"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.
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We the Workers
Directed by Wen Hai • Documentary • 2017 • 174 minutes
China’s economic miracle has been built on cheap labor. And now, that labor is starting to fight back. Filmed in the southeastern part of the country, WE THE WORKERS is a vérité documentary that closely follows people organizing workers and ...
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Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
Directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller • Documentary • With Matt Damon • 2010 • 78 minutes
This acclaimed film looks at the amazing life of the renowned historian, activist and author. Following his early days as a shipyard labor organizer and bombardier in World War II, Howard Zinn became an a...
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Live Nude Girls Unite!
Directed by Vicky Funari & Julia Query • Documentary • With Julia Query, Siobhan Brooks, Kristina, Ellen, Star, Joyce Wallace • 2000 • 70 minutes
Winner of the Audience Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Live Nude Girls Unite! is "a partisan tale from the inside" (Boston Pho...
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I Am Somebody
Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1970 • 30 minutes
In 1969, black female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina went on strike for union recognition and a wage increase, only to find themselves in a confrontation with the state government and the National Guard. Featuring An...
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Tighten Your Belts, Bite the Bullet
Directed by James Gaffney, Martin Lucas, and Jonathan Miller • Documentary • 1980 • 48 minutes
Focusing on the 1970s fiscal crises in New York City and in Cleveland, Ohio, TIGHTEN YOUR BELTS, BITE THE BULLET looks at the root causes of fiscal crises in American cities, and the political response...
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Nokia Mobile
Directed by Arto Koskinen • Documentary • 2017 • 60 minutes
Once upon a time there was a large Finnish company that manufactured the world’s best and most innovative mobile phones. This film tells the rise and fall of Nokia and the Finnish mobile phone industry from grassroots, the point of view...
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The Outsider
Directed by Christophe Barratier • Drama • With Arthur Dupont, François-Xavier Demaison, Sabrina Ouazani • 2018 • 117 minutes
Before the subprime mortgage crisis began unfolding in 2008, causing chaos in world markets and misery among millions of homeowners, another financial apocalypse was alre...
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56 UP (Michael Apted)
Directed by Michael Apted • Documentary • With Bruce Balden, Jacqueline Basset, Symon Basterfield, Andrew Brackfield, John Brisby, Suzanne Dewey, Nicholas Hitchon, Neil Hughes, Lynn Johnson, Paul Kligerman, Susan Sullivan, Tony Walker, Charles Furneaux • 2012 • 138 minutes
”Give me the child ...
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Long Story Short
Directed by Natalie Bookchin • Documentary • 2016 • 45 minutes
In the moving and immersive film LONG STORY SHORT, over 100 people at homeless shelters, food banks, adult literacy programs, and job training centers in Los Angeles and the Bay Area in Northern California discuss their experiences o...
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We Are Not Ghosts
Directed by Mark Dworkin & Melissa Young • Documentary • 2012 • 52 minutes
Fifty years ago Detroit was booming with two million hard-working people living the American Dream. Then the auto industry crashed and so did the Motor City. Most moved away; whole neighborhoods turned into wastelands. Bu...
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Monobloc
Directed by Hauke Wendler • Documentary • 2022 • 90 minutes
Universally recognized yet frequently discarded, the monobloc plastic chair has been the world’s best-selling piece of furniture since its invention in the 1970s, with over a billion units in circulation worldwide.
Hauke Wendler’s feat...
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Propaganda: The Manufacture of Consent
Directed by Jimmy Leipold • Documentary • With Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Stuart Ewen, David Miller • 2020 • 53 minutes
In 1916, Woodrow Wilson ran on a platform strongly opposing US entry into WWI. But just a few months after taking office, the United States declared war on Germany. Soon after...
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Fate of a Salesman
Directed by Ben Crosbie and Tessa Moran • Documentary • 2013 • 27 minutes
Fate of a Salesman is an intimate portrait of a way of life on the verge of disappearing. In its 60th year of business, Men's Fashion Center in Washington, DC has come to represent identity, legacy and redemption for sales...
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Cafe
Directed by Hatuey Viveros Lavielle • Documentary • 2014 • 80 minutes
Jorge is preparing to graduate from law school-the first person from his mountain village in Mexico ever to do so. Chayo, his pregnant 16-year-old sister, faces the most difficult decision of her young life. Meanwhile their qu...
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Company Town
Directed by Deborah Kaufman, Alan Snitow • Documentary • 2017 • 77 minutes
The once free-spirited city of San Francisco is now a 'Company Town,' a playground for tech moguls of the 'sharing economy.' Airbnb is the biggest hotel, Uber privatizes transit. And now these companies want political pow...
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The Cost of Living
Directed by Sean Blacknell & Wayne Walsh • Documentary • With Annie Miller, David Graeber, Diane Coyle, George Monbiot, Guy Standing • 2020 • 45 minutes
THE COST OF LIVING is a documentary that explores the current socio-economic state of Britain and considers how the idea of a basic income coul...
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Dark Eden
Directed by Jasmin Herold and Michael Beamish • Documentary • 2018 • 80 minutes
On a journey for an answer to the question, "How high is the price for a better life?", the directors explore Fort McMurray in the far north of Canada, home of the largest industrial project and the third largest oil...
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The Enemy Within
Directed by Owen Gower • Documentary • 2015 • 112 minutes
In 1984, a Conservative government under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared war on Britain's unions, taking on the strongest in the country, the National Union of Mineworkers. Following a secret plan, the government began announcin...
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Food Coop
Directed by Tom Boothe • Documentary • 2017 • 97 minutes
FOOD COOP takes us deep into the belly of the Park Slope Food Coop, one of America's oldest cooperative food supermarkets, with a healthy dose of insight and wit.
Nestled deep in New York City, which, for many, exemplifies both the glory ...
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Hamou-Beya, Sand Fishers
Directed by Andrey Samoute Diarra • Documentary • 2012 • 72 minutes
The Bozo of Mali are people of the water. For generations, they have lived along the banks of the Niger river, fishing for their livelihood. But climate change and drought have brought lower water levels and fewer fish, driving ...
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Keepers of the Future
Directed by Avi Lewis • Documentary • 2018 • 24 minutes
In a fertile floodplain in El Salvador, where the great river meets the sea, a peasant movement puts down roots — growing resilience in the scorched earth of exile and civil war. But soon these farmers and fishing folk discover new challeng...
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Jean Ziegler, the Optimism of Willpower
Directed by Nicolas Wadimoff • Documentary • With Jean Ziegler • 2018 • 92 minutes
"A child who dies from hunger is a murdered child." —Jean Ziegler, Vice President of the Advisory Committee of the UN Right Council
In 1964, Jean Ziegler was asked by Che Guevara to fight the "capitalist Monster....
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Northern Light
Directed by Nick Bentgen and Lisa Kjerulff • Documentary • 2013 • 105 minutes
Set against the backdrop of a town's annual snowmobile race, NORTHERN LIGHT explores the working class experience in a series of captivating personal stories of recession-era America. The lives of three families change...