Recently I started watching documentaries, first only about history (mainly the Second World War), but now I find it quite stimulating to be entertained and educated at the same time. Sure, there is a documentary trend going around the last few years, but I am not talking about pseudo scientific shows like “Galileo” (a German television show) or “what nobody needs to know” shows on your next best documentary channel.
So let me just tell you about some of these movies that I saw recently and you can form your own opinion. Some of these are quite controversial and even provocative, and the facts presented are not necessarily all 100% proven to be true, but at least they give you a reason to think about the world.
“Orwell rolls in his grave” is the first one. It’s a movie about current political developments, especially in the US, that compares these developments with some of the predictions that George Orwell made in his literary works, like “Animal Farm” and “1984”. Let’s just say it’s almost spooky that he was right on the money over 60 years ago. For more information visit:
http://www.orwellrollsinhisgrave.com/
I also watched “Zeitgeist” which I liked, but you maybe need to know that I’m a bit of a conspiracy nut. To quote the official website: “Zeitgeist, produced by Peter Joseph, was created as a nonprofit filmiac expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are.” The movie can be split into 3 parts: The first part takes a new view on popular religious believes and tries to explain some of them with astrology. The next 2 parts are about politics, world economy and also about 9/11 and it’s repercussions. At the end the whole thing takes a turn to a futuristic view of the world that shows what might happen if current trends in the economy continue. I recommend this movie, but you should critically evaluate the information presented in it. Peter Joseph puts it this way: “That being said, It is my hope that people will not take what is said in the film as the truth, but find out for themselves, for truth is not told, it is realized.” You can watch and download the movie here:
http://zeitgeistmovie.com/
Finally I’d like to present a series about philosophical topics in combination with the idea of happiness. Author Alain de Botton talks about self-confidence, happiness, anger, self-esteem, love and hardship by looking at the works of Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The good thing about this series is that you don’t need to know a lot about philosophy to understand these teachings. For more information visit:
http://www.alaindebotton.com/philosophy.asp and you can watch it here:
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