Influencer hype and scarcity marketing create conditions where counterfeit makeup thrives, teens become addicting to vaping, disposable furniture kills, and corporations use single use plastics in a 4 part series.
Chocolate’s Heart of Darkness
This film, Chocolate’s Heart of Darkness, goes to Ivory Coast, which produces about 40 percent of the world’s cocoa. It tells the story of how thousands of children from neighbouring Burkina Faso and Ghana are trafficked to harvest cocoa pods.
The children work long days with poisonous pesticides and dangerous tools, with little or no reward. The Ivory Coast farms and cooperatives then supply the cocoa to the biggest chocolate producers in the world.
Maldives: Fighting Back the Tides of Trash
Thilafushi, an island of floating rubbish island in the Maldives, grows by a square meter a day. But diving instructor Shaahina Ali is trying to slow that growth by recycling and using floating barriers to hold back the rising seas.
A to Z
Where would we be without the world’s alphabets? Writing has played a vital role in the development and expansion of cultures throughout history. But researchers are only now uncovering the origin story to our own alphabet, which may have gotten its beginnings in a turquoise mine 4,000 years ago. From the shape of the letter A to the role of writing in trade and storytelling, discover how the written word shaped civilization itself.
Welcome to Sodom
Hundreds of thousands of mobile phones, LCD TVs, notebooks and the likes become useless and “out” relatively soon and end up in Ghana where children and adolescents dismantle them in toxic smoke. A “clean” business for some, a poisonous routine for others.
The Secret Life of Landfill
Dr George McGavin and Dr Zoe Laughlin chronicle the history of rubbish and explore how what we throw away tells us about the way we live our lives.
Tickled
Tickled is a 2016 New Zealand documentary about “competitive endurance tickling” and videos featuring it, and the practices of those producing the videos, directed by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve. The film explores possible legal and ethical issues with certain individuals making the videos, and has itself been the subject of legal challenges.
Drowning in Plastic
Wildlife biologist Liz Bonnin works with some of the world’s leading marine biologists and campaigners to discover the true dangers of plastic in our oceans.
America’s new gurus — in search of enlightenment
For some years now, the US has been in the midst of a second “New Age” wave. Shamans, life coaches and spiritualists are doing good business thanks to people’s search for meaning. One current trend is self-healing using kambo, a highly toxic secretion of the American giant macaque frog, which is administered in group ceremonies. It leads to vomiting, palpitations and dizziness, which adherents regard as a cleansing of the body. If used incorrectly, the substance can lead to cardiac arrest. One guru’s career is continuing, despite the deaths of his followers. Life-coach James Arthur Ray was sentenced to two years in prison in 2011, after three participants in one of his workshops died in a home-made sauna. In 2019, he celebrated his comeback in Las Vegas, and now sells self-realization seminars for thousands of dollars. For his followers, it’s proof that Ray’s strategy works. The US has given birth to huge sects that survive thanks to the utter financial dedication of their members. In 2019, cult-founder Keith Raniere was convicted in a sensational trial, having exploited and at times abused 15,000 women. One former member shares the barbaric methods that were used to keep women in the cult. This documentary takes a journey through America’s quest for spiritual fulfillment, shedding light on the questionable practices of self-appointed gurus.
Can’t Get You Out of My Head
Love, power, money, ghosts of empire, conspiracies, artificial intelligence – and You.
An emotional history of the modern world by Adam Curtis.
Stabbed: Britain’s Knife Crime Crisis
Twenty-five years after the murder of his friend Stephen Lawrence, Duwayne Brooks explores the current wave of knife crime and the impact it is having across the nation.
Pablo Escobar’s Successors
Colombia’s cocaine production dropped after Pablo Escobar’s death. But today, it is soaring again. The South American country has once again become the world’s leading producer of the drug. This documentary follows the trails of the cocaine cartels.