Oil Springs

August 1922. An American journalist, Jerry Thompson, travels to the Soviet Union and arrives in Azerbaijan. He visits the settlement of Mardakan in Baku. There, he meets an elderly man at a villa. Thompson can hardly believe what he hears. Standing before him is Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev, a once-great oil producer, millionaire, and philanthropist who lost all his wealth after the establishment of Soviet rule. Haji recounts his life story to the guest, a journey that saw him rise from a humble mason to an influential oil industrialist.

The imagination of history in Ecuador never thought that oil, “its redeeming hope”, discovered in the Lago Agrio No. 1 well, was going to mean the beginning of the worst environmental catastrophe on the planet. Thirty years of operation and exploitation of the Texaco company, forever transformed the rivers and estuaries, the forests and the life of the indigenous communities in the northern Amazon of Ecuador.

Experts say over the next hundred years the "perfect storm" of population growth, resource depletion and climate change could converge with catastrophic results. The scenarios in Earth 2100 are not a prediction of what will happen but rather a warning about what might happen.

Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge...

The Indian Act, passed in Canada in 1876, made members of Aboriginal peoples second-class citizens, separated from the white population: nomadic for centuries, they were moved to reservations to control their behavior and resources; and thousands of their youngest members were separated from their families to be Christianized: a cultural genocide that still resonates in Canadian society today.

From the acclaimed director of American Movie, the documentary follows former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter Michael Ruppert. He recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out his apocalyptic vision of the future, spanning the crises in economics, energy, environment and more.

Filmed in the Inner Mongolian portion of the Gobi Desert, this film follows a group of oil field workers as they go about their daily routine.

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.

In this evocative meditation, a disturbing link is made between the resource extraction industries’ exploitation of the land and violence inflicted on Indigenous women and girls. Or, as one young woman testifies, “Just as the land is being used, these women are being used.”

In 1971, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE ceased to be part of Britain’s empire in the Middle East and became fully independent states. BBC News Persia and BBC Arabic collaborate in this gripping film, to uncover the secrets and shady deals that underpinned the decolonization process. From eye-witness accounts of a British-organised coup to Iran being left in control of disputed islands, it's a fascinating insight to a murky history.

When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one—until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.

Wiebo Ludwig is the leader of a Christian group who brought his family to live in Alberta, Canada, 25 years ago in order live a life according to scripture. They built a small, self-sufficient community in a place that they did not realize was one of the largest undeveloped natural gas fields in North America. Unlike others who lived in the area, Wiebo and his family refused to sell their land and move, and now Wiebo is the prime suspect in a series of pipeline bombings and other acts of sabotage against the local oil industry.

No description available.

Training and Customer Service information film sponsored by the Marketing Retail Sales Department of the Standard Oil Company. Features product placement for brands like Atlas and Chevron.

Over the course of a year, film follows Vancouver Pride Society president Ken Coolen to various international Pride events, including Poland, Hungary, Russia, Sri Lanka and others where there is great opposition to pride parades. In North America, Pride is complicated by commercialization and a sense that the festivals are turning away from their political roots toward tourism, party promotion and entertainment. Christie documents the ways larger, more mainstream Pride events have supported the global Pride movement and how human rights components are being added to more established events. In the New York sequence, leaders organize an alternative Pride parade, the Drag March, set up to protest the corporatization of New York Pride. A parade in São Paulo, the world's largest Pride festival, itself includes a completely empty float, meant to symbolize all those lost to HIV and to anti-gay violence.

The causes underlying the collapse of civilizations are usually traced to overuse of resources. As we write this, the world is reeling from economic chaos, peak oil, climate change, environmental degradation, and political turmoil. Every day, the headlines re-hash stories of scandal and betrayal of the public trust. We don't have to make outraged demands for the end of the current global system - it seems to be coming apart already. But acts of courage, compassion and altruism abound, even in the most damaged places. By documenting the resilience of the people hit hardest by war and repression, and the heroism of those coming forward to confront the crisis head-on, END:CIV illuminates a way out of this all-consuming madness and into a saner future. Backed by Jensen's narrative, the film calls on us to act as if we truly love this land. The film trips along at a brisk pace, using music... Written by Franklin Lopez