New Zealand is a place of great natural beauty and resources, of pioneering immigrants from the Maori to the more recent settlers. They’re fierce, hardy, and strong, able to withstand challenges like the massive economic challenge they faced in the mid 1980’s. With their economy unraveling, they made huge, controversial changes, including doing away with farm subsidies and protectionist import controls. At first, it hurt. A lot. But now, the farmers and the fishers, the people and the economy, are prospering. And they wouldn’t go back to subsidies, special interests, or support for manufacturers. Travel to New Zealand with scholar Johan Norberg to meet some amazing Kiwis and see how they blazed a trail to economic prosperity.
As the documentary “Tax Me If You Can” explored, the tax shelter became one of corporate America’s biggest hidden profit centers in the 1990s and early 2000s. The General Accounting Office estimated that bogus tax shelters at the time cost the government more than $85 billion. Correspondent Hedrick Smith spoke with government officials, tax experts and industry insiders to expose these tax shelters. His reporting led him to some unexpected places — from the city of Dortmund, Germany, to the Cayman Islands. The documentary examined how difficult it was for the Internal Revenue Service to find tax shelters and how the tax shelter wave prompted a federal investigation. The ultimate victim in this scheme, experts in the documentary said, is the honest taxpayer who is left to make up what companies aren’t paying.
A documentary about the closure of General Motors' plant at Flint, Michigan, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs. Details the attempts of filmmaker Michael Moore to get an interview with GM CEO Roger Smith.
A documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to its fall.
Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.
Since its adoption in June 1955 by the Congress movement, the Freedom Charter has been the key political document that acted as a beacon and source of inspiration in the liberation struggle against Apartheid. It was reputedly the main source that informed democratic South Africa’s liberal constitution and a constant reference point for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and rival political parties that it spawned since 1994, all claiming the Freedom Charter’s legacy. Freedom Isn’t Free assesses the history and role of the charter, especially in relation to key political and socio-economic aspects of developments in South Africa up to the present period. It includes rare archival footage with interviews of a cross-section of outspoken influential South Africans.
"The Silent Alps" explores a forgotten massacre that is widely unknown in the modern era, the history of Kea culling in New Zealand
Unknown short stories from the past, the present and the future of fascism and its relation to the economic interests of each era. We will travel from Mussolini’s Italy to Greece under the Nazi occupation, the civil war and the dictatorship; and from Hitler’s Germany to the modern European and Greek fascism.
With the country's debt growing out of control, Americans by and large are unaware of the looming financial crisis. This documentary examines several of the ways America can get its economy back on the right track. In addition to looking at the federal deficit and trade deficit, the film also closely explores the challenges of funding national entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed ceramics workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - the take - has the power to turn the globalization debate on its head. Armed only with slingshots and an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy, the workers face off against the bosses, bankers and a whole system that sees their beloved factories as nothing more than scrap metal for sale.
James Nesbitt moved to New Zealand in 2011 when he landed the role of Bofur in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, but he says the country remains largely unknown to him. Travelling more than 1,000 miles from the tip of the North Island down to the South, the actor finds out more about the place he has called home, visiting areas of natural beauty and learning about the nation's history and traditions. Along the way, he meets former All Blacks player the late great Jonah Lomu, takes a trip around film star Sam Neill's vineyards in Queenstown, catches up with Peter Jackson and goes Base-jumping from the tallest building in Auckland.
Should the United States eliminate the penny? "Heads-Up: Will We Stop Making Cents?" is a documentary that explores the different sides of the debate, touching on the role of the penny in today's economy, predictive economic models of a penny-less future, and the cultural importance of the coin. Radio DJ and Actor Laurie Gallardo narrates the penny odyssey as we travel from Texas to Canada, stopping to speak with former Mint Directors, lawmakers, economists, and more than a few unique penny characters, including a coin-hunter, a former President*, and one very memorable penny prankster. * "Abraham Lincoln" appears in the film.
The two NZ survivors of the deadly White Island eruption tell their remarkable story of survival.
He was one of Germany's leading investment experts with an income of several million Euros per day. Now, he sits on one of the upper floors of an empty bank building in the middle of Frankfurt, overlooking a skyline of glass and steel. And talks. In an extended mix of a monologue and an in-depth interview, which is as frightening as it is fascinating, he shares his inside knowledge from a megalomaniac parallel world where illusions are the market's hardest currency. Marc Bauder's 'Master of the Universe' is based on meticulous research and provides us with geniune insight into the notoriously secretive and self-protective 'universe' of which our nameless protagonist experiences himself a master. Where other films on the financial meltdown have focused on the epic nature of larger-than-life business, Bauder probes the mentality that made it possible in the first place. A tense drama where psychology meets finance - two things that are more closely linked than you would like to believe.
On December 9, 2019, New Zealand's most active volcano erupted, engulfing 47 day trippers in a toxic ash cloud. 21 lost their lives that day and in the following weeks. Whakaari: A Heroes' Story paints a picture of the chaos and the bravery, and the complex rescue mission to save those stranded on the island.
This Traveltalk series short visit to New Zealand starts in Auckland, a bustling, modern city. Next is Christchurch, home of Canterbury University, where rowing teams participate in a regatta. Nearby is Lake Wakatipu, which inspires artists to put their impressions on canvas. We then visit Rotorua, a city famous for its geysers, hot springs, bubbling mud pools, and other geothermal activity. At Ferry Springs there is lots of trout for fishing. Later, a group of natives performs a canoe dance.
Drawing surprising connections between market methods and CIA torture techniques developed in the 1950s, the film explores how well-known events of the recent past have been theaters for the shock doctrine, from Pinochet's coup in Chile, to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, to the war in Iraq today.
A documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money.
Let’s Make Money is an Austrian documentary by Erwin Wagenhofer released in the year 2008. It is about aspects of the development of the world wide financial system.
Michael Moore comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world).
Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created