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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

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Monopoly so fragile

A big boat stuck in the Suez Canal, catastrophically disrupting global logistics - it wasn't just predictable, it was inevitable. For decades, the shipping industry has consolidated into just a few companies, and ships got bigger - too big to sail.

As Matthew Stoller points out, in 2000 the ten biggest shippers controlled 12% of the market, today, it's more that 82%, and even that number is misleadingly rosy because of alliances among the megashippers that effectively turn them into one company.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/what-we-can-learn-from-a-big-boat

The Suez crisis illustrates one of the less-appreciated harms of monopoly: all of us are dunderheads at least some of the time. When a single person wields a lot of unchecked power, their follies, errors and blind-spots take on global consequence.

The "efficiencies" of the new class of megaships - the Ever Given weighs 220 kilotons and is as long as the Empire State Building - were always offset by risks, such as the risk of getting stuck in a canal or harbor.

Despite this, a handful of executives were able to green-light their deployment. Either these execs didn't believe the experts, or they didn't care (maybe they thought they'd retire before the crisis) or they thought they could externalize the costs onto the rest of us.

Running a complex system is a game of risk mitigation: not just making a system that works as well as possible, but also making one that fails as well as possible. Build the Titanic if you must, but for the love of God, make sure it has enough life-boats.

Monopolies are brittle. The ideology that underpins them is fundamentally eugenic: that there exists among us superbeings, genetic sports who were born with the extraordinary insights and genius that entitle them to rule over the rest of us.

If we let nature run its course, these benevolent dictators will usher in an era of global prosperity.

This is catastrophically, idiotically, manifestly wrong. First, even people who are very smart about some things are very stupid about other things.

Charles Koch took over his father's hydrocarbon empire and correctly concluded that the industry was being held back by a focus on short-term profits. He made a series of long-term bets on new production technologies and grew the business a thousandfold.

Being patient and farsighted made Koch one of the richest people in world history - and one of the most influential. He pioneered a kind of slow, patient policy entrepreneurship, investing in a network of think-tanks that mainstreamed his extremist ideology over decades.

And yet, this man who became a billionaire and changed the character of global politics with his foresight has managed to convince himself that there is no climate emergency. That patience, foresight, and cool weighing of probabilities have gone out the window completely.

Smart people are often fools (so are regular people). History is full of them. Take William Shockley, the Nobel-winning inventor of silicon transistors who failed in industry because he became obsessed with eugenics and devoted his life to a racist sterilization campaign.

Moreover, fools sometimes succeed. Take Mark Zuckerberg, who justified his self-serving "real names" policy (which makes it easier to target ads by banning pseudonyms) by claiming that any attempt to present yourself in different ways to different people is "two-faced."

That is a genuinely idiotic thing to believe: presenting yourself differently to your lover, your parents, your toddler, your boss and your friends isn't "two-faced," it's human. To do otherwise would be monstrous.

But even when monopolists aren't idiots, they are still dangerous. The problem with Zuck isn't merely that he's uniquely unsuited to being the unaccountable czar of 2.6 billion peoples' social lives - it's that no one should have that job.

Monopolists all have their own cherished idiocies (as do the rest of us), but they share a common pathology: the ideology, popularized by Thomas Friedman and others, that "efficiency" is the highest virtue.

The whole basis for 40 years of tolerating (even encouraging) monopolies is the efficiencies of scale that come from consolidating power into a few hands, and the shared interests that arise from a brittle interdependence.

Who would go to war with the trading partner that controls the world's supply of some essential item?

This was always, predictably, a system that would work well but fail badly. Clustering the world's semiconductor production in Taiwan made chips cheap and plentiful, sure.

But then the 1999 Taiwan quake shut down all the world's computer sales. There are plenty of examples like this that Stoller lists: a single vaccine factory in England shuts down in 2004 and the US loses half of its flu vaccines.

Despite the increasing tempo of supply-chain crises that ripple out across the world, we have allowed monopolists to "take the fat out of the system at every joint," setting up a thousand crises among us and yet to come.

Bedding makers can't make mattress for want of foam. RV manufacturers can't get enough "air conditioners, fridges, furniture" to meet orders. Often, the pivotal items are obscure and utterly critical, like the $1 "flat steel form ties," without which home construction halts.

"For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost." We've understood that tightly coupled systems have cascading failures since the 13th century. "Resiliency" is inefficient - but only if you ignore what happens when brittle systems fail.

Every monopolist *necessarily* shares an ideology that elevates brittleness to a virtue. They must, because monopolies are brittle. One foolish mistake, one ship wedged in a canal, one delusive denial of climate change, and we all suffer.

Every monopolist believes in their own infallibility. They must, because to have someone as fallible as me or you in charge of the world's social media or shipping or flat steel ties is otherwise a recipe for disaster.

Of all the dangerous things monopolists are wrong about, this belief in their own inability to be wrong is the most dangerous.

Image: Copernicus Sentinel (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Container_Ship_%27Ever_Given%27_stuck_in_the_Suez_Canal,_Egypt_-_March_24th,_2021_cropped.jpg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

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srwestvikwrites · 5 years ago

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Privilege is the Haven of Thorns

I wrote this post the week George Floyd was murdered. I was angry, and tired, and confused, and increasingly more apprehensive in my capacity as a person and as a writer as I was drawn in to the immense whirlpool of the zeitgeist gripping the internet and society.

It was such a complicated and emotional time. I was wracked with guilt at not going to the BLM protest in Madrid because we had just opened up into Phase 2 of the desescalada and I was scared of COVID. I was furious at the denial of individuals in my home country of Singapore who refused to believe that just because our race riots were in 1964 and not 2020 that it meant we had no more issues of systemic discrimination or privilege to challenge. I was exasperated and uneasy and inspired at having been drawn into a massive shitshow about race that rocked the Tolkien fandom within the same timeframe.

All of this made me question my place and my purpose as an author writing a story like Haven of Thorns. It doesn’t dwell on these issues, but it draws on them, in the same way that my life doesn’t linger on the colonisation of my home country or the country of my ancestors (India) and yet is irrevocably shaped by this history.

Haven of Thorns was always going to be a story taking place in the strange rivers of colonial legacy. It is a story of drowned histories and ghosts that reside in the very stones of a city and demons that linger inside people who were happy enough to let them back in. All of it is pushed along by the current of time, where history is not stagnant but forces change. It is about war, and it is about subtle discrimination, and it is about what we choose to do when we’re so hung up on our independence story that we refuse to acknowledge the rot in our roots.

I’m reproducing the post as I wrote it all those weeks ago, even though there are better ways I could have expressed my thoughts, and indeed some of these thoughts have new nuances now as I have drafted pivotal scenes in the story. There are other things I’d rather have focused on. The haven of thorns is more than mere privilege now. And perhaps one day I’ll expand on that.

