Group items tagged

We commissioned eight documentaries from award-winning film makers and 30 shorts from new and emerging talents. The films are moving, subtle and thought-provoking stories, but they also tackle big issues and pose difficult questions. The films were shown around the world in November 2012 on more than 70 national broadcasters. The documentaries are now all free to view online. We'll make them available on DVD and in languages other than English soon. We'll also be adding educational resources to help people use them as teaching tools

Why do a billion people still live in poverty worldwide, and what can be done to change this? The series Why Poverty? uses documentary film to get people talking about this critical problem, its causes, and its solutions. These eight films are co-productions of ITVS and STEPS International, and are part of a global cross-media project aimed at raising awareness of poverty in America and around the world.

The Last Survivor is an award winning, feature-length documentary film that presents the stories of four Survivors and their struggle to make sense of tragedy by working to educate a new generation, inspire tolerance and spark a civic response to mass atrocity crimes. Following the lives of survivors of four different genocides and mass atrocities - The Holocaust, Rwanda, Darfur, and Congo - The Last Survivor presents a unique opportunity to learn from the lessons and mistakes of our past in order to have a lasting social impact on how we act collectively in the face of similar issues which still exist today.

Filmed over the course of several years, The Revolutionary Optimists follows Amlan and three of the children he works with on an intimate journey through adolescence, as they fight for the better future he encourages them to imagine is deservedly theirs.

For the whole of modern civilization, humans have attempted and failed to eradicate poverty. What can we learn from generations of failed efforts? Using a combination of animation, archival material, live action, anecdote, and humor, Poor Us looks at mankind's periodic efforts to alleviate poverty with the hope that we will get a better sense of how to move forward.

Rockliff, Mara. Get Real: What Kind of World are YOU Buying? Philadelphia, PA: Running Press Kids, 2010. Age Range: 10 and up Publisher's Description: Rockliff outlines how mass consumerism is harming our planet, and specifically how teens can use their purchasing power to enact change. She cites examples of products that teens use frequently (high-tech electronics, clothing, junk food, etc.) and explains how their production often harms the people who make them, the environment, and, potentially, the end consumer. She explains that a chocolate bar was most likely made with cacao beans harvested by exploited workers, and that a cell phone contains enough heavy metals to seriously harm our groundwater. She covers (un)fair labor practices, environmental pillaging, factory farming, excessive marketing, local vs. corporate stores, and the pervasive throwaway mentality that drives the whole cycle. The author's in-your-face approach makes her points while still engaging readers-she is never didactic or overbearing. She encourages teens to make a difference in their world by making small changes to things they do already-buying fair-trade chocolate or saving up for an organic cotton T-shirt. The pop-art illustrations are clever and illustrative of many points. The impressive bibliography provides lists of documentaries, websites, books, articles, and other sources to help teens find out how their favorite products came to be (and came to be so cheap). Learning more about how these products are made just might make some teens think twice about their buying habits.