If you want a better understanding of the economic crisis, these documentaries provide valuable insights about how America and Americans have gotten so deeply into debt, and how that affects the global economy. The films suggest there are ways you and the nation can improve the situation by changing spending patterns and habits.
I.O.U.S.A.
Agora Entertainment
Patrick Creadon's eye-opening documentary uses easy-to-understand pie charts and graphs to illustrate the magnitude of our nation's debt addiction and to show its effect on our current and future economic situations.
Young and Restless in China
Filmmaker Sue Williams follows nine Chinese Gen X-ers, tracking their struggles to achieve their personal goals as their country's rapidly changing political, social and economic climate presents unprecedented opportunities. They are the beneficiaries of the new 'Chinamerica,' the economic union of America and China, in which China holds the largest percentage of America's national debt.
King Corn
Balcony Releasing
Two recent Yale graduates return to their home state of Iowa to investigate the effects that the ubiquitous planting of genetically engineered corn--which has become one of America's primary food sources--has on the American economy and environment.
Up The Yangtze
Yung Chang
Building the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River will displace two million Chinese citizens from their homes, forcing them to leave their rural and agrarian lifestyle and adopt that of low wage workers in crowded cities. The dam is causing environmental and economic changes that affect not only China, but the rest of the world, as well.
Manda Bala (Send A Bullet)
City Lights Pictures
The violent class struggle between the very rich and completely impoverished citizens of contemporary Brazil has created an environment where kidnappings for ransom are so frequent that cottage industries--cadres of security guards and gadgets and plastic surgeons whose primary practice is restoration of ears that have been severed from kidnap victims--have sprung up around them. This sort of situation is springing up around the world.
