Watch 100 documentaries

Philosophy – guide to happiness
Socrates on Self-Confidence, Epicurus on Happiness, Seneca on Anger, Montaigne on Self-Esteem, Schopenhauer on Love and Nietzsche on Hardship.

Worth watching if you’re into philosophy or want to see things in life from a different perspective.

How mad are you?
“Take ten volunteers, half have psychiatric disorders, the other half don’t, but who is who? Over five days the group are put through a series of challenges – from performing stand-up comedy to mucking out cows.

The events are designed to explore the character traits of mental illness and ask whether the symptoms might be within all of us.Three leading experts in mental health attempt to spot which volunteers have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. But will the individuals who have suffered from mental illness reveal themselves?”

I think it was a very interesting experiment that shows that there isn’t always such a big difference between people with mental disorders and “normal people”. I don’t think it’s very shocking that the “experts” didn’t get more than 2 out of 5. They seemed a bit narrow-minded to me. E.g., they thought that the one with social anxiety was the one that showed the most signs of anxiety, and weren’t aware of the fact that these people often underestimate themselves and often come across as normal people. They thought eating disorders are all about food and body image. They thought this woman had schizophrenia because of the way she talked and due to her slow responses, and didn’t realize that the reason could be that English wasn’t her native language etc.
But it’s worth watching if you are interested in psychology and like to observe people.

Religulous
“Religulous begins with Bill Maher, standing alone in Israel at a place called Meggido; a worthless pile of rubble where many of the planet’s religions believe the end of the world will begin. From there, Maher pushes us into an intense, honest, and brutally funny discussion of blind belief, presenting the possibility that maybe we should all consider doubt instead. We follow him around the world, as he travels from place to place talking to religious people of different faiths on different continents. The surprising thing here is that even though Maher definitely has an agenda, his movie never skews into the realm of propaganda.

It’s not propaganda, because Maher isn’t running out and finding weirdos to use in smear tactics against the devout. Typically anyone trying to make a case against God goes right to the pedophile priests and the suicide bombers, but Maher makes it a point to focus on normal, reasonably sane religious people. He’s not stacking the deck in his favor, because he doesn’t need to. He talks to truckers in a roadside chapel, he chats with random, middle-class tourists at a Christian-themed amusement park.

He talks to religious shop owners, small town preachers, televangelists, Jews for Jesus, fundamentalist U.S. Senators, Vatican priests, religious scientists, secular Muslims, gay Muslims, people in America, Utah (come on, we all know it’s not really America), Europe, and even in Jerusalem. Though those fumbling for an excuse to discredit him may claim otherwise, these aren’t extremists or lunatics. These are for the most part sane, rational, even intelligent people who believe something which Maher believes is insane.”

Although this documentary has its funny moments, it was a bit concerning to watch.

HIV = AIDS, fact or fraud?
“Too many people are making too much money out of it, and money is much stronger than truth. This feature-length expose explains exactly how the 300-Billion-dollar AIDS fraud began, why HIV can NOT be the cause of AIDS, what the real causes could be, and who manipulates the public’s good intentions while poisoning hundreds of thousands with toxic drugs that cause the very disease they are supposed to prevent.

You will meet a number of highly reputable scientists who all agree that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, including Dr. Peter Duesberg, who was the first scientist to map the genetic structure of retroviruses. He is joined by Nobel Prize winners Dr. Kary Mullis and Dr.Walter Gilbert, along with Dr. David Rasnick, an expert in the field of protease inhibitors.”

Ok, so this documentary was biased, but a few statements surprised me. First of all that there is no proven correlation between the HIV virus and AIDS, and critical scientists aren’t allowed to retest this hypothesis.

White blood cells’ CD4-t-cells identify a virus, then they alert B-lymphocite cells to produce antibodies to attack infecting bacteria and viruses. When you take a HIV blood test, if these antibodies are found, the test will come out positive. In persons who are not in AIDS risk groups the HIV test can be wrong 71% of the time. False positives can occur due to Malaria, flu, parasite infections and hormone changes during pregnancy.

Another thing that surprised me is that AZT, the medications given to HIV patients, actually seem to cause AIDS. Mortality of AZT recipients is 25% higher than the untreated.

