Documentaries

It may seem like the time I spent in front of the TV only consists of watching movies in general and British murder mysteries in particular - mixed with an odd TV-series here and there - but as it happens there are other programmes of interest on now and then. Miscellaneous documentaries. Here's an assortment of what I've been watching, enjoying, learning, getting really upset about, crying tears of despair over as lately.

The Lion's Trail - about the South African musician Solomon Linda who was the actual composer of the world famed hit "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", but never got acknowledge for that during his lifetime. He died impoverished and his descendants weren't amended until 2006. This article with links tells the story well.

A documentary about globalization, this one concentrating mainly on the clothing industry, freetrading zones, what can't be described as anything else than slavery, the need for social responsibility and ethics, in every rank, and how utterly and reprehensibly ignorant most of us are as consumers...

Spam, the documentary - not really about SPAM, the ham, just a bit about Monty Python, and mainly about those unsolicited emails most of us we get far too often. For some reason these kind of things never cease to amaze me, all those people, all over the world, with obviously shady agendas, with all that ingeniousness and all that time at their disposal, what if they actually turned all that into something positive instead? Imagine that...

What's wrong with people, do they lack a certain chromosome, did they have a rotten childhood, weren't they adequately potty trained, is everyone else to blame but themselves or are they just plain and simple greedily mean?

Why We Fight - a well told documentary about why America goes to war. All over again and again... About the unsavoury military-industrial complex, a system of legal corruption, what every country needs is alert and knowledgeable citizens who demand to be told the truth and nothing but the truth - and all that lying with smug politician faces, it makes me shudder in despond as well as anger...

Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive - a very interesting, personal, moving documentary about bipolar disease, and how different people cope, or in many sad cases not, with having this stigmatized disease, how it affects the people around them. My only, as far as I know, personal experience of this is that my grandfather's second wife suffered from it. I never met her during those "episodes" though, so as far as insightfullness goes it's very limited indeed. Perhaps this documentary has helped.

An absolutely heartbreaking documentary about the umbrella species orangutangs' lifes and mankind's overexploitation of their natural habitats in Borneo, with dr Biruté Galdikas. And once again, how untaught and tame we are as human inhabitants in this world...

I know I'll stay away from products that hold palmoil from now on, there are too many of them unfortunately and the consequenses are absolutely devastating for the rainforrests and their natural inhabitants.

No wonder there is a notion of Weltschmerz...