Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh (1993)

 

Ladakh, or 'Little Tibet', is a wildly beautiful desert land high in the Western Himalayas. It is a place of few resources and an extreme climate. Yet for more than a thousand years, it has been home to a thriving culture. Traditions of frugality and cooperation, with an intimitate and location-specific knowledge of the environment, enabled the Ladakhis not only to survive but to prosper. Then came 'development'. Now in Leh, the capital, one finds pollution and divisiveness, inflation and unemployment, intolerance and greed. Centuries of ecological balance and social harmony are under threat of modernization.

Ancient Futures is much more than a film about Ladakh. The breakdown of Ladakh's culture and environment forces us to re-examine what we really mean by 'progress' - not only in the 'developing' parts of the world, but in the industrialized world as well. The story of Ladakh teaches us about the root causes of environmental, social and psychological problems, and provides valuable guidelines for our own future.

I travelled in Ladakh in 1996 between September and November, spending time in Leh, the Nubrah Valley, Shey, Thiksey and Hemis monastries and on the road back to Manali, which I hitchhiked along for three days, travelling 500 kms. I worked for Helen Norberg-Hodge's Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG) while I was in Leh, selling water in the street. It was a life changing experience.

I spent three nights in Diskit Gompa, built by Changzem Tserab Zangpo, a disciple of Tsong-kha-pa, the Diskit Gompa dates back to the 14th century. In this recording there are around 70 monks chanting in the main hall of the monastery. Bowls of butter tea and sampa can be heard occasionally sliding along the benches as some monks take a break and others step forward to take their place. The chanting went late into the night from very early in the morning for three days.

Honeyland (2019)

Honeyland (2019) is a stunning, meditative documentary that unfolds like a quiet epic about nature, tradition, and survival. Set in a remote village in North Macedonia, the film follows Hatidze Muratova, a lone, middle-aged beekeeper and one of the last in Europe to practice wild beekeeping in harmony with the land.

Living with her ailing mother in a crumbling stone hut, Hatidze climbs cliffs, whispers to her bees, and harvests honey with care — always leaving “half for the bees.” Her existence is simple but dignified, rooted in an unspoken code of balance and respect. That delicate balance is disrupted when a nomadic family with seven children and dozens of cattle settles nearby. At first, Hatidze welcomes them with warmth. But when the family’s patriarch decides to take up beekeeping himself, driven more by profit than sustainability, tensions rise. Greed clashes with wisdom, and nature bears the cost.

Filmed over three years, directors Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov use no narration or interviews. Instead, they let the camera observe, allowing the story to emerge organically through breathtaking visuals and deeply human moments. The cinematography captures the stark beauty of the landscape and the quiet poetry of Hatidze’s daily rituals.

At its core, Honeyland is about more than bees — it's a microcosm of global issues: climate change, capitalism, and the fragile balance between humans and nature. Hatidze emerges as a quietly heroic figure, both resilient and heartbreakingly alone.

The film is both intimate and universal, minimalist yet emotionally rich. Nominated for both Best Documentary and Best International Feature at the Oscars, Honeyland is a rare gem that speaks volumes without ever raising its voice — a powerful testament to harmony, loss, and the price of exploitation.

Click on the above image to watch the entire film.

Play For Today - Pendas Fen (1974)

ginally broadcast in 1974 as part of the BBC's Play for Today series, Pendas Fen was directed by social realist director Alan Clarke and written by David Rudkin.

"I am nothing pure, my race is mixed, my sex is mixed. I am woman and man, light with darkness, nothing pure. I am mud and flame."

"Penda’s Fen is perhaps the most significant film to be made during the rural turn that, as William Fowler has noted, British cinema took in the early 1970s. A decline in manufacturing had led to the shrinkage of many urban centres, and that, combined with a post-sixties vogue for communes, free festivals and pre-industrial ways of being, inspired artists such as Derek Jarman (Journey to Avebury, 1971), William Raban (Colours of This Time, 1972), and Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo (Winstanley, 1975) to explore the submerged histories, altered states and radical possibilities of the British landscape.

Rudkin shows the English countryside as a place, not of becalmed continuity and ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’, but as a historical battleground and in constant turmoil. It offers wormholes and geysers, faultlines that fertilise, ruptures that release energy. It’s a philosophy of pastoral – and of what makes a nation – that sloughs off Little Englandism and Middle Earthism in favour of something less self-satisfied and more attuned to its lurking darknesses."

Captain Planet and the Planeteers

A Hero For Earth / Season 1, Episode 1 from CPF on Vimeo.

Captain Planet and the Planeteers is an animated TV series broadcast on TBS and in syndication from September 15, 1990, to December 5, 1992.

Gaia, the spirit of the planet, assembles a diverse team of "planeteers," who are able to combine their powers to summon an elemental warrior that takes on the appearance of superhero Captain Planet. He works with the planeteers to defend Earth from pollution caused by criminals and villains. As the show's theme song says, Captain Planet is "gonna take pollution down to zero" by defeating the villains, who include the likes of Hoggish Greedly, Dr. Blight and Looten Plunder. The animated series was co-created by media mogul Ted Turner, a noted environmentalist.