A human body attacked by a virus usually manage to heal itself by producing antibodies. The question is, why would one take AZT to eliminate the virus (which so far hasn’t worked on anyone) when it is gradually killing the body’s immune system?

Ryanair caught napping
“Two Dispatches undercover reporters spent five months secretly filming Ryanair’s training programme and onboard flights as members of the cabin crew. The reporters reveal what really takes place behind the scenes: inadequate safety and security checks, dirty planes, exhausted cabin crew and pilots complaining about the number of hours they have to fly.”

The most disturbing thing was the exhausted cabin crew and pilots. Ryanair demands that the planes should be in and out in 25 minutes which gives the cabin crew too little time to clean the aircraft, get the passengers on and off and to go through the security checks. So they often skip the security checks.
If the pilots said that they were too tired and didn’t feel that they were able to fly they would get demoted or fired. If the cabin crew complained about the great time pressure and work conditions they’d get fired.

They probably wouldn’t be able to assist passengers in an emergency situation because 1. they were exhausted/falling asleep and 2. they had learned nothing/very little about the plane and the safety routines. They had done no emergency training on a plane or a simulator, like crews working for other airlines do, because of Ryanair’s budget.

Promises
Promises presents a powerful portrait of seven Palestinian and Israeli children who live in and around Jerusalem. All are religious (the twins are the grandchildren of a Holocaust survivor). Most have strong political beliefs and have seen their share of tragedy – Faraj’s friend was killed in front of him – but as the film makes clear, they’re also kids.

The Palestinian children learn from their parents that the Israelis are evil, Jerusalem/Israel is their land and that they need to take it back.
The Israeli children learn from their parents that the Palestinians are evil, Israel is their land and that they need to protect it.

Some of the children are smarter than the adults though, and realize that they need to communicate and respect each other if they want peace, that people on both sides get killed and that the war has no winner – as long as they kill each other both sides are losers.
If children can understand this why can’t adults?

Hacking democracy
This documentary shows the vulnerabilities of voting machines. It reveals how easily results can be altered to change the outcome of an election. It also shows how the vendor of a majority of the voting machines, Diebold, gets paid by the republicans. Besides, in a letter from 2003 the CEO promises to get president Bush re-elected in 2004.

The software installed in the voting machines is kept secret from everyone – even the computer scientists, the certification labs and the election officials.
Cuyahoga, Ohio is a swing county in a swing state, capable of influencing the results of an election. While recounting Coyahoga’s votes from the 2004 election, they found some disturbing mismatches between the official votes and the real votes.

Trouble in Amish paradise
“An extraordinary insight into the secretive world of the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

When two radical Amish men, Ephraim and Jesse Stoltzfus, start to question some of the most fundamental aspects of their Amish culture, they face excommunication from their church and total rejection by their friends and family.”

They started reading the bible and having bible meetings. The leaders didn’t like that they started questioning all the rules they had to follow that aren’t mentioned in the bible. The leaders didn’t like that they had their own opinions, and since they didn’t want to say they were wrong to have their own opinions and that they regretted it, they were excommunicated.

Interesting things happened when their daughter got cancer though.

Parallel universes
“Scientists now believe there may really be a parallel universe – in fact, there may be an infinite number of parallel universes, and we just happen to live in one of them. These other universes contain space, time and strange forms of exotic matter. Some of them may even contain you, in a slightly different form. Astonishingly, scientists believe that these parallel universes exist less than one millimetre away from us.

In fact, our gravity is just a weak signal leaking out of another universe into ours.”

Even if you don’t believe in the theories they present, it’s very interesting to watch if you like to challenge your own world view.

Enjoy Poverty
This documentary really provoked me. I realized why we mysteriously enough, despite all the “foreign aid” * and the seemingly idealistic organizations like the UN who are involved in these countries, can’t get rid of poverty in this world. In short, the problem is greedy foreign capitalists who take advantage of poor nations with an abundance of natural resources like gold – nations who can’t afford to extract them.