But for now, this is a historical record of what I was thinking as it was all going down and I was trying to decide what sort of story I wanted to tell in the world I lived in as the person I am.

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I’m not going to be coy about the metaphor anymore. This book was always going to be highly political. It has just become even more political. I cannot begin to describe how apt and how heartbreaking it is to be drafting my novel right now.

Some context should perhaps be given as to the kinds of politics that are informing this story. I began outlining the earliest iterations of Haven of Thorns at the height of the European migration crisis. While migration itself is not a main theme of the story – and where it does feature, it’s from a rather inverted historical power dynamic – the backlash against it was always present in the telling of the tale. The rise of the European right terrified me. I had never experienced open racism before until one incident when I moved to Norway in late 2015, where I was lucky enough to have an ally at the time, though I never learned her name. I have seen far too many swastikas misappropriated from their holiness to represent hatred, spraypainted on neighbourhood walls in Trondheim, London, and Madrid.

For many years, I likened racism and xenophobia and white supremacy to a contagion, even to possession (which may have been down to the title of this book I read during high school). My view on this has changed, now. For those raised into these ideas, sure, the demon metaphor may still apply. But for many, these corrupted values take root and fester because we allow them to.

The old first draft of Haven of Thorns was begun in the first week of November, 2016. I feel I have no need to elaborate on why this timing is significant. Globally, the sense of the triumph of ignorance and vitriol was palpable. Over the next few years, partially because I became more active on social media and partially because of the degree I was studying for, every day required exposure to injustices very often predicated on culture, ethnicity, language, and/or race.

Then in 2019 Singapore commemorated the bicentennial – our 200 year anniversary of being colonised. And once again I was confronted with the bizarre lack of acknowledgment of how blatantly race relations had been directed and segmented by the British, and how whatever the government line says, we have not bounced back from the wounds that gouged in our society. I interned at an NGO dealing with race relations, and it only illuminated what we’d rather cover up – the value judgements we make of people based off their skin colour, the god(s) the pray to, or the language they speak. When COVID-19 reared its head Singapore was lauded for their response, until it hit the migrant worker dormitories. That was a powder keg waiting to explode. And it is false and unjust to pretend that the conditions they are living in do not have their own origins in the petulant protests of those who unfairly profiled and characterised the workers and robbed them of better conditions, resulting in the tragedy that has taken place now.

Even climate justice and its link to ethnicity began to seep into the story, particularly during the early 2020 fires in Australia and how severely the Aboriginal peoples were affected.

As I write this post Minneapolis is up in arms, and Americans are out in the thousands across the country protesting for justice for George Floyd and the countless other black Americans who have been victims of the system and of police violence.

Growing from childhood to adulthood in the 2000s-2010s has meant growing up in a time when discussions about race, ethnicity, culture, and the legacies of our most backward perceptions and prejudiced notions have come to the forefront, both of activism and of violent action taken against others. How could I not be impacted, for example, by the horror of the massacre in Norway on 22 July? How could I not have felt the shadow of the War on Terror through the rampant Islamophobia in the media and in society?

The extent to which all these disparate ideas of politics and power and race and xenophobia and colonialism actually manifest in Haven of Thorns isn’t perhaps measurable in the amount I’ve discussed them here. But the core of this book is that the haven is privilege, and thorns are both the barrier of our ignorance and the spears upon which we sacrifice those who challenge it. White privilege in the West. Chinese privilege in Singapore. Yes I fucking said it. To refuse to see that is privilege, in and of itself. One can feel hurt, to be associated with the violent ways these ideas manifest. Or, one can choose to acknowledge that feeling implicated by despicable acts is perhaps the spark to challenge one’s own biases.

This story is about breaking that thorn barrier and letting in the light, in all its unbridled blinding glory, to burn away the festering hatred we’ve allowed to take root in our flesh.

In the end an important theme in Haven of Thorns – perhaps the most important – is the power structures and prejudices that prevail when colonisation has ended, along with its associated forms of exploitation, and a state becomes self-governing. It’s about who remains in power, why they remain there, and what it means for those who do not have an equal share in that power. I’m not just talking about physical force. I’m talking about value judgments that disenfranchise people based on their inherent qualities. Things like language, religion, or skin colour. Having a voice and having the power to exercise and sustain what you advocate for are all very different things, and this is why these stories cannot be apolitical. A person’s life, their right to life, and their rights to liberty and equality should not be a matter of politics – and yet they are. Because politics is about power. And power is far too often exercised unjustly.

Blaming the old oppressor only works up to a point. At some stage, a country has to face what it has done and continues to do to itself, and whether they are going to choose to make collective, powerful, and perhaps jarring value changes for the sake of basic human rights and justice. After all, prejudice is learned. It can be unlearned.

While this tale focuses on the legacy of colonisation, these same principles lie behind the abuse of authority and the untended wounds of what has happened to the black community in America for centuries, itself founded upon ideas of racial superiority. The police brutality coupled with endorsement from the highest offices in the land is a horrific ugliness – but worse, is those who choose not to see it for what it is. Those who tweet #alllivesmatter. Those who say they don’t see colour. Those who question why race has to be dragged into everything. To quote Moses in Dreamworks’s The Prince of Egypt: “I did not see because I did not wish to see.” This is privilege. This is us inviting contagion into our societies and refusing to mask up and letting it kill us from the inside out. But unlike a contagion, this is discriminatory. That is the essence of it. The differential treatment is the point. If you question why people are burning and looting, why they aren’t being “peaceful”, why they don’t comply (they do – it doesn’t work, as anyone who watched the clip of the CNN reporter would know), why they are so angry – then you are in the haven of thorns. You just refuse to acknowledge it, because the only light seeping into your little puddle is filtered, screened, and you’d rather ignore the shadows cast by the thorns.

So many of the choices in Haven of Thorns hinge upon deciding whether to preserve or whether to overturn these vicious cycles of hatred. It’s so painful to see these struggles continue to be mirrored in the real world, happening to real communities at this very moment. Part of me wants to stop writing this, because I cannot begin to capture the true agony of what is happening, no matter how much I empathise. But another part of me knows that I am in a position of great privilege, and perhaps it is time I put my voice to something that truly matters. Add another line to the anthem that advocates for these deep-set value changes that we need to make on a domestic and an international scale.

In the first very first chapter of this story, the royal palace burns. It may just as well have been a police station.

#work:hot #irdiverse #privilege #race #fantasy #social justice #my writing

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brigade-claire-opinions · 5 years ago

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Day 24: The Descent

This movie scares the shit out of Rikka, so kudos for that.

The Descent is a 2005 film written and directed by Neil Marshall, concerning our protagonist Sarah and five other women who go spelunking during a girls' trip to Appalachian Mountains. While exploring the caves, it's revealed that the trip planner, Juno, took them to a new, uncharted cave system instead of the one they planned on exploring. After a collapse leaves them unable to return the way they came, the group discovers a colony of humanoid creatures who have evolved to live and hunt in the caves. Now our heroines need to outwit these creatures to escape with their lives.