In 1990, The Los Angeles Times described the show as having "not much originality", although also saying that "there's a passion behind this series, which adapts a conventional super-hero formula to an unconventional theme", also stating that the celebrities voicing the series "also sets the series apart". The newspaper also described the show as being part of "the increased awareness of Earth as endangered". L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative activist, accused the show of "seeking to scare children into political activism", along with accusing the show of having "leftist slants"; Barbara Pyle responded, saying "I don't think 'Captain Planet' is scary ... it shows kids that every action counts ... I consider [environmental issues] bipartisan."

Earth First - Australian Environmental Activism in 1970s and 80s

A history of the Australian environmental activist movement in the 1970s & early '80s, focusing on the Terania Ck, Franklin River & Daintree rainforest eco-blockades. Narrated by Jack Thompson.

Growing Pains: The Ecological Cost of an Insatiable Economy

 

A look at the global and political obsession with economic growth and the ecological and humanitarian consequences.

Aluna

Aluna means "conscience ". Enter the last theocratic chiefdom in America, hidden for centuries on a mountain in Colombia. The Kogi have made this amazing documentary to help us understand how to avoid the destruction of the world that they are trying to protect, and of ourselves.

HOME - Yann Arthus-Bertrand (English version)

"We have created phenomena that we cannot control"
Home is a 2009 documentary directed by French photographer, reporter and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand and produced by Luc Besson. The film is almost entirely composed of aerial shots of various places on Earth. It shows how tightly linked Man and nature are, and how humanity is threatening the ecological balance of the planet. The English version of the film is narrated by Glenn Close. 

 Yann Arthus-Bertand is especially known for his book Earth from Above, published in 1999. As a aerial photographer, the main goal of his work is to help people see how beautiful Earth is and to raise awareness of the negative impact of human activities on our ecosystem.

END:CIV

This film examines our culture’s addiction to systematic violence and environmental exploitation, and probes the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations. Based in part on Endgame, the best-selling book by Derrick Jensen, END:CIV asks: “If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?” // Franklin López, Canada, 2011, 115' // 

Deep Adaptation - Jem Bendell & Toni Spencer

A climate induced collapse for our way of life is inevitable. The presentation, to 300 people in Bristol, UK, was his first recorded lecture on the Deep Adaptation. Using a more informal format than a University lecture, the Professor of Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cumbria, invites the audience to explore forms of action additional to cutting and drawing down carbon from the atmosphere - actions associated with personal and collective preparedness for coming disruption. Accompanying him was Toni Spencer, a facilitator who works on Deep Adaptation and Transition.

After Jem's talk, Toni led the audience in a reflective process to explore feelings and ideas emerging. She also offered some poems and reflections during the process. Members of the Climate Psychology Alliance spoke from the floor, explaining their new initiative to provide therapeutic support to people working on or affected by this agenda. The event was organized by the local Constituency Labour Party and Momentum group, but made open to anyone with any political interest or none.

To engage on this topic see http://www.deepadaptation.info 

Revolution - the documentary (2012)

Revolution is a 2012 documentary film by Rob Stewart. It follows the filmmaker as he follows up on his earlier film, Sharkwater, and examines both looming environmental collapse and what people, especially young people, are doing to avert it.

Black Snake Killaz - The story of the Dakota Access Pipeline (2017)

Black Snake Killaz: A #NoDAPL Story from Unicorn Riot on Vimeo.

Black Snake Killaz is a feature-length documentary film about the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. This film explores actions taken by water protectors to stop the construction of the oil pipeline and highlights actions taken by law enforcement, military, and corporate mercenaries to quell the months-long protest. Black Snake Killaz timelines the historical events that unfolded in Standing Rock throughout 2016 and brings you the raw experience from many frontline actions to protect the water. Although the Dakota Access Pipeline is completed, the impact of the movement will be long-lasting. As fossil fuel extraction projects continue to impact some of the most vulnerable communities throughout the United States of America, the importance of the water protectors story grows.

Goolengook 1997-2004

Mass arrests among the old-growth forest of Goolengook, the site of Australia's longest-running forest blockade.

The New Alchemists

The New Alchemists, Dorothy Todd Hénaut, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

This short documentary profiles a community engaged in developing sustainable living methods, including food production and small-scale solar and wind technology, on a farm in Massachusetts in the 1970s. Well before sustainability was a mainstream concern, these prescient innovators attempted to create a vision of a greener, kinder world. "Think small," say the New Alchemists. "Look what thinking big has done."

The Arctic Methane Emergency and Ecological Economics

"We are negotiating a deal between life on earth and the wellbeing of all and money"

Global warming is causing CO2 levels to hit 400 ppm, a level humans have never seen. Droughts are spreading and Miami is reporting that the ocean is backing.