The Congolese are being suppressed in their own country. Armed UN soldiers “protect” Congo’s gold mines so that the west can take it and make a profit and to keep Congolese “rebels” who want their resources back, away. This is what the UN supports! Also, foreign journalists and photographers who are there to cover civil war events earn 50 dollars a picture, but the locals don’t even have the opportunity to enter the international news market. No one wants to buy their photos due to discrimination. Unless you’re from the west, the western news agencies won’t pay you. This is another way Congo and other poor countries are being exploited.

If the western world would just stop trying to take advantage of Congo and other African countries, the Africans could have had the chance to grow and get rid of poverty. At least they could have been better off than today. Why not demand fair play from the capitalists? Is it too much to ask from them? Don’t take advantage of those who suffer and aren’t even into the game yet!

• Foreign aid – up to 90% of the foreign aid returns to the donor countries in the form of goods, and the money goes to corrupt/threatened politicians who are bribed to do what certain (especially one) western countries want.

I recommend watching this documentary and others like it so that people can see what’s going on while being led to believe that “we” are helping the poor countries.

Can’t Read, Can’t Write
“Today in Britain, over five million adults have a reading age of 12 or less or, worse, cannot read at all. From dealing with bills, letters, helping with their children’s homework, shopping, and finding work, this illiteracy blights nearly every aspect of their lives, especially their self-esteem. Ashamed and embarrassed, many keep the fact that they can’t read a secret, sometimes even from their own family.”

I can’t believe no one tried to help them before. Most of them went to school for over a decade and the only attention they got regarding this issue was getting told that they were dumb! In the UK! After just a few months, with the right learning method adapted to their needs, every one of them made progress. If they had been offered a little bit of individual attention in school, think of all the suffering that could have been avoided! It’s pretty sad.
Very moving though when some of them after much frustration start being able to read.

Unlocking the great pyramid
“Jean-Pierre Houdin has his own insight of a more practical solution to the riddle of how the pyramids were built. He suggests that a ramp was used but that it was an internal ramp and that the Grand Gallery was used to move counter weights to raise the nine granite beams for the King’s chamber ceiling. Houdin worked with Dassault Systemes to test his hypotheses and to demonstrate the validity of the theory with the aid of their scientific 3D technology. They couldn’t reject his theory.”
Very intriguing, makes you curious about the mystery of the pyramids.

Kids + Money
Young people ranging from 11 to 17, and spanning several socio-economic levels are interviewed in their homes. They discuss everything from their shopping habits and addictions, the importance of clothes and fitting in at school, getting money from parents versus making their own money, and the overwhelming pressures of consumerism and image in LA.

“Growing up in Los Angeles, a child quickly learns the difference between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots,’ and where his or her family stands in that paradigm. A child also quickly learns how crucial a role consumerism plays in his or her social life; this microcosm of materialism is what Lauren Greenfield explores in her documentary ‘Kids + Money’.”

I must say I was more amazed by the parents than the kids. The influences from the environment were quite strong too. If you’re a bright, down to earth person who wants to see the same traits in your kids I guess going to LA to bring them up there would be a real stupid move (literally). I wonder how these kids will turn out as adults.

Refuge: A film about Darfur
“Pedneault approached filmmaker Alexandre Trudeau and convinced him to travel with him to Sudan to document the fighting, and after a dangerous journey through Chad, they arrived in Darfur to find a nation where people struggled to find food and water, aid workers fought to bring needed supplies to the hungry and the battle between the government and rebel forces was beginning to look less like a civil war and more like genocide. One of the rebel factions befriended Pedneault and Trudeau and took them into the midst of the fighting, where they were able to see the violence at its worst and meet the people struggling to win freedom for Darfur and its citizens.”

The government is committing ethnic cleansing of the people and destroying innocent people’s villages. These people then become refugees. Armed by the Sudanese government, the “Janjaweed” militias murder, rape, and pillage African villages with impunity.

China has been supplying money and political protection to the Sudanese regime in Khartoum in exchange for stakes in the country’s oil. The Chinese are building a paved highway which will connect Abéché to the capital.
The UN (countries) are also involved, people speculate if they’re there to stop the Chinese because they also have interests there.

Sadly and pathetically the biggest motives behind these conflicts are ethnic cleansing and oil interests. Not that I can think of a good reason to commit genocide, but it disturbs me to see time after time that a major part of humanity is so primitive.