
Reconstruction of Hill Street Birmingham
1949 · 53m · Documentary
An engineering feat: Second city civil engineers complete a new bridge to carry traffic over New Street's tangled railway intersections.
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The Singer Story: Made in Clydebank
2019
The Singer sewing machine, international icon and a symbol of the Industrial Revolution, helped put the town of Clydebank on the map. Over the course of a century, it employed tens of thousands of 'bankies' before its demise nearly 40 years ago. This documentary charts the story of those workers: how their lives were intertwined with the fortunes of Scotland’s first US multinational company. The programme pays homage to the Singer machine, and the huge impact it made on families and households all over the world.
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The Cost of Cobalt
2021
In the cobalt mining areas of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), babies are being born with horrific birth defects. Scientists and doctors are finding increasing evidence of environmental pollution from industrial mining which, they believe, may be the cause of a range of malformations from cleft palate to some so serious the baby is stillborn. More than 60% of the world’s reserves of cobalt are in the DRC and this mineral is essential for the production of electric car batteries, which may be the key to reducing carbon emissions and to slowing climate change. In The Cost of Cobalt we meet the doctors treating the children affected and the scientists who are measuring the pollution. Cobalt may be part of the global solution to climate change, but is it right that Congo’s next generation pay the price with their health? Many are hoping that the more the world understands their plight, the more pressure will be put on the industry here to clean up its act.
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California Company Town
2008 · ★ 6
Lee Anne Schmitt explores California's landscape and past to document the history of one-time boom towns built and abandoned by the industries that necessitated their creation. Sold as a limitless land expansive with free opportunity, California was actually, from its onset, fissured by the interwoven needs of private and public interests. Schmitt's film covers various locations through time, as the major industries of the early 20th century (mining, lumber, oil) give way to the military, eventually leading to multinational corporations, and the use of small towns as satellites for growing urban metropolises.
More info →Hollywood's Greatest Trick
2017
The video is accompanied by a richly detailed article that adds more depth to the documentary. If there’s any question about why Hollywood is dead set against the unionization of vfx artists, the following graphic from the article will answer the question: vfx artists comprise the biggest portion of the crew on most Hollywood blockbusters.
More info →The High Cost of Cheap Gas
2015
The environmental problems caused by fracking in America have been well publicized but what's less known are the gas industry's plans for expansion in other countries. This investigation, filmed in Botswana, South Africa and North America, reveals how gas companies are quietly invading some of the most protected places on the planet.
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Edward Abbey, naturellement subversif !
2025 · ★ 7
A resistance writer and pioneer of nature writing with a controversial personality, Edward Abbey wrote more than twenty books on the theme of eternal nature. A gem of counterculture, his 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired a generation of environmental activists and readers with rebellious souls. Portrait of a rebellious, lyrical, and rude writer.
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Risky Roadz: 0121
2021
After a ten year sabbatical, legendary Grime filmmaker; Roony 'Risky Roadz' Keefe, makes a return to the world of documentary to uncover the business infrastructure of the fast emerging music scene in Birmingham, and, how that is being taken to a global platform.
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When the Water Stops Flowing
2026
Jonathan Stavleu explores, in a stream-of-consciousness video essay, the relationship people have with water and what happens when access to it is taken away. For this work, he examines anecdotal histories he has heard from Estonians, as well as stories from his own family history in the Netherlands, weaving them together into a journal-like narrative.
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The Last Word in Chickens
1924 · ★ 7
This 10-minute short documentary exploring the shifting state of the American poultry industry was preserved in 2015 from an original nitrate print. More information is available on the film's page in the National Film Preservation Foundation's website, where this version can be found featuring original music by Michael D. Mortilla.
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Manufactured Landscapes
2006 · ★ 7.2
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris.
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1953 · ★ 5.9
A self-narrated portrait of a Polish immigrant in Winnipeg whose unglamorous job keeping streetcar switches working reveals dignity, resilience, and pride in everyday labor.
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