Neil Marshall is a master of the craft. Once our cast enters the caves, the film's atmosphere becomes thicc and tense and never gives even a moment's reprieve. The creature designs on display are absolutely sick, with gross, fleshy designs and glazed-over eyes to demonstrate that they're blind. Marshall also demonstrates a mastery of jump scares; they are scarce and placed well enough that they're never annoying. I love when a jump scare is intended for and meaningful to the character and not included for the sole purpose of getting a cheap scare out of the audience, and that's exactly what we have here.

The film's score is fantastic, memorable, and never in the way, which is a rarity in mid-2000s horror. The cast is fantastic too, blessing Marshall's screenplay with powerful performances. It's great how, even after the group splinters off, they all learn in different ways how the creatures hunt and how they can overpower them. I found myself rooting for all of them to find their way out, including that treacherous bitch Juno. It is really gratifying to watch these ladies dispatch these goons as well. Those moments feel earned after all they go through together.

This film has two endings: the original UK ending and an alternate (and, sadly, canon) ending for the US release. While I don't want to spoil anything, the original ending suits the film much, MUCH better, as it calls back to a pivotal event early on in the film. The US ending, which more are likely familiar with, was likely swapped in to better tie into the sequel.

Regardless of which version you watch, The Descent is a great horror film. Its dark tone and relentless tension provide an atmosphere unmatched by nearly anything else in the era. Though I highly recommend the original UK ending (especially since the sequel is, unfortunately, nothing to write home about, especially because Marshall did not pen or direct it), this film has earned every single positive review it received. Check this out if you're looking for a different evolutionary branch of horror film; it's absolutely worth your time.

Speaking of Neil Marshall and humanoid creatures, though...

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debtorbeetle15-blog · 6 years ago

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The Woman Who Inspired the DCOM Classic The Color of Friendship Reflects on Its Legacy

Nearly 20 years ago during Black History Month, The Disney Channel premiered The Color of Friendship, a movie based on true events about a young white South African girl and a young Black-American girl who develop a strong bond despite their racial differences and experiences. Mahree Bok (Lindsey Haun), who lives a comfortable life in apartheid-era South Africa, participates in a student exchange program in America, thinking she will be staying with a white family — but is surprised when Piper Dellums (Shadia Simmons) and her family are Black — and in turn, the Dellums are shocked that Mahree is white.

In the DCOM (Disney Channel Original Movie) golden age of Johnny Tsunami, Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, Halloweentown, and other millennial cult favorites, The Color of Friendship distinguished itself as a groundbreaking movie that took an an unflinching look at racism, specifically the racism experienced during apartheid — South Africa's institutionalized system of racial segregation and white supremacy, in place from 1948 through the early '90s. Racial groups were geographically and economically separated by oppressive laws that limited Black people's access to a variety of economic and social opportunities. Apartheid has commonly been compared to the Jim Crow Laws legalizing racial segregation in the United States, particularly in the South; both systems kept Black people socially and economically disadvantaged, the effects of which persist today. The Color of Friendship explored the different ways racism was expressed in South Africa versus America, and how it impacted both Mahree as a white South African, and Piper, a Black American whose father, Congressman Ronald Dellums of California, was one the most vocal American political voices against apartheid in the 1970s and '80s.

The movie won several awards, including the Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program in 2000 and an NAACP Image Award in 2001, and enjoyed a widely positive reception from critics, who praised Disney for making an unapologetic statement about racism, particularly to a young audience accustomed to the lovable, if corny, DCOMs of the late '90s. But all these accolades would have been impossible if not for one person — Piper Dellums.

The real life author and activist, Piper Dellums.Photo: YouTube

Disney was inspired by Dellum's short story "Simunye," which focused on that pivotal summer in 1977 when she, as an 11-year-old girl, came face-to-face with a kind of racism completely outside her experience. Dellums told TV Guide she remembers the thrill she felt as a child at the prospect of hosting a young, Black South African girl in her home. "I knew we would be able to offer freedom for a year from a regime or experience that was so outside of ability to even cognitively understand," Dellums said. "I was a young, naive kid who wanted a sister." In fact, that summer with Carrie — renamed Mahree for the TV movie — is one that she often evokes, even now as a 53-year-old author, director and public speaker who has traveled the country to speak on the socioeconomic and political structures that oppress people of color.

In the late '90s, while Dellums was living in South Africa to help build some of the first free housing for Black people after apartheid, Kevin Hooks, the director of The Color Of Friendship, and Allan Sacks, the executive producer, contacted the Dellums family in hopes of adapting their story into a DCOM. In an unusual push for a delicate handling of the material, Dellums and other members of her family were consulted throughout the entire writing process of the movie.

Friendships cannot be defined or limited — friendship, love, justice, peace, honor, respect, integrity — these things can't be defined by race or distinction.

"This was a very progressive and provocative step to confront race relations on the Disney [Channel]," Dellums said. "It was less about the truth of how the family dynamic unfolded and more about this conversation about race — it was safer to have that conversation about race between an American and a South African than to confront racism in America."

And The Color of Friendship didn't shy away from the truth about racism. The film pointed out the lasting effects of slavery on Black Americans. It also highlighted the conflict between Mahree and Piper over the death of Steve Biko, a Black South African anti-apartheid activist. And although some parts of the movie were altered to fit the family-focused tone of Disney Channel, Dellums said the majority of the movie stayed true to her experience. Perhaps the most powerful scene of the movie is a two-minute conversation that shows Mahree's nonchalant attitude about her own racism. When Mahree learns that she's going to attend Piper's school, she's shocked that she is attending a "Bantu school" — a term for Black schools in South Africa's segregated education system meant to ensure Black people remained in the uneducated working class. Piper is confused at the word "Bantu," and she asks Mahree if it means the N-word. Mahree tells Piper "Bantu" means "Negro" or "Black" in Afrikaans, adding that "Kaffir" means "N--" before adding that she would never call anyone that word.

A conversation like this — one that did not censor the N-word — was shocking to hear on the Disney Channel. But Dellums said hearing someone so casually describe the practices of economic and social enslavement showed how blind Carrie — and her fictional counterpart, Mahree — was to the racist system she had been raised in and benefitted from. "It's very at ease that [way] she discusses — she knows it's a bad word... but as you recognize, it's very casually spoken, which lets you know that it was common in her home," Dellums said.

