Inside Job (2010)

 Inside Job (2010)

As he did with the occupation of Iraq in No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson shines a light on the global financial crisis in Inside Job. Accompanied by narration from Matt Damon, Ferguson begins and ends in Iceland, a flourishing country that gave American-style banking a try--and paid the price. Then he looks at the spectacular rise and cataclysmic fall of deregulation in the United States. Unlike Alex Gibney's fiscal films, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Casino Jack, Ferguson builds his narrative around dozens of players, interviewing authors, bank managers, government ministers, and even a psychotherapist, who speaks to a culture that encourages Gordon Gekko-like behavior, but the number of those who declined to comment, like Alan Greenspan, is even larger. Though the director isn't as combative as Michael Moore, he asks tough questions and elicits squirms from several participants, notably former Treasury secretary David McCormick and Columbia dean Glenn Hubbard, George W. Bush's economic adviser. Their reactions are understandable, since the borders between Wall Street, Washington, and the Ivy League dissolved years ago; it's hard to know who to trust when conflicts of interest run rampant. If Ferguson takes Reagan and Bush to task for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, he criticizes Clinton for encouraging derivatives and Obama for failing to deliver on the promise of reform. And in the category of unlikely heroes: former governor Eliot Spitzer, who fought against fraud as New York's attorney general (he's the subject of Gibney's documentary Client 9). --Kathleen C. Fennessy

From Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson (NO END IN SIGHT), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.

Schooling the World

Schooling the World

Schooling the World acquaints students with the major debates, practices, and challenges facing teachers throughout the world today.  Drawn from first-hand experience and knowledge, the authors include the latest, most up-to-date viewpoints on comparative and international education. Designed to give students in teacher education programs a global perspective on their future profession, the text is constructed around a solid framework--a consistent structural format for each chapter, and within each chapter--so students can easily draw thematic comparisons among the numerous case studies presented.

Waste Land (2010)

Waste Land (2010)

Brazilian artist Vik Muniz combines visual beauty with social awareness. Waste Land--a documentary about Muniz collaborating with the trash pickers in a staggeringly huge landfill--achieves the same fusion. Muniz, a remarkably upbeat and earnest fellow, is almost just an excuse for the movie to investigate the lives of the trash pickers, who are amazing people living on the fringes of a highly polarized society. The documentarians capture startlingly open and complex interviews with a handful of men and women striving to maintain some hope and personal dignity in some of the worst circumstances imaginable. Their vibrance and vitality will make you want to live your own life more fully. The tricky ethical issues around the entire project get a substantial discussion; Muniz is aware of the potential for exploitation and capsizing these delicately balanced lives, but proceeds with fervor. The glimpses into his artistic process (and his ability to genuinely collaborate with his subjects) provide a striking mirror to the collective effort of the trash pickers as they fight to form a political association to better their existence. Waste Land will truly make you examine your own life and may well inspire you to live better. --Bret Fetzer

Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of "catadores" -- or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz's initial objective was to "paint" the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Walker (Devil s Playground, Blindsight, Countdown to Zero) has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.

Ashes And Snow (2005)

Ashes And Snow (2005)

60-minute feature film (DVD) written, directed, produced, and filmed by Gregory Colbert. A poetic field study that depicts the world not as it is, but as it might be a world in which the natural and artificial boundaries separating humans from other species do not exist.

Colbert's Ashes and Snow feature film captures extraordinary moments of contact between people and animals as seen through the lens of Colbert's camera on more than thirty expeditions to some of the earth's most remote places. The viewing experience is one of wonder and contemplation, serenity, and hope.

Edited by two-time Oscar-winner Pietro Scalia; narrated by actors Laurence Fishburne (English) and Ken Watanabe (Japanese). Musical collaborators include Michael Brook, David Darling, Heiner Goebbels, Lisa Gerrard, Lukas Foss, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Djivan Gasparyan.

Review
The power of the images comes less from their formal beauty than from the way they envelop the viewer in their mood. . . .They are simply windows to a world in which silence and patience govern time. --New York Times

Blue Planet: Seas of Life (2007)

 Blue Planet: Seas of Life (2007)

Before creating the monumental Planet Earth, producer Alastair Fothergill and his team from the BBC put together one of the most breathtaking explorations of the world's oceans ever assembled, The Blue Planet: Seas of Life. The winner of two Emmy(R) Awards, The Blue Planet: Seas of Life is the definitive exploration of the marine world, chronicling the mysteries the deep in ways never before imagined. It is now being re-released in an all-new special edition, with an added 5th disc of bonus programming not included in the original DVD release. See it again, like never before!

Story of India (2007)

Story of India (2007)

Product Description
Sixty years after Indian independence, British historian Michael Wood presents the tale of the oldest and most diverse civilization, and largest democracy. A nuclear power and a rising giant, India's population will overtake China's within 10 years and its economy is predicted to overtake that of the U.S. in the 2030s. This journey of sights and sounds, and achievements takes him from the deserts of Turkmenistan to the Khyber Pass.

Review
If you like the idea of watching a really good National Geographic article brought to life, with the lush photography, fascinating facts, sense of discovery and slight superficiality that implies, you ll love THE STORY OF INDIA. --Mike Hale, The New York Times