Freedom Downtime

This documentary looks at the computer hacker community in New York City of today, its meetings and conferences, political annotations, and historically explores the roots of the original definition 'hacking' amongst the model train enthusiasts at MIT.

A vivid portrait of a generation of Hong Kongers committed to creating a new more democratic Hong Kong. Schoolboy Joshua Wong dedicates himself to stopping the introduction of National Education. Whilst former classmate Ma Jai fights against political oppression on the streets and in the courts. Catapulting the viewer on to the streets of Hong Kong and into the heart of the action. The viewer is confronted with Hong Kong's oppressive heat, stifling humidity and air thick with dissent. Filmed over 18 months this is a kaleidoscopic, visceral experience of their epic struggle.

When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.

Uncompromising millennial radicals from the United States and the United Kingdom attack the system through dangerous technological means, which evolves into a high-stakes game with world authorities in the midst of a dramatically changing political landscape.

They are frozen in place, stagnating without any direction. Around them, things change rapidly.

For years now, the Kremlin has been systematically trying to use well-trained hackers for its own benefit. In exchange for freedom and protection, they do the dirty work of the state, interfering in other countries’ elections and penetrating government networks. Just how dangerous is Russia’s cyber army?

Global, dynamic, and eye-opening, this is story of the most daring cyber heist of all time, the Bangladeshi Central Bank theft, tracing the origins of cyber-crime from basic credit card fraud to the wildly complex criminal organisations in existence today, supported by commentary and fascinating insight from highly regarded cyber security experts.

Four years later, Hong Kong’s 2014 democratic Umbrella Movement has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, yet political backlash against protesters has intensified. Repeatedly the target of censorship*, Raise the Umbrellas traces the lineage of the massive Hong Kong protest to the global Occupy movement, 1989 Tiananmen, and its democratic struggles since British colonial days. Highlights range from the Umbrella Movement’s eco-awareness and its burgeoning aspiration for independence, to its empowerment of women -- “umbrella mothers” -- and the rainbow-bridging activism of LGBTQ iconic artists. Incisive and intimate, driven by stirring on-site footage in a major Asian metropolis riven by protest, Umbrellas includes anti-Occupy views that lay bare the sheer political risk for post-colonial Hong Kong’s universal-suffragist striving to define its autonomy within China.

REVOLUTION OS tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement.

BERTHA LUTZ: WOMEN AND THE U.N. CHARTER reveals the important and unknown role of a Brazilian biologist and feminist in ensuring that gender issues were addressed at the basis of the United Nations.

August 2015, a courtroom in Rostov-on-Don. A man is peering through the bars of his cage, his eyes reveal that his nerves are about to snap. Today he will be handed down a sentence to which he must submit: 20 years’ imprisonment in Siberia for terrorism. The man is Oleg Sentsov, a film director and Maidan activist born in Simferopol in the Ukraine. He is charged with leading an anti-Russian terrorist movement and having planned attacks on bridges, power lines and a monument of Lenin. Sentsov defends himself, courageously and without flinching. He responds to the verdict with an emphatic denial of his crimes and instead accuses the accusers themselves ...

A documentary film about Comanche activist LaDonna Harris, who led an extensive life of Native political and social activism, and is now passing on her traditional cultural and leadership values to a new generation of emerging Indigenous leaders.

A portrait of the hacking community. In an effort to challenge preconceived notions and media-driven stereotypes Hackers Are People Too lets hackers speak for themselves and introduce their community to the public.

In The Realm of the Hackers is a documentary about the prominent hacker community, centered in Melbourne, Australia in the late 80's to early 1990. The storyline is centered around the Australian teenagers going by the hacker names "Electron" and "Phoenix", who were members of an elite computer hacking group called The Realm and hacked into some of the most secure computer networks in the world, including those of the US Naval Research Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a government lab charged with the security of the US nuclear stockpile, and NASA.