India is hungry for energy. Over 173 power plants, all of them coal-fired, will be built to power the nation’s high-tech industries and booming cities.
This is accelerating an ongoing “coal rush” which has put our dirtiest fossil fuel at the heart of India’s breakneck growth, and could soon make a single state, Andhra Pradesh, one of the world’s top 20 carbon emitters.
On 101 East, filmmaker Orlando de Guzman takes a dark journey through the coal belt of Jharkhand and West Bengal, to look at the winners and losers of this booming industry.
Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova explores the dark underworld of sex trafficking in Eastern Europe in a 2009 multimedia series, a prelude to THE PRICE OF SEX documentary.
“Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality takes an unflinching look at today’s porn industry: the stories woven into the images, the impact on our culture, the effects on us as men and women, the business machine that creates and markets porn, and the growing legitimacy of porn in mainstream media. Above all, Pornland examines the way porn shapes and limits sexual imaginations and behaviors.
Although we are surrounded by pornographic images, many people are not aware of just how cruel and violent the industry is today.
Pornland argues that rather than sexually liberating or empowering us, porn offers us a plasticized, formulaic, generic version of sex that is boring, lacking in creativity and disconnected from emotion and intimacy.”
Open Pit, a ninety minute documentary, explores the impacts of gold mining, one of the most lucrative industries in the world. In the remote highlands of Cajamarca in Peru operates the Yanacocha mine, the most profitable goldmine in the world. Constantly taking over more land and impacting the environment, the mine is conflicting with the natives and their way of life based on agriculture and farming. The film gives an intimate look into the lives of native populations in Peru, their customs and traditions currently being threatened by the world’s intense demand for gold. The film also explores the impacts of gold mining on the social, economic and political life of the country.
Tomkav, a Luiseno village and burial site in Northern San Diego County, is being happily desecrated by developers working for Pardee Homes (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser Corporation) and Palomar College in San Marcos, CA.
On the morning of February 23, 2012, a group of bulldozers arrived to begin work on the recently-approved Horse Ranch Creek Road, a four-lane road that would pave the way to a planned 844-home development and a brand new College satellite campus.
It wasn’t long before a group of Indigenous activists arrived on the scene; unfortunately, their efforts did little to stop the desecration that day.
To make matters worse, the operators weren’t merely trying to do their job, despite the best efforts of the activists. As the following cell-phone video reveals, the workers were enjoying it. You can see one of the operators grinning just before he turns away…
The incident speaks well to the reality of what Indigenous Peoples face in the United States, especially when it comes to preserving sacred site: As Elders watched on in horror and others ran out in front of bulldozers to try to save what they could, the workers were celebrating. They were “laughing about what was happening, high-fiving when they were finishing, and you know, making the pump motion with their hands to say whoo-hoo we did a great job,” said San Luis Rey attorney Merri Lopez-Keifer.
Meanwhile, Tom-Kav, a part of the Luiseno creation story and the site of an historic village and burial ground, is being viewed from afar as nothing more than empty land. It’s as if California state law and federal doesn’t even exist, never mind basic moral conscience.
“During the course of [work], many archeologically significant new discoveries have been made, and dozens of Luiseno burials have been unearthed, notes Save Tomkav Village. “California law requires that when new discoveries of human remains occur, construction projects must be put on hold until the materials can be analyzed, which could lead to project modifications. Pardee and Palomar College have disregarded legal protocol by carelessly proceeding with grading and construction activities, and in fact they sped up work as soon as San Luis Rey took legal action against them.”
A day after the disgusting display, the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians filed for an injunction to halt the road construction–which is being paid for by Palomar College.
