The Cost Of Convenience(2024)

The Sun Queen(en)

Chemical engineer and inventor Maria Telkes worked for nearly 50 years to harness the power of the sun, designing and building the world's first successful solar-heated modern residence and identifying a new chemical that could store solar heat like a battery. Telkes was undercut and thwarted by her (male) boss and colleagues at MIT, but she persevered. Upon her death in 1995 Telkes held more than 20 patents, and now she is recognized as a visionary pioneer in the field of sustainable energy whose work continues to shape how we power our lives today.

Surviving Progress(en)

Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.

To Make Sure?(de)

Journalist Sandra Harkow produces a promotional film for the RFID industry. Through a time traveler, she learns about the dark future triggered by RFID chips. Her encounter with the time traveler makes her prick up her ears and she researches the radio chips. The so-called docu-fiction style, which coherently combines real interviews with film scenes, gives the viewer the impression of being part of this reality.

The 414s(en)

THE 414s tells the story of the first widely recognized computer hackers, a group of Milwaukee teenagers who gained notoriety in 1983 when they broke into dozens of high-profile computer systems, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a classified nuclear weapons research facility.

Dreams Rewired(en)

Tracing anxieties about technology back to the 1880s, DREAMS REWIRED combines clips from nearly 200 films and newsreels with an insightful commentary by Tilda Swinton on our eternal love/hate relationship with a hyper-mediated world.

Abendland(de)

Some things can be seen more clearly at night.. . A film poem about a continent at night, a culture on which the sun’s going down, though it’s hyper alert at the same time, an “Abendland” that, often somewhat self-obsessively, sees itself as the crown of human civilization, while its service economy is undergoing rapid growth in a thoroughly pragmatic way. Nikolaus Geyrhalter takes a look at a paradise with a quite diverse understanding of protection. Night work juxtaposed with oblivious evening digression, birth and death, questions that await answers in the semi-darkness, a Babel of languages, the routine of the daily news, and political negotiation: All this has been captured in images with a wealth of details that make us look at things in a new way. The longer you consider a word, the more distant is its return gaze: ABENDLAND.

Knit's Island(en)

Somewhere on the internet is a land where communities pretend to live out a survivalist fiction. The avatars of the directors of Knit’s Island spent 963 hours there, creating a fascinating film resulting from their encounter with these communities. The “players” reveal their fears and fantasies, in an at times unsettling blurring of the real and the virtual.

A86 : Le Défi d'un tunnel à double étage(fr)

The Duplex A86 is a 10 kilometer underground highway buried more than 90 meters deep. This concrete tube, measuring the equivalent of more than 30 lying Eiffel towers, is the longest tunnel in France. The result of a succession of technical prowess born from the imagination of visionary engineers, the Duplex A86 allows you to cross all of western Paris in a few minutes.

Die Macht der Elektronengehirne(de)

The Above(en)

A U.S. military surveillance balloon floats on a tether high above Kabul, Afghanistan. Its capacities are both highly classified and deeply mysterious.

Peep Culture(en)

Pop culture has become “Peep Culture”, where we’ve traded privacy for notoriety and, in the process, reinvented mass culture. But what does it all mean and how is it changing us? Hal Niedzviecki, a 38 year old husband and father, plunges into “deep peep”, with webcams exposing his every move and millions of potential internet viewers invited to watch and engage in the spectacle.

A Good American(en)

A Good American tells the story of the best code-breaker the USA ever had and how he and a small team within NSA created a surveillance tool that could pick up any electronic signal on earth, filter it for targets and render results in real-time while keeping the privacy as demanded by the US constitution.

Synthetic Pleasures(en)

Conceived as an electronic road movie, this documentary investigates cutting edge technologies and their influence on our culture as we approach the 21st century. It takes off from the idea that mankind's effort to tap the power of Nature has been so successful that a new world is suddenly emerging,an artificial reality. Virtual Reality, digital and biotechnology, plastic surgery and mood-altering drugs promise seemingly unlimited powers to our bodies, and our selves. This film presents the implications of having access to such power as we all scramble to inhabit our latest science fictions.

The New World of Xi Jinping(fr)

Behind his polite exterior lies a formidable leader with a ruthless character, ready to do anything to make China the world's leading power by the People’s Republic’s centenary in 2049. This well-documented portrait of the Chinese president gives an unprecedented insight into his politics and shows how Xi Jinping's personal journey has shaped his choices as he steers China towards world domination.

Low-Tech(fr)

What if, before rushing headfront into technology progress, we think twice about it ? As our societies bet on technology outbids, some chose to invest on sobriety : the "low tech".

MLK/FBI(en)

Based on newly declassified files, the film explores the US government’s surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr.

More Than Robots(en)

More Than Robots follows four international teams of teenagers as they prepare for the 2020 FIRST Robotics Competition. Get to know competitors from Los Angeles, Mexico City and Chiba, Japan as they work towards the ultimate goal of taking their unique designs all the way to the highly competitive global championships. Along the way they must overcome challenges such as having limited resources or putting everything on hold because of the COVID pandemic. The kids persevere and learn that there is a lot more to the competition than just robots.

Origins(en)

"Origins" takes a journey through the biological roots of where we have come from and where we have gone. Using fire as a metaphor for technology, the film looks at the advances of our civilization and how the recklessness of unchecked technology is now choking out the environment and poisoning our bodies. Interviews with the biggest names in the health and green space create compelling context and arguments for how we can better coexist with nature. "Origins" shows how man, technology, and nature can walk together in balance.

Petrol - Carburant - Kraftstoff(de)

An audiovisual experiment that shows how oil is refined into gasoline and ultimately powers cars and other vehicles, accompanied by classical music and experimental synthesizer sounds. Filmed in the Libyan desert, the film traces the path and development of the gasoline, from the extraction of oil as it is drilled in the Libyan desert to the pump at the gas station, making road construction machines dance and convertibles roar through the Spessart forests. This film also drew Herbert von Karajan and Leo Kirch's attention to Hugo Niebeling, in which the director has road bulldozers "dance" to the music of Vivaldi.

The Truth About Killer Robots(en)

Exploring provocative viewpoints from engineers, factory workers, journalists, philosophers and Asimov himself, The Truth About Killer Robots is a cautionary tale about a world automating beyond control.