Dellums said the movie accurately depicted Mahree's shock, not only when learning that her host family was Black, but also upon discovering they enjoyed a rather upper-class lifestyle (Dellum's mother was an attorney and her father was a congressman). However, the movie couldn't begin to touch on the true breadth of racist behavior Mahree's real-life counterpart displayed when she first arrived. For instance, Carrie wrapped towels around her hand to open doors in the Dellums' home, and she ran hot water over utensils before eating with them. But as the months went by, similar to what is seen in the movie, Carrie began to awaken to the racism in her own community and the realities of being Black in a racist system like apartheid, thanks to the Dellums' consciousness of their own Blackness. During this time, Dellums said she and Carrie grew closer and did "everything together," from trips to the mall to roller skating to going to movies. During the summer of 1978, Dellums recalled the girls saw popular teen film Grease five times in a row and memorized the songs and dances, both developing crushes on lead actor John Travolta. "That's how we became sisters," Piper said. "We were tremendously inseparable."

Mahree and Flora in The Color of Friendship.Photo: Disney

The movie ends with Mahree returning home, and upon greeting her Black housekeeper, Flora, Mahree shows her the inside of her jacket, which has the African National Congress flag sewn into it — proof of Mahree's solidarity with the Black liberation movement. In real life, Carrie helped form the first anti-apartheid student underground movement when she returned to South Africa, Dellums said, but was soon arrested for her organizing. She wrote letters asking for Rep. Dellums' help, but then communication from Carrie ceased. After attempts to reach her through official channels failed, Dellums and her family assume that Carrie was killed as a result of her activism. (According to Dellums, Carrie's father was a high-ranking judge in South Africa, rather than a police officer as shown in the movie.)

Nearly 20 years later, Dellums said the movie's powerful message is as relevant as ever. She still believes that love and respect can help tear down systems as powerful as institutionalized racism. "We are one body of humanity," Dellums said. "Friendships cannot be defined or limited — friendship, love, justice, peace, honor, respect, integrity — these things can't be defined by race or distinction."

Source: https://www.tvguide.com/news/color-of-friendship-piper-dellums-interview/?rss=breakingnews

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maartenscherpenisse · 6 years ago

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It was perhaps most popular in the 1950s, as a new consumer society began confidently rolling off the production line, and the age of literary science fiction arguably reached its peak. It was particularly popular with children, who read about it in comics with titles like Fantastic Adventures and Planet Stories. But many adults were equally sold on the promise offered. It was assumed fairly widely that by the year 2000 the promise would have been kept, and that humanity would benefit greatly.

It didn't take long for this optimism to abate, and for a few decades the idea seemed to disappear from the popular consciousness. But I've noticed that in the last few years that old promise has resurfaced in the popular consciousness. This time around, though, it has a different taste to it. This time around, it seems more like a threat.

I'm talking about the human colonization of other worlds. It seems eccentric even to write the words, but there's no doubt that a belief in humanity's need—perhaps its destiny—to colonize the moon, or Mars, or other worlds known or unknown, is making a strange kind of cultural comeback. No matter that it is no more practical now than it was in the 1950s. No matter that it doesn't look likely that it could happen within the lifetime of anyone alive today, if ever. The practicalities are not the point: it is a fantasy, a motif. It is a means of salvation.

Back in the optimistic 1950s, with the promise of material abundance everywhere, the space race beginning, and much of the population of the Western world still excited about the possibilities offered by new technologies and a beneficial, authoritative science, the idea of humans some day extending their reach to other worlds seemed simply an inevitable progression. I remember believing it myself at school in the late 1970s and the early 80s. This was the future, and it looked great. I consumed Isaac Asimov novels at a rate of knots. I was looking forward to it.

Today, the world is a different place. The popular faith in science and technology has drained away, to be replaced by a widespread, if often unspoken, fear. From biotechnology to geoengineering, from unmanned drones to internet surveillance, the democratic promise of technology has been transmuted into an authoritarian threat. Meanwhile, that vision of science-fueled progress has done as much damage as it has offered improvement. With the climate changing, with the sixth mass extinction well underway, with the ocean swimming in our industrial refuse, with our own chemical backwash in our breast milk and bloodstreams, it's a harder world for techno-optimists to find a voice. We have opened the box and seen where our ambition leads, and though we might quickly close it again and look away, it is too late in the day for any kind of innocence.

I think it is precisely this fear of the future, this sense of a looming apocalypse, this feeling that we have unleashed a monster that is now beyond our control, that has given rise to the latest outburst about the colonization of other worlds. This time, the idea is not buoyed on a tide of optimism and hope, but tinged with desperation, sadness and sometimes even anger. This time, it is not our next exciting adventure, but our final hope.

Just in the last few years, I have seen a number of people who should know better speculating on how colonizing Mars may be humanity's best prospect for a liveable future. The logic verges on the psychopathic: We have now wrecked this planet beyond the point of no return; there are too many people here, our political systems are unable to contain our technological or economic ambitions, and individual greed and desire is running out of control. There is no way that seven billion people can live the kind of lifestyle they apparently want to live without endless conflict and ecological destruction.

The solution? Not to change ourselves, but to find another planet on which to replay the same script. If we begin to shift people "offworld," we will have new frontiers to explore. The pressure on Earth will be reduced. We will be saved, by our cleverness, from the consequences of our cleverness.

Some of the voices which have been clamoring for humans to build themselves a presence on other worlds have been predictable enough. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, for example, a veteran of those optimistic times, called last year for "American permanence on the planet Mars" within two decades. Stephen Hawking, probably the world's most famous scientist, recently insisted that "we must continue to go into space for humanity...We won't survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet."

Physicists and astronauts can be excused their daydreams, but they are no longer alone. New strands have been woven into the optimistic space rhetoric of earlier times, and one of the most common is the suggestion that colonizing other worlds will provide new space for humans to expand—and, perhaps crucially, may offer new resources for the toys, gadgets and machines we are mining our own planet to death to get hold of. Writing in the millionaire's magazine of choice Forbes last year, technology writer James Conca made this case starkly: "Growing shortages of key inorganic elements, such as rare earth elements for all our electronic gadgets and renewable energy systems, platinum and other related metals...suggest that we may need more non-renewable resources than Earth can provide," he explained.

You will find arguments like this in every niche on the internet now: we need more space, we need more stuff, and we can't find it here. Maybe it is "out there" instead! Bind this bundle of blind greed and desire with a length of imperial bombast—insist that exploring space is the equivalent of exploring the oceans in an earlier age, that it is our right and our destiny—and you have a whole new fantastical mythology on your hands. Now, the planet which created us is what holds us back from achieving our potential. Note how Hawking talks of "escaping" the Earth, as if the only living planet we know of, the source of all life, were a prison, and the dead vacuum of space offered the clean air of freedom. It takes a strange kind of mind to believe this. Perhaps it takes a brilliant one.

At the same time as this seed has begun to re-establish itself in the intellectual topsoil of the industrial world, I have seen other utopian weeds begin to flourish. I recently had a conversation with a woman who told me she was looking forward to the development of the artificial uterus—a technology which is currently being explored—so that women could be relieved of the burden of pregnancy and birth. She believed it would foster gender equality.

