"It's the Economy, Stupid!"
"It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism."
-- Frederic Jameson/Slavoj Zizek/Mark Fisher
Is it even possible to understand and engage with political economy, the invisible force that seems to shape how we live and die, via film?
How to make sense of economic history and theory, or poverty, inequality, and class relations?
With dramas like THE CLEARSTREAM AFFAIR, a story of financial corruption exposed, and THE OUTSIDER, recounting the extraordinary tale of how one young trader lost $ 4.9 Billion for a French bank, to Michael Apted’s unique documentary 56 UP, a mirror of the British class system, and Ilan Ziv’s monumental six-part CAPITALISM series, filmed in 23 countries, OVID has assembled an unmatched collection of original, illuminating, and well-argued films that take on this daunting challenge.
-
Chicago Boys
Directed by Carola Fuentes and Rafael Valdeavellano • Documentary • 2015 • 85 minutes
In the middle of the Cold War, the University of Chicago gave scholarships to a group of Chilean students to study economics under the teachings of Milton Friedman. Twenty years later, during Pinochet's dictato...
-
As Goes Janesville
Directed by Brad Lichtenstein • Documentary • 2012 • 87 minutes
As Goes Janesville catapults viewers to the front lines of a national debate over the fate of the American economy and the survival of the middle class – a debate that turned into a pitched battle in the normally tranquil state of W...
-
Discount
Directed by Louis-Julien Petit • Drama • With Olivier Barthélémy, Corinne Masiero • 2014 • 102 minutes
One day the checkout assistants at Discount's, the local supermarket, learn that their jobs are being threatened by the installation of automatic cash registers. If this wasn't bad enough, they...
-
The Corporate Coup d'État
Directed by Fred Peabody • Documentary • With Chris Hedges, Phillip Martin, Sarah Jaffe, Matt Taibbi, Lee Fang, John Ralston Saul • 2018 • 90 minutes
This investigative documentary exposes how corporations and billionaires have taken control of the American political process, and in doing so hav...
-
Futures Market
Directed by Mercedes Alvarez • Documentary • 2011 • 110 minutes
A film essay in tableaux, FUTURES MARKET traces the connections between memory, public space, and the real estate bubbles that led to the international financial crisis. Beginning with Greek lyric poet Simonides of Ceos' invention o...
-
Nixon’s Reversal
Directed by Jenny Alexander and James Rutenbeck • Documentary • 2023 • 9 minutes
Richard Nixon was on the verge of providing guaranteed basic income for all Americans. Then a story from 1795 changed his mind and the course of history.
-
What's the Economy for, Anyway?
Directed by John de Graaf and Hana Jindrova • Documentary • 2010 • 40 minutes
In this film produced by John de Graaf of AFFLUENZA> fame, ecological economist Dave Batker presents a humorous, edgy, factual, timely and highly-visual monologue about the American economy today, challenging the ways ...
-
Downtown Dream
Directed by Aaron Matthews • Documentary • 2013 • 45 minutes
For decades, small town life in the United States has been quietly eroding. But there are overlooked stories amidst the talk of America's economic decline: the stories of individual men and women in the 'Rust Belt' community in Lewisto...
-
Capitalism: A six-part series
1 season
Capitalism has been the engine of unprecedented economic growth and social transformation. With the fall of the communist states and the triumph of "neo- liberalism," capitalism is by far the world's dominant ideology. But how much do we understand about how it originated, and what makes it work?...
-
Zona Franca
Directed by Georgi Lazarevski • Documentary • 2016 • 100 minutes
Zona Franca is a large outdated shopping district at the heart of Chile's Patagonia, located near the Strait of Magellan. Everywhere this area shows the scars of the upheaval which transformed the last wild place of the original Am...
-
Lobster War
Directed by David Abel • Documentary • 2019 • 74 minutes
LOBSTER WAR is an award-winning feature documentary about a conflict between the United States and Canada over waters that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War. The disputed 277 square miles of sea, known as t...
-
An Injury To One
Directed by Travis Wilkerson • Documentary • 2003 • 53 minutes
AN INJURY TO ONE provides a corrective-and absolutely compelling-glimpse of a particularly volatile moment in early 20th century American labor history: the rise and fall of Butte, Montana. Specifically, it chronicles the mysterious ...
-
The Wobblies
Directed by Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer • Documentary • 1979 • 89 minutes
Founded in Chicago in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) took to organizing unskilled workers into one big union and changed the course of American history. This compelling documentary of the IWW (or “The...
-
The Secret Life of Your Clothes
Directed by Andy Wells • Documentary • 2016 • 59 minutes
Each year, we give thousands of tons of our unwanted clothes to charity. But where do they actually go? It turns out most are exported to Africa. And even though we have given them away for free, our castoffs have created a multimillion-do...
-
Master of the Universe
Directed by Marc Bauder • Documentary • With Rainer Voss, Angela Merkel • 2014 • 88 minutes
A brilliant documentary dissecting the global financial system as told by leading German investment banker Rainer Voss. A real life former master of the universe, Voss gives a disturbing insider's account...
-
Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States
Directed by Olivier Azam, Daniel Mermet • Documentary • With Howard Zinn • 2016 • 100 minutes
"As long as rabbits don't have historians, history will be written by the hunters."
With the tremendous success of his book, A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn radically changed the w...
-
Waiting for the Carnival
Directed by Marcelo Gomes • Documentary • 2019 • 86 minutes
The small village of Toritama is a microcosm of relentless capitalism. Each year, more than 20-million pairs of jeans are produced in make-shift factories. The locals work non-stop hours, proud to be the masters of their own time. Durin...
-
The Dirty War on the National Health Service
Directed by John Pilger • Documentary • 2019 • 106 minutes
Britain's National Health Service, the NHS, was the world's first universal public health service. Designed to give millions of people "freedom from fear" following World War II, the NHS today is under threat of being sold off and conver...
-
A Call to Action: The Freedom Budget of 1966
Directed by Jenny Alexander • Documentary • With Martin Luther King • 2023 • 7 minutes
“A Call to Action: The Freedom Budget of 1966” tells the story of a little-known grassroots push for guaranteed income during the civil rights movement.
-
Miners Shot Down
Directed by Rehad Desai • Documentary • 2014 • 86 minutes
In August 2012, mine workers in one of South Africa's biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress it, killing 34 and injuring many more. Th...
-
Family Business
Directed by Tom Cohen • Documentary • 1982 • 90 minutes
Part of the acclaimed Middletown series.
Howie Snyder is an archetype: a retired Marine colonel in his mid 40s, he is an American entrepreneur struggling to make his business succeed.
Howie's Shakey's Pizza franchise in Muncie, Indiana em...
-
Marx Reloaded
Directed by Jason Barker • Documentary • 2011 • 52 minutes
Today a new generation of philosophers, artists and political activists are returning to Marx's ideas in order to try to make sense of the crisis and to consider whether a world without or beyond capitalism is possible. Is the severity o...
-
Davos
Directed by Daniel Hoesl • Documentary • With Klaus Schwab, Christine Lagarde • 2021 • 99 minutes
Looking to decipher the fractured world of ours was the driving force to make this film. We‘ve been following the everyday life in Davos for over a year. The challenges of our society are shown thro...
-
Third Avenue: Only the Strong Survive
Directed by Jon Alpert • Documentary • 1980 • 60 minutes
This Emmy Award-winning documentary tells the stories of six "ordinary" people who live or work along New York City's Third Avenue, which runs for sixteen miles through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, cutting through the complex social...