The epic tale of a maverick Midwestern farmer. An outcast in his community, Farmer John bravely stands amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors, and violence. By melding the traditions of family farming with the power of art and free expression, this powerful story of transformation and renewal heralds a resurrection of farming in America. A haunting and humorous odyssey, capturing what it means to be wildly different in a rural community. 'Unbelievably special, a real and gripping story, with insight and humour' - Al Gore.

Mark’s take on it: A bit strange at first but if one perseveres then all the good points are made and show yet another great example of how we may all be living one day soon as our corporate run systems start to break down.
Farmer John


Foodmatters


Rating:Rating G | Duration: 80min | Country: USA | Year: 2008 | Director: Anto Skene

A hard hitting, fast paced look at our current state of health. Despite the billions of dollars of funding and research into new so-called cures, we continue to suffer from a raft of chronic ills and every day maladies. Patching up an over-toxic and over indulgent population with a host of toxic therapies and nutrient sparse foods is definitely not helping the situation. The film sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide sickness industry and points out that not every problem requires costly, major medical attention and reveals many alternative therapies that can be more effective, more economical and less harmful than conventional medical treatments.

Mark’s take on it: Another life changer! two main issues brought to light; the corporate health, sorry - 'sickness' industry funded by big pharmaceutical pushing a 'pill for all ills' and the life giving power of raw organic food and mega doses of vitamins as nature's wonder cure.
Foodmatters


Future of Food, The


Rating: Rating E | Duration: 88min | Country: USA | Year: 2005 | Director: Deborah Koons Garcia

This provocative, award-winning documentary offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabelled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery stores for the past decade. Filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia travels across America, Canada, and Mexico, speaking to farmers and examining the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system. 'One of 2005's must-see documentaries' -San Francisco Chronicle.

Mark’s take on it: Very interesting viewing. Again the corporate machine runs rampant across the world driving farming families off the land and replacing life giving food with genetically engineered limited numbers of crops kept viable with huge quantities of Roundup herbicide and other chemical pesticide sprays. An eye opener...
The Future of Food


A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil


Rating: Rating E | Duration: 52min | Country: USA | Year: 2007

An informative, inspirational documentary aimed at sharing ideas to provoke environment-friendly and cost-effective changes in cities worldwide. The documentary focuses on innovations in transportation, recycling, social benefits including affordable housing, seasonal parks, and the processes that transformed Curitiba into one of the most liveable cities in the world.

Mark’s take on it: This is brilliant! No ‘doom and gloom’ just pure inspiration. Possibly the best living example of probably the worlds only existing Transition Town with measures established in the early 1970’s. Rent this and share the news.

A Convenient Truth


One Man, One Cow, One Planet (AKA How to Save the World)


Rating: Rating E | Duration: 56min | Country: New Zealand | Year: 2007 | Director: Thomas Burstyn
Narrator: Peter Coyote

AKA "How to Save the World". This 'eco-mentary' exposes globalization and its mantra of infinite growth in an infinite world for what it really is: an environmental and human disaster. But across India marginal farmers are fighting back. By reviving biodynamics, an arcane form of agriculture, they are saving their poisoned lands and rejecting the bio-colonialism of multi-national corporations. Elderly New Zealander, Peter Proctor, is at the forefront of this burgeoning bio-dynamic agricultural movement - they're calling him the new Gandhi.

Mark’s take on it: This inspired me to finally plant my vege garden after much procrastination and to keep the ‘banner flying’. Again, no ‘doom and gloom’ just achievable practical solutions and a living example of one New Zealander changing the face of rural India. We need him here too. More than anything it shows how with a decision to use ones ‘whole heart’ any one person can change the world in a major way. It does not need 6.5 Billion of us to change it for the better, it only needs You!

One Man, One Cow, One Planet


Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Season 1


Rating:Rating PG (Contains low level offensive language) | Duration: 328min | Country: USA | Year: 2007
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Ted Danson, Daryl Hannah, Moby, Laura Dern etc

Created by the Sundance Channel, each episode of this series revolves around a different green theme, spotlighting three specific innovators or innovations that have the potential to transform our everyday lives. Visionaries in various industries, bitten by the environmental bug, happily invite us into their studios, labs and workshops as they attempt to provide ways in which we can live more sustainably on our planet. Interviewees include celebrity greenies Morgan Freeman, Ted Danson, Laura Dern, Daryl Hannah, Moby, Ben Harper and many more.