Perhaps related to this is the ever-popular dream of the "Singularity"—itself a term coined in the 1950s. The Singularity is the point at which machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence, and all bets are off about the future of our species (and presumably every other species too). The Singularity is an idea that used to be confined to the hipster idealists of Silicon Valley, but it has recently broken free and is beginning to establish itself more widely.

There is plenty more technological utopianism that could be added to this list: the ongoing crusade by neo-environmentalists to use biotechnology to recreate extinct species, for example. Or perhaps even the increasingly dominant concept of the "Anthropocene" era, the Age of Humans, in which we have changed the Earth so radically that our only option is to act as if we were not simply inhabitants but creators: to take on the mantle of gods in order to correct our mistakes. For a culture which pivots around a need for control and a deeply anthropocentric idea of human manifest destiny, the appeal of this notion is clear enough.

What are we to make of this? Is it some strange, deranged endgame? Perhaps techno-industrial society, hyped up on its own sense of indestructibility, is hitting walls everywhere and doesn't have the intellectual or spiritual equipment to deal with the resulting mess. All we can do is argue for more of the same: more onward momentum, more technological mediation, more control. Are these anything more than the fantasies of people whose worldview is crumbling? Are they any more than delusions?

Certainly many of these fantasies—because this is what they are—start to fall apart on examination. Take that colonization of Mars, for example. The writer John Michael Greer recently drew attention to a paper published in the journal Nature in 1997. A team of economists had calculated how much value was contributed to the global economy by nature, as opposed to human effort. Their results suggested that, for every US dollar's worth of goods and services consumed by human beings each year, around 75 cents are provided free of charge by the Earth's ecosystems. Only the remaining 25 cents were created by human economic activity. If we were to colonize a dead planet, like Mars, we would somehow need to make up that 75 percent on our own, working it up from a world of dead rock and dust. How would we do it? We have no idea. In all likelihood, it would be entirely impossible.

So, what should we call this clutching at straws? We could call it idealism, even utopianism. It is clearly both of those things. But perhaps it is something else too. Perhaps it is a modern day form of Romanticism.

Look up the word "Romantic" in a dictionary, and you will probably be met with definitions like this: "exaggeration or picturesque falsehood... A sense of remoteness from or idealization of everyday life ... Exaggerate or distort the truth, especially fantastically." "Romantic" is a word that is commonly thrown around, often by the kind of people who idealize Mars bases, to dismiss people who draw inspiration from the past rather than the future. It is a popular insult, which, as so many insults do, relieves the insulter of the burden of thinking.

A "Romantic," in these terms, is somebody who views the past through "rose-tinted spectacles," and desires a return to it. Somebody who, for example, idealizes rural communities and low technology cultures and doesn't understand the harshness and horror of preindustrial life. A "Romantic" is usually a bourgeois escapist, who sees "nature" as welcoming rather than threatening, doesn't realize that life before the coming of antibiotics and television was nasty, brutish and short, and is only able to hold those views because of his or her privileged position within the protective bubble of industrial society.

This caricature is not entirely unfounded. Certainly there are plenty of naive visions of the past around, and there are plenty of unrealistic assessments of the present as well. But it seems to me that Romanticizing the past, in our culture at this point in time, is less common than Romanticizing the future. The only difference is that Romanticizing the future is socially acceptable.

Consider what the two worldviews have in common. One of them looks back to a period of the past which is considered to be superior to the present, and draws inspiration from it. So a "primitivist," for example, may look right back to the Paleolithic era, before the development of agriculture, and hail this as the high point of human development. We lived in harmony with the natural world until the first grain seed was cultivated, after which we slid into a future of hierarchy, control and ecological destruction. Because there is no possibility of getting back to this period, and because we know very little about it, it is easy to project our emotional needs onto it. This is essentially the Christian narrative of the Fall re-tooled for an anti-capitalist age, and it has the same primal appeal.

It's not hard to find people who swim in these waters. I've swum there myself, and I find it a tempting and comforting story. Perhaps buying into narratives like this is foolish, or perhaps it is just human. But if it is foolish, is it any more so than indulging in fantasies about moon bases and salvation by silicon chip? What is the difference between those who project their needs onto the past, and those who project them onto the future? What is the difference between someone who sees perfection in the ice age, and someone who sees perfection in the space age? It may not always be realistic to look to the past for inspiration, but at least we know, more or less, what the past was like. We have no idea what the future will bring. Perhaps that is the attraction: space is empty, in every sense, and that makes it big enough to contain all of our dreams, however baroque.

Still, if we are going to use words like "Romantic," we should at least understand their provenance. The Romantic movement, which flourished during the first half of the 19th century, was a reaction to the utilitarianism of the 18th-century "Enlightenment." It responded to the dehumanizing impact of mass industry, the rationalization of nature and the increasing emphasis on human reason, with a defense of an emotional, intuitive reaction to the natural world and to human relationships. Though it is perhaps best known today through the poetry of Wordsworth or the art of the German landscape painters, it was at the time just as deeply entwined with radical politics and an assault on the dogmas of materialism and scientism. If it sometimes idealized the past, that was probably an inevitable reaction to the bombastic championing of the future which was going on all around.

Personally, I don't think the word "Romantic" should be used as an insult at all; like its counterpart "Luddite," it is a misused historical term. But if it must be—and perhaps it is too late to turn things around—then at least let it be an equal opportunities insult. If it is to be used to condemn those who idealize particular time periods, let the time periods encompass those yet to come as well as those which have gone.

Looked at this way, the Mars-base future, like the future in which we rebuild passenger pigeons in laboratories, breed babies in machines and download our consciousness into silicon chips, is an exercise in Space Age Romanticism. The kind of people who are disgusted by an idealized past can often barely contain their enthusiasm for an idealized future. And when objections are raised, they can dress their visions up in moral language: we must save the planet, we must provide new space for humans to develop and meet their ever-increasing needs. Expect to hear more of this in years to come, as the situation here on Earth grows more desperate.

What is to be done about this? The answer to this question, as so often, seems to me to be personal rather than political. There is no way to prevent this society from Romanticizing progress and technology, and there is no way to prevent it coming down hard on visions of human-scale and ecological development. It will continue to do this until its own intellectual framework, and probably its physical framework, collapses under its own weight. These attitudes are in our Space Age DNA.

But what we can do, when presented with a vision which projects an ideal onto either the future or the past, is examine our own personal need to be deluded. Engage with any of the world's great spiritual teachers, or many of its secular philosophers, and you will come across the claim that most of us, most of the time, are caught up in our own delusions. That is to say, we are creating our own mental maps of the world, by which we navigate its harsh tracts, and we are hugely reluctant to see these maps taken from us, or to see any of the directions printed upon them questioned. These maps may be religious, philosophical, political or any variation of these things. But they mean that when we look out at the world, we don't see the world itself, we see our own perception of it, and that perception of it is colored by our own emotional needs.

