Mark Achbar

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.

A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.

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.

Wars of the future will be fought over water as they are over oil today, as the source of human survival enters the global marketplace and political arena. Corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments vie for control of our dwindling supply, prompting protests, lawsuits, and revolutions from citizens fighting for the right to survive.

Through interviews with leading psychologists and scientists, Neurons to Nirvana explores the history of four powerful psychedelic substances (LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA and Ayahuasca) and their previously established medicinal potential. Strictly focusing on the science and medicinal properties of these drugs, Neurons to Nirvana looks into why our society has created such a social and political bias against even allowing research to continue the exploration of any possible positive effects they can present in treating some of today's most challenging afflictions.

A mockumentary illustrating a supposed conspiracy to infiltrate American culture through employing Canadians in the U.S. entertainment industry.

This video focuses on the formative influences in Noam Chomsky's life--those factors which enable him to become a politically engaged intellectual. Starting out as a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his work revolutionized the study of language, Chomsky was radicalized by the 1960s anti-war movement and became a major critic of American policy. We learn about the important Jewish intellectual influences of his family, as well as those defining incidents in his early schooling that made a lasting impression.

Star Wars is no longer science fiction The prospect of Earth being ruled from space is no longer science-fiction. The dream of the original Dr. Strangelove, Wernher von Braun (from Nazi rocket-scientist to NASA director) has survived every US administration since WW2 and is coming to life. Today the technology exists to weaponize space, a massive American industry thrives, and nations are maneuvering for advantage. PAX AMERICANA tackles this pivotal moment. Are war machines already orbiting Earth? Can treaties keep space weapons-free? Must the World capitulate to one super-cop on the global beat? With startling archival footage and unprecedented access to US Air Force Space Command, this elegant, forceful documentary reveals the state of play through generals, space-policy analysts, politicians, diplomats, peace activists, and hawks.

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In this video, Noam Chomsky concentrates on the contemporary institutions and powers which have set limits on human progress and offers us some concrete ways of challenging them; in effect, he presents a vision of a future society. Chomsky's work is directed at developing intellectual self-defense for "ordinary people" who are often isolated in their struggles. States are seen to be violent through such strategies as the near-genocide of aboriginal peoples. Ultimately, Chomsky feels we must move beyond the myths of modern industrial civilization and the privileged elites who dominate mass communication, and instead foster the interests of a truly global community.

Waterlife is a documentary film about the Great Lakes that follows the flow of the lakes' water from the Nipigon River to the Atlantic Ocean. The film's goal is to take viewers on a tour of an incredibly beautiful ecosystem that is facing complex challenges.

Beginning with Noam Chomsky's response to a college student who role-plays "Jane U.S.A."--someone who naively believes she lives in a democratic society in which she can create her own destiny--the viewer is presented with a cross-section of typically lively Chomsky encounters. Central to a functioning democracy is the necessity of free access to information, ideas and opinions. But what should be our democratic right turns out to be limited and shaped by the biases of insitutions and ideologies within the mass media. Chomsky shows how governments, corporations and other elites manufacture the consent of the public to serve their interests.

Colombia is the center of a new global gold rush, and Marmato, a historic mining town, is the new frontier. Filmed over the course of nearly six years, Marmato chronicles how townspeople confront a Canadian mining company that wants the $20 billion in gold beneath their homes.

What do the Japanese see in Canada? What's the magnetic pull from the Far East? And what's our take on this land of ours? Bolstering our feeling of national pride comes naturally after watching the Japanese embrace the country. The film follows Masaaki Kagami, a Japanese transplanted in Alberta. He specializes in making souvenir videos for Japanese tourists. HO! KANADA is an investigation of national stereotypes. The film records the way the Japanese see us, and how we see them and ourselves.

This video focuses primarily on the implications of the structure and format of television, especially the consequences of concision, and how these factors can shape the messages of the medium. In addition, other issues, such as how democracies handle dissenters, and how the mainstream media have treated the challenges of Noam Chomsky's media critiques are explored. The media construct reality, and in the conclusion we see the author participating in that very process.

Captures the exciting movement of Spiritual Activism that is exploding around the planet, and the powerful personalities who are igniting it.

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An indigenous lawyer represents the division among his people between traditional caring for the land and developing the resources it contains.

The political journey of Canadian photographer Elaine Brière from the villages of East Timor to the halls of the United Nations in an effort to find out Ottawa's rational for abandoning the tiny nation of East Timor to corporate interests in Indonesia.

When Linda, an outspoken lesbian psychotherapist, decided that George, a bulldozer-driving transsexual, was the woman for her, Two Brides and a Scalpel: Diary of a Lesbian Marriage was born. Directed and produced by Vancouver-based Mark Achbar, the video was shot over a two-year period by the subjects and covers what the media touted as the first lesbian marriage in Canadian history, a graphic sex change operation, and the daily lives and most intimate moments of a relationship generally hidden behind the iron curtain of societal taboo.