Mark’s take on it: Two DVD’s containing about 16, 45minute episodes, each a bright light of hope and inspiration showing how ordinary people all over the planet are already solving the worlds problems with existing solutions that everyone could adopt. This should be on TV in New Zealand.

Big Ideas for a Small Planet


e2: Energy


Rating: Rating E | Duration: 180min | Country: USA | Year: 2007 | Narrator: Morgan Freeman

A 'must see' for the eco-concious, this features people, places and innovations that suggest a more enviromentally balanced future is possible. Equal parts visual style and storytelling acumen, each episode promotes such issues as 'Harvesting the Wind', 'Energy for a Developing World', 'Growing Energy' and 'Coal & Nuclear: Problem or Solution'.

Mark’s take on it: Similar in format to ‘Big Ideas’ but focussing on energy issues only and presenting 6, 45 minute TV episodes. Again real solutions already available. No need for us to ‘re-invent the wheel’ there are people all over the world who have already re-invented sustainable solutions, all we need do is learn from them and run with it…!

e2: Energy


GARBAGE WARRIOR


Rating: TBA | Duration: 90min | Country: USA | Year: 2008 | Director: Oliver Hodge
Starring: Michael Reynolds

Garbage Warrior is a feature-length documentary film telling the epic story of maverick US architect Michael Reynolds and his fight to introduce radically sustainable housing. An extraordinary tale of triumph over bureaucracy, Garbage Warrior is above all an intimate portrait of an extraordinary individual and his dream of changing the world.

Mark’s take on it: Architect and developer of the ‘Earthships’ – earth berm off grid passive solar homes built almost entirely with refuse, this man’s work is the primary inspiration for my current work at Ecotect Ltd and with the ‘Solabode’ which is essentially my own version of the Earthship made palatable for the mainstream NZ market with the aim to bring affordable eco housing to the masses. This film toured with the NZ Film Festival in 2008 but the DVD has 40mins of extra footage and interviews.

Garbage Warrior



A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash


Rating:Rating G | Duration: 83min | Country: Switzerland | Year: 2006

An astoundingly sobering and unashamedly apocalyptic documentary about the world's obsession with oil, when it's going to run out, and what will happen when it does. And it's not looking good. An impressive array of impassive experts - including Republicans and even a former OPEC leader - spell out the potentially dire consequences of our continued unbridled consumption of global oil stocks.

Mark’s take on it: Not to be missed, this is the whole story on peak oil, it puts our whole oil based civilization into perspective.

A Crude Awakening


An Inconvenient Truth


Rating: Rating PG | Duration: 100min | Country: USA | Year: 2006 | Director: Davis Guggenheim
Narrator: Al Gore

The history and perils of global climate change are explored in this popular and controversial documentary featuring former vice president Al Gore. Taking his environmental science presentation on the road, Gore argues - with both alarming statistics and disarming humour - that just as the deleterious effects of global warming come from human activities, so too must the solutions to a crisis he believes places the future of Earth in the balance. Winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Mark’s take on it: Excellent and essential viewing.

An Inconvenient Truth


The 11th Hour


Rating: Rating PG | Duration: 95min | Country: USA | Year: 2007 | Director: Oliver Hodge
Co-Written and Narreted by: Leonardo DiCaprio

Is Earth headed for environmental catastrophe? Co-producer/narrator Leonardo DiCaprio is joined by an array of experts who warn that mankind is almost out of time to repair the damage done to the environment by destructive industrial practices and overzealous energy consumption. Fortunately, this provocative documentary suggests, it may not be too late to heal the planet if 'greener' energy technology is aggressively pursued.

Mark’s take on it: I bought this movie from Amazon.com - $4.99US – an excellent doco on all the world's problems not just peak oil, like the rate of species extinction at 50,000 extinctions per year!!

The 11th Hour
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