So, if we need to believe in progress, we will believe in progress. If we need to believe in Apocalypse, we will believe in that. If we need to deny the existence of climate change, or believe we can go back to the Pleistocene or forward to the Martian future, we will believe those things, and as long as we want to believe them, nothing can tear those maps from our hands.

The purpose of delusions is to comfort us, and our Space Age delusions comfort us on a civilizational level. The best way around them is probably to examine our own mental maps—and thus our own minds—and try to deflect them as they come. This is the work of a lifetime, but perhaps in the end it is the only work.

"All that we are," explained the Buddha 2,500 years ago, "is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become." We can see what our civilization is becoming, and where it is going too. What delusions brought you here—and how do you begin to strip them away?

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enough-finance · 8 years ago

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The Origins and Story of the Financial Crisis One of the differences between Roger Lowenstein's 2000 book, When Genius Failed, and his latest book, The End of Wall Street, is that when Genius was written it plowed a lot of new ground describing the events that led up to (and followed) the collapse of the improbably-named Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund back in 1998. (At that time, the LTCM saga was a very big deal, although the seriousness of the event has certainly been eclipsed by the more recent financial crisis.) The fact that Lowenstein was--and remains--a gifted writer just made Genius all the better. Today, in contrast, the events of the recent financial crisis are reasonably well known, and I've lost count how many books have been written on the subject. Is there room for one more? Sure. However, don't expect blinding revelations. Really. There is little new material that you probably haven't seen elsewhere. Fortunately, The End of Wall Street is well written, as you would expect from Lowenstein, so be prepared to enjoy a thoughtful, well-researched and engaging story. I haven't downgraded The End of Wall Street because it isn't the first book on its subject (although some may want to do that), but rather have rated it on the basis of how enjoyable it is. Frankly, I don't think it's quite up to When Genius Failed standards, but it's still a good effort. Go to Amazon

I am still confused by financial tools like "swaps" but Mr I did not take any economics courses in college so when the subject is applied to current political, cultural occurrences, I feel frustratingly removed. Mr. Lowenstein's accessible description of what probably will be remembered as the pivotal event in two administrations has opened my eyes. I am still confused by financial tools like "swaps" but Mr. Lowenstein has walked me through the process of how subprime securities passed through the hands of "thrifts" as mortgages ending up in the investment banking houses on Wall Street. How CDOs (another confusing financial implement) extended the scope of investment for the subprime securities. How the rating services played a part. He has helped me see more clearly the responsibility Congressman Barney Frank (the whipping boy in the minds of many people) bares, especially when compared to the brokerages themselves. Unfortunately I think it is only a matter of time until it happens again. Go to Amazon

4.5 stars-Presents an excellent,overall overview of the financial collapse The author has done an excellent job in his overall coverage of the financal fiasco that is now called " The Great Recession ".He shows how an alliance of hedge firms,Wall Street investment banks,major commercial banks, private equity firms,and credit rating agencies were able to use the shadow banking system to engage in debt leverage through the process of securitization of financial assets and mortgage debt based on the use of derivatives in completely unregulated derivative markets and deregulated financial,money and stock markets worldwide.Any reader will be well rewarded . Go to Amazon

Great book. Easy read in laymans terms. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the financial crisis. Three Stars Very detailed and well documented account of what happened. ... Get a first hand view of just how the world ... Excellent telling of the lead-up to, the collapse and aftermath of the 2008-2009 economic crisis Clean summation of the biggest crisis of our time Regarding deadly corruption in regulation of the economy including stocks, bonds, options: Beautifully readable, engrossing and understandably terrifying

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aussiebillsweb · 3 days ago

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topsolarpanels · 8 years ago

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50 documentaries you need to see

Ten of the best nonfiction film-makers today choose their own favourites, from serial murderer tales to meta pranks.

Joshua Oppenheimer

The Texan directors feature debut, The Act of Killing ( 2012 ), and its follow-up, The Look of Silence ( 2014 ), explore the consequences of the carnages in Indonesia. Both were nominated for Oscars .

Joshua Oppenheimer, photographed at home in Copenhagen. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose for the Observer

Salaam Cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1995

For this film, Mohsen Makhmalbaf announces a casting call: thousands of people turn up and theres a riot to get in. Each participant is channelling their worries and hopes into the desire to be in a movie. He interacts with them in this autocratic route, which builds the cinema ultimately about power and authority. He demands that people scream on command. One girl becomes so frustrated that she does start to cry, so he tells OK, youve attained it. And shes so happy, but then theres the frustration as she realises this was her moment on screen. She thought thered be a script and a real movie to make afterwards. Its a devastating, beautiful film.

A scene from Close-Up by Abbas Kiarostami.

Close Up, Abbas Kiarostami, 1990

A man pretends to be Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the director of Salaam Cinema . He insinuates himself into a familys life out of loneliness, to make friends. At one point the family realise hes not really the director and have him apprehended. The cinema follows this mans trial in an Iranian court, and then the real Mohsen Makhmalbaf satisfies the man and takes him to the family.

The impostors fragility ultimately embodies what it means to be poor and fighting in life, and through that you feel how sad it is that we live in a world where people are measured by wealth and power, and the cruelty that any human being could ever feel insignificant.

Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris, 1978

This was Errol Morriss first cinema. He was taking his time with it so Werner Herzog promised If you finish this film I will eat my shoe, which he did. Its about two families in California who operate pet graveyards, and it looks at humen relationships to their pets. Its an odd mystery, a pet. We eat animals, we use them for labor, but then we keep them in our home as objects upon which we project love that we maybe lack elsewhere. Morris has these carefully crafted tableaux: theres one continuous shooting where a woman has a 15 -minute lament, complaining about aspects of their own lives, and thats where the movie becomes something altogether greater and more mysterious.

Loss Is to Be Expected, Ulrich Seidl, 1992

This was constructed shortly after the fall of communism in eastern Europe and it looks at two communities on either side of the Czech-Austrian border. Theres an elderly human in Austria looking for a new spouse, and he fulfils a lone single woman on the Czech side of the border.

There are these amazing scenes where they go on a date to a funfair and then to a sexuality museum. Shes much more sexually comfy than he is, which is a source of incredible comedy. But its about passion and love and the fulfilling of our quotidian needs and the necessary, wilful blindness towards our deeper needs because ultimately, to contemplate those requires is to contemplate our own mortality.

A scene from The Hour of the Furnaces. Photograph: Tricontinental films

The Hour of the Furnaces, Octavia Getino and Fernando e Solanas, 1968

This is a furious, angry cinema about neocolonialism in Argentina, and its the most devastating look at colonialism Ive seen in nonfiction films. The sections about Argentinas oligarchy, and the exploitation on which they flourished, are so poetically rendered that you relate to the horror of totalitarianism purely through your emotions.

