Documentaries, II

A few of the documentaries I've watched lately -

* Animals who sense danger - about the fact that many animals sense geo-electrical waves ie electromagnetic waves and therefor can "predict" different natural catastrophes, like tsunamis, earth quakes, volcanic eruptions. The lesson to be learnt - most of us should learn to be more openminded and *listen* more to what other animals are trying to tell us...

* 9.11 fund - a sad fact, money or the prospect of getting money seems to bring out all sorts of nastiness in all too many humans... The 9.11 fund is the federal compensation fund for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and this documentary showed how basically unfairly and inefficiently the money was distributed. There weren't any equal payouts, but instead they were based on factors such as the victim's age and potential lost income. A strange way of putting a price and value on a life... Not to mention how greedy some of the *mourners* became, ah the distastefulness and complete lack of respect is just appalling...

* Grand Designs, The Woodsman's Cottage - perhaps not a documentary as such, just something I stumbled over, but still an extremely interesting and fascinating irl TV-show about, in this episode of the series, a man who built an eco-house in the middle of the woods in Suffolk, UK. From scratch, and by hand, grew an amazingly beautiful house, with a very Little-House-On-the-Prairie-feel to it. More of the series can be found here

* Ethical fashion - a documentary about how non-ethical and non-sustainable, in so many ways, the fashion industry is. How, still few, designers are trying to make things better and how hard the resistance from different actors in the fashion business often is. About fair trade - how many know or even care about that when there are silly cheap shirts from Asia to be found in store back home... We should be aware. And we ought to care. More information (in Swedish) can be found at etiskt mode.se

* Cajsa Warg & her culinary sisters - a culinary journey from Cajsa Warg, 18th century, to today's Swedish trendsetters in the culinary department. Quite interesting, and in parts plain wimpish, to say the least...

* 21 years in the new South Africa - in 1992 the directors began filming this documentary about what was then 11 children from different walks of life in SA. They were then 7 years old, the next episode was filmed when they were 14 and now they're 21. There are only eight of them still alive, three have died in aids. It should be a generation with a whole lot of new possibilities in life, but have they been able to make the most of that or are all these new possibilities just something that's seen on paper? My impression of most of the youths in the documentary was jadedness, sadness and like one of them put it "Everyone is so pc in South Africa today, but noone seem to actually care. Apartheid was something that defined us." - heartbreaking. On so many levels. And all that waste of resources and lives.

* In search of Gandhi - a documentary road movie about today's India and how Gandhi's visions of equality and democracy, his Satyagraha, have been maintained and managed. The sad fact it seems, is that it has not, with few exceptions. The caste-system, the reverses of SEZ, the forced dislocations, the suicides of about 100000 Indian farmers every year, the religious antagonisms - as Gandhi so well put it; "As soon as we lose the moral basis we cease to be religious, there is no such thing as religion overriding morality".

The conclusion of this particular documentary was that India of today is living with the consequences of not following Gandhi's ideas.

* An extremely interesting documentary about different people's different daily rhythms, about our genetic biological clock and sleeping disorders. About the fact that so many people aren't very well adapted to this rigid society with the-early-bird-catches-the-worm attitude. That it should be an innovation society, and not an industrial society that forces everyone into the same strict 9-17 templates. If we could chose to sleep and work when it suited us the best, and really many of the means of working nowadays allow us to, it would lead to both an economic value addition as well as an increased personal life quality.

And *of course* a country that is actually in parts open to this way of thinking being Denmark. Where the so called B-Society has been founded, with a mission to change the labour markets and society's rigid structures. My two words for this is - at last.