The Decade the Rich Won • 2022

85:17

FRONTLINE’s three-part series The Power of Big Oil examines the fossil fuel industry’s history of denying climate change by delaying action and casting doubt on scientific research. This first part charts the fossil fuel industry’s early research on climate change and investigates the efforts to sow seeds of doubt about the science.

S1E1 • The Power of Big Oil • 2022 • Economics

82:16

Thirty-five years of relentless propaganda and harsh brutal punishments left the Chinese people living in fear of their country's one-child policy. That rule, which was abandoned in 2015, has left the country with an ageing population and tens of millions more men than women. The documentary's directors, Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, unmask the tightly held, hidden secrets of how the Chinese government enforced its one-child policy and explores its devastating effect. Wang, a new mother now living in the US, travels back to the rural village she was born in and speaks to midwives, village leaders and journalists, revealing chilling stories of forced abortions, sterilisation, abandoned babies and state-sponsored kidnappings. Her own family share the grim choices they were forced to make in order to avoid harsh punishments from the state. With new information on tens of thousands of abandoned and kidnapped children (nearly all of them infant girls), One Child Nation breaks open decades of silence on a vast, unprecedented social experiment that shaped - and destroyed - countless lives.

Storyville • 2019 • Economics

114:22

The role of the Federal Reserve’s “easy money” policies in the current economic uncertainty. From the Great Recession to the rise in inflation, FRONTLINE examines the ongoing fragility of the financial system and the widening gap between Wall St. and Main St.

2023 • Economics

25:52

Jeff Goldblum excitedly explores the world of denim. He decides to discover just how popular jeans really are today.

S1E4 • The World According to Jeff Goldblum • 2020 • Economics

53:37

As the build-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar nears its climax, this documentary investigates the human cost that the host nation has put into it. Allegations of foreign labour abuse and unexplained deaths have dogged the organisers of the massive construction projects necessary for the event - at the same time, Qatar has also been accused of putting LGBT football fans and players at risk.

2022 • Economics

53:27

What makes an entire country take self destructive decisions of eating unhealthy, smoking cigarettes & going to war? 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, the American people, so firmly opposed to the war just a year earlier, were enthusiastic supporters. What happened? The short answer: Sustained consumption of propaganda! PROPAGANDA: THE MANUFACTURE OF CONSENT is a revealing documentary about how public relations grew out of wartime propaganda-and a portrait of one of the key architects of the field, Edward Bernays. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays refined the techniques used so successfully during the war to sell products to consumers, and ultimately to sell capitalism itself to workers. Public relations was also critical in building support for the New Deal, and in the pushback against it from the National Association of Manufacturers, which created materials including films aimed at children on the glories of manufacturing. Bacon and eggs as part of a hearty breakfast? The work of Bernays on behalf of a bacon company. Cigarettes as a sign of women's liberation? Bernays, again. Casting the democratically elected government of Guatemala as a Communist threat to justify US invasion on behalf of the United Fruit Company? Once more, Bernays. There was nothing shadowy about Bernays. He wrote a book detailing his techniques and discusses them in an archival interview with Bill Moyers from 1983, where we see his pride in hijacking the women's suffrage movement in order to sell more cigarettes—one of many illuminating moments in this film. Featuring Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Public Relations Museum co-founder Shelley Spector, historian Stuart Ewen, sociologist David Miller, and Bernays' daughter Anne, PROPAGANDA offers an insightful look into the development of public relations techniques, and how they continue to affect us today.

2017 • Economics