It was built secretly and was screened at illegal opponent meetings, in defiance of the authoritarian rule. People were arrested for screening it. I imagine that ensure it at the time you would come out feeling like youd “re going to have to” do something about the situation. There are segments of The Act of Killing where I surely had this film in the back of my head. KB

Lucy Walker: The Up series showed me what the medium was capable of

Director Lucy Walker. Photo: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

British director Lucy Walker has been Oscar-nominated twice, for Waste Land ( 2010) and The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom ( 2011 ). She is currently working on a remaking of Buena Vista Social Club .

Hoop Dreams, Steve James, 1994

Hoop Dreams follows two very talented African American boys in Chicago who get a basketball scholarship to go to a prestigious, predominantly white high school. It follows them for five years and its a spectacular example of a longitudinal documentary where you get to glimpse the machinery of life. You get a real sense of hour unfold and the big forces that act on us. The twistings and turnings are subtle , nothing much happens, and yet it feels unbelievably dramatic and compelling because its so well crafted and the characters are so beautifully rendered. I watched it repeatedly when I was stimulating my first cinema, Devils Playground , because it follows young people through this pivotal period in “peoples lives”, and I was trying to understand how you could get so much narrative, feeling and character into a movie. Theres a scene where the mum is icing a birthday cake for her sons 16 th birthday. Its an interview, in the sense that the film-maker is asking her the issues and shes talking to camera, but it doesnt feel like one, its so much more cinematic and compelling and the activity is so perfect.

Streetwise, Martin Bell, 1984

This film had its beginnings in a photojournalism assignment for Life magazine by the photographer Mary Ellen Markabout a group of street kids living in Seattle. She persuaded her husband, Martin Bell, to make a film about them. Its just so intimate that its hard to believe the film-maker is actually in the room with these kids. Its like hes put on a cloak of invisibility. I could have chosen any number of cinema vrit masterpieces but for some reason this moves me. Ive made quite a few films with young people and its fascinating because the plot of their lives is so close to the surface: one conversation can change the course of your life when youre young in a way that is rare when youre older and you are able to capture that nano-second when the course of a lifes direction is altered. When you put a camera and a cinema crew into a room, the observers paradox is almost always true you cant capture life because youre in the way of it. But these kids seem unaware of the camera and theyre behaving in a way that feels like life unfolding. The filmmaker is so present with them, you cant help but understand what theyre “re going through”, and to understand is to feel empathy and to want to help.

The Five Obstructions by Lars Von Trier.

The Five Obstructions, Lars von Trier and Jrgen Leth, 2003

In this underrated cinema the iconoclastic Danish director Lars von Trier challenges experimental film-maker Jrgen Leth to remake one of his earlier movies, The Perfect Human , 5 times, each time with a different creative constraint. The first obstruction imposed by von Trier, for example, was that the cinema had to be made in Cuba, using shootings of no more than 12 frames. Another was that it had to be made as a cartoon. Its basically these two creative egos going up against one another and it dedicates a fascinating insight into the film-making process, what goes on in a directors head and how you cope with stress and constraint and challenge. Its delicious and playful and theres never a dull moment watching these two maestros needling each other.

The Gleaners and I, Agns Varda, 2000

This film was made during the early days of the hand-held digital camera, when for the first time you could capture something high-quality enough to show on a big screen on a camera that would fit in your handbag. Its an essay about the people who pick through other peoples leftovers, whether it be the remains of the harvest in the countryside, or in cities. Its very casual, but Varda is so astute and the quality of the film-making is such that it becomes something very beautiful, a meditation on life. Were having this golden age of documentary right now and its being driving in technology. In the past you would need to write a script first because the editing process was so laborious but now you are able to shoot a whole bunch of stuff and capture life in a way that you couldnt before and this movie, shot by a 72 -year-old woman employing a very low-key format, shows you just what level of artistry is possible.

Jackie in 21 Up, 1978. Photo: ITV

Up series, Michael Apted, 1964

Im fascinated by longitudinal film-making and this series, which has followed the lives of 14 British infants since 1964, when they were seven years old, showed me what the medium was capable of. This series is head and shoulders above any other attempt to record dramatically a whole human life. And because its a whole group of people, you learn not just about the individual but also about the organizations of the system in which theyre living. I cant think of any other artefact in our culture that can tell us so much about Britain in our lifetime and how society is evolving as this body of work. Its light and fascinating and its one of the things that inspired me to do the work that I do. JOC

Alex Gibney: Fake home movies dont bother me you might as well object to dreams

Going Clear director Alex Gibney. Photo: Larry Busacca/ Getty Images

Alex Gibneys award-winning films include Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room ( 2005 ), Taxi to the Dark Side ( 2007) and Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God ( 2012 ). Last year he released documentaries on Scientology and Steve Jobs. He tells: I dont believe in five best films. But I do believe in influential films. These are five of mine .

Night and Fog, Alain Resnais, 1955

What really impressed me about this movie was its concision. Its about the Holocaust, but it has a simple and horrible beauty to it, because it describes the scaring nature of the Holocaust through a powerful series of images and a narration that was specific, naming the collections of items of the prisoners and survivors. Its the cruel verse of detail that is so heartbreaking: the handles of the ovens, the fingernail scrapings on the ceilings of the cells. We assure piles of combs, shaving brushes, shoes and a vast mountain of human hair. It took something so horrible but discovered a way to go to the heart of the matter through simple details.

Gimme Shelter , Albert and David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin 1970

Here you assure the Rolling Stones on tour singing about empathy for the demon, but their posturing about satanism blows back at them at the Altamont music festival. Its structured like a detective tale: it starts with a assassination a Hells Angel stabs somebody who seems to have a gun in the audience and then you go back in time. Maybe one of the most powerful scenes is of the Stones listening to a playback of Wild Ponies in the studio. Its stunning in its simplicity. That movie went route beyond a concert reveal; it celebrates music but its really about a few moments in time and how dark forces-out get unleashed. Its powerful both in its observation and its analysis, which is a rare combination.

Leon Gasts When We Were Kings. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/ Allstar

When We Were Kings , Leon Gast, 1996

This is perhaps the greatest sport cinema ever attained. It has wonderful cinema vrit footage of the Rumble in the Jungle, the famous 1974 battle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Gast has the most magnificent material, particularly in Muhammad Ali on a running, dancing, gooning for the camera, at his most charismatic. And then the dwell figure of George Foreman. But Gast wasnt be permitted to put that footage together, and in arrives Taylor Hackford, shoots some interviews with people who were there , notably George Plimpton and Norman Mailer, and through their recollection you also have a sense of analysis and understanding rather than mere observation. So its combining those two things in the film that really is magnificent.

