Created on Friday, 10 December 2010 18:43

The Atomic Café (1982) is an acclaimed documentary about the beginnings of the era of nuclear warfare. It was created entirely from a broad range of archival film from the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s – including newsreel clips, television news footage, U.S. government-produced films (i.e. propaganda), advertisements, television and radio programs.

The filmmakers opted to not use narration and instead they deployed carefully constructed sequences of film clips to make their points. Though the topic of atomic holocaust is a grave matter, the film approaches it with black humor.

Much of the humor derives from the modern audience's reaction to the old training films, such as the ‘Duck and Cover’ film shown in schools.

 

The film was released in April 1982. Its release coincided with a peak in the international disarmament movement and the film received much wider distribution than was the norm for politically-oriented documentaries.

 

It became a classic and greatly influenced documentary filmmaking.

 

Created on Saturday, 08 January 2011 11:08

Part I:  The Battle of Ideas

A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack. The year is 1914. Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. 

 

From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world’s economic order.

 

Part II:  The Agony Of Reform

As the 1980s begin and the Cold War grinds on, the existing world order appears firmly in place. Yet beneath the surface powerful currents are carving away at the economic foundations. Western democracies still struggle with deficits and inflation, while communism hides the failure of its command economy behind a facade of military might.

 

In Latin America populist dictators strive to thwart foreign economic exploitation, piling up debt and igniting hyperinflation in the process.

Part III:  The New Rules Of The Game

With communism discredited, more and more nations harness their fortunes to the global free-market. China, Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Europe, and Latin America all compete to attract the developed world’s investment capital and tariff barriers fall.

 

In the United States, Republican and Democratic administrations both embrace unfettered globalization over the objections of organized labor.