Stories We Tell , Sarah Polley, 2012

This is a detective narrative thats very much in the first person. Its about identity, trying to understand your childhood, and ultimately paternity. Sarah Polley is digging back into the relationship between her mother and father, who she discovers isnt her biological father. In some quarters she was criticised for using a series of fictional home movies that she manufactured, but it didnt bother me at all they might as well any objections to dreamings and memories, because those are everyday recreations. The trick is receiving the verse in their own homes. Its a very powerful movie about memory and exploration and love, because she comes to appreciate her adoptive father in a manner that is she might not otherwise have done.

Waltz With Bashir, an animated documentary.

Waltz With Bashir , Ari Folman, 2008

Part of the small but growing category of the animated documentary, Waltz With Bashir is actually a film about repressed memory, and the recollection of Israeli soldiers trying to understand why theyre having these nightmares. The notion of using animation to convey what is mostly going on inside their heads, in their imaginations, is such a powerful one. It doesnt become clear until nearly the end that the soldiers all took part in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre in Lebanon in 1982. And the very end of the movie includes just the slightest bit of real footage: a woman whimpering in the wake of that carnage. It really is one of the most poignant movies about the trauma of war. KB

Kim Longinotto: All the very best Tv documentaries are on the BBC at the moment

Film-maker Kim Longinotto. Photo: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

British film-maker Kim Longinotto tackles topics such as female genital mutilation ( The Day I Will Never Forget ) and women opposing abuse ( Sisters in Law ). Her most recent cinema, Dreamcatcher , is on Chicago females trying to leave the sexuality industry .

Shermans March, Ross McElwee, 1986

I saw this at film school, then watched it again at a festival a couple of years ago and thought it was so charming, so good. It has a very simple premise. The director is meant to be making a film about General Shermans march through Georgia during the course of its American civil war, but he falls out of love with the idea. Instead, the film becomes about his attempts to find a girlfriend, shooting as a kind of video diary an approach that was completely new at the time. Its so candid and affectionate and lovely, and everyone at the celebration loved it. Not many cinemas bear rewatching, but this one does.

Tales of the Grim Sleeper, Nick Broomfield, 21

Nick Broomfield has become much more serious and political in recent years and this is a difficult and perpetrated cinema. Its about a man who was arrested in 2010 for killing as many as 100 prostitutes in Los Angeles over a period of 25 years. Whats extraordinary is how he managed to get away with it for so long the police didnt seek because his victims were mostly black prostitutes. Its a very timely cinema, in terms of Black Lives Matter and police abuses in the US, and I thought he got it just right. Its also a really good crime story.

Solar Mamas.

Solar Mamas, Jehane Noujaim and Mona Eldaief, 2012

This is a film about Bedouin women trying to get solar energy in their village in Jordan. It follows one woman travelling to a college in India to become a solar engineer. I like it because its not saying, Oh, look at these poor women. Instead, it presents women actively changing their lives and I found that very inspiring. So many documentaries tell you what to think. This one doesnt it puts you straight into the story and you get to know the characters merely by watching them. It was part of a very good BBC series on poverty. Thats where all the good Tv documentaries are at the moment: on the BBC.

Virunga, Orlando von Einsiedel, 2014

I watched this in the cinema, which was good because its very beautifully filmed a real spectacle. Its set in a reserve in the Congo, which is home to the last mountain gorillas on earth and it follows the people who are trying to save them, as well as the corrupted people trying to get the land to drill petroleum. Theres a moment when the person or persons in a neighbouring village are assaulted. It was filmed so well, I dont know how they did it. Youre right in the thick of it and you feel so angry, because you know it all come to corrupt practices and greed.

Five Broken Cameras.

Five Broken Cameras, Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi, 2011

This is about a Palestinian man who films the destruction of his villages olive orchards by the Israeli army. His cameras maintain get broken by the Israelis, hence the title, but he just maintained filming. I think he was feeling: Theres an incredible incorrect being done to my people, Im going to film it, even if I succumb doing it. Then he linked up with an Israeli film-maker, who edited the footage. I recollect people saying he shouldnt have worked with an Israeli, but I thought it was so great that they came together and made something very powerful which showed us what is really going on in Palestine. KF

James Marsh: In my view there should be no borders to film-making

James Marsh at the 2015 Palm Springs film festival. Photo: C Flanigan/ Getty Images

James Marsh is a British film-maker, best known for the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire ( 2008) and the acclaimed Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything .

Man with a Movie Camera , Dziga Vertov, 1929

This was the first truly subversive, playful documentary. Its notionally a day in the life of a city in the Soviet Union and so it has, on a purely sociological/ historical level, great value. But what it does beyond that is to show you the means of production: the filming, the trim room, the editing all the things that are going into the stimulating of this film. Its style before its period, the Tristram Shandy of documentaries, if you like. Its so inventive and it has techniques that, 87 years later, still look pretty revolutionary: the freeze frames and slow motion. Its simply full of inventive and brilliant formal ideas as well as being a very beautiful cinema to watch. And its informative too, showing us the Soviet Union in a halcyon period before Stalins terror, when you felt that things were still possible in a new political context. Of course we now know that Vertov suffered in the Stalin era, as many other independent artists would have done, but theres a sort of optimism and a playfulness to it that you wouldnt expect from a Soviet documentary from 1929.

Le Sang des Btes , Georges Franju, 1949

This is a documentary about an abattoir that was built in Paris just after the second world war. If the cinema had been shot in colouring it would be unwatchable, its so gory and weird and disturbing, but its in black and white and so it becomes a bit more abstract. There are images in that cinema that I think are some of the most powerful Ive ever seen. Theres a surreal sequence where lots of sheep have been beheaded and theyre all dancing without their heads on this conveyor belt. Its like a bit of choreographed horror, but its all real. The director Georges Franju went on to have a career doing very artistic horror movies in French cinema, most famously a cinema called Les Yeux Sans Visage .

The War game by Peter Watkins.

The War Game , Peter Watkins, 1965

In this film, Watkins takes a possible scenario a nuclear attack on London and shows you very carefully, each step of the style, what is likely to happen. It was banned by the BBC for many years because it was just too harrowing a depiction of a reality that all individuals at that time was very concerned about: this was in the middle of the cold warand at the time there were dozens of warheads pointing at us. Its like a documentary made by Brecht youre staging something to flush out a reaction in the audience, and that reaction is one of utter horror. Some people would say this is not a documentary because everything was staged, but its a speculative documentary the director is saying: This is how it could be and Im going to show you this in a way thats very truthful.Its very responsible, even if the imagery is very disturbing: youre find bobbies firing at people in the street, people with their clothes burned off. His information is sourced directly from the government and based on scientific fact, so the bed of it is factual, and people responded to it “as if its” a real documentary.