Stuart Scott is the Founder and President of Transition University.  A dedicated, life-long lover of Nature, Stuart was the first environmentalist stockbroker on Wall Street in the late 1970s, representing the financial community at US Department of Energy hearings on the fledgling alternative energy industry, and matters of pollution control and corporate social responsibility.

Stuart is currently making presentations to audiences around the world on the impacts of climate change and counter measures to this most serious challenge that humanity has ever faced. He attempts to minimize his own ‘carbon footprint’ in any way possible, including the purchase of carbon offsets for his travel, a ‘second-tier’ but important piece of the de-carbonization puzzle.

The unwavering message Stuart presents is the critical need for immediate action at all levels. Globally we have strayed too far into a condition of ‘overshoot’ in stressing the ecological systems of our home planet. The solutions he offers to address our ecological problems range from personal through political to societal, both easy and difficult to implement, and often thought-provoking, innovative, and unusual. Our challenge is nothing short of rethinking and reorganizing the way we live on Earth.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of this century. The United States Army Corps of Engineers projects that they could rise by as much as five feet; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts up to six and a half feet. Many geologists are looking at the possibility of a ten-to-thirty-foot range by the end of the century,

Our inability to abandoned a culture in which happiness, status and a sense of achievement are based solely on consumption is going to destroy civilization. 

Before the Flood (Full Movie)

Before the Flood, directed by Fisher Stevens, captures a three-year personal journey alongside Academy Award-winning actor and U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio as he interviews individuals from every facet of society in both developing and developed nations who provide unique, impassioned and pragmatic views on what must be done today and in the future to prevent catastrophic disruption of life on our planet.

Vali: Death in Port Jackson Hotel - 1971

A film by Ed van der Elsken. Features Vali in her "savage paradise", Il Porto, the canyon near Positano where she created her artwork. (Duration: 36 minutes).

Vali Myers (2 August 1930 – 12 February 2003) was an Australian visionary artist, dancer, bohemian and muse whose coverage by the media was mostly in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s in Europe and the United States.

The Possibility of Hope (2007) - Children of Men Extra

The possibility of Hope - subtitulos en español. from Editores Salvajes on Vimeo.

A 2007 documentary short film directed by Alfonso Cuarón included as an extra in the Special Edition DVD of Cuarón's 2006 film Children of Men.

The film looks at different matters of the world such as immigration, global warming and capitalism through the eyes of scientists and philosophers.

From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers' Warning (Kogi message)

The Kogi people are warning society of destruction we face if we fail to embrace nature.

The Kogi (/ˈkoʊɡi/ koh-gee) or Cogui or Kágaba, meaning "jaguar" in the Kogi language, are an indigenous ethnic group that lives in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. Their civilization has continued since the Pre-Columbian era.

The Kogi are descendants of the Tairona culture, which flourished before the times of the Spanish conquest. The Tairona were an advanced civilization which built many stone structures and pathways in the jungles. They made many gold objects which they would hang from trees and around their necks. They lived not much differently from modern day Kogi. Before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, the Tairona were forced to move into the highlands when the Caribs invaded around 1000 CE. The decision to flee to the mountains proved beneficial and strategic by the time the Spanish entered modern-day Colombia in the 15th century. In 1498, the Spanish arrived in Northern Colombia where they began to enslave indigenous groups. Threatened by dogs and soldiers alike, the Tairona remained in isolation. Regardless, many priests were hanged, women were stolen and raped, and children were forced to accept Spanish education. Later, missionaries came and also began to influence their way of life, building chapels and churches amidst their villages to train and convert the locals. In the years since, the Kogi have remained in their home in the mountains, which allows them to escape the worst effects of colonization and aids them in preserving their traditional way of life.

The Kogi base their lifestyles on their belief in "Aluna" or "The Great Mother," their creator figure, whom they believe is the force behind nature. The Kogi understand the Earth to be a living being, and see humanity as its "children." They say that our actions of exploitation, devastation, and plundering for resources is weakening "The Great Mother" and leading to our destruction.

Like many other indigenous tribes, the Kogi people honor a holy mountain which they call "Gonawindua," otherwise known as Pico Cristóbal Colón. They believe that this mountain is "The Heart of the World" and they are the "Elder Brothers" who care for it. They also say that the outside civilization is the "Younger Brothers" who were sent away from The Heart of the World long ago.

From birth the Kogi attune their priests, called Mamas (which means sun in Kogi), for guidance, healing, and leadership. The Mamas are not to be confused with shamans or curers but to be regarded as tribal priests who hold highly respected roles in Kogi society. Mamas undergo strict training to assume this role. Selected male children are taken from birth and put in a dark cave for the first nine years of their lives to begin this training. In the cave, elder Mamas and the child's mother care for, feed, train, and teach the child to attune to "Aluna" before the boy enters the outside world. Through deep concentration, symbolic offerings, and divination, the Mamas believe they support the balance of harmony and creativity in the world. It is also in this realm that the essence of agriculture is nurtured: seeds are blessed in Aluna before being planted, to ensure they grow successfully; marriage is blessed to ensure fertility; and ceremonies are offered to the different spirits of the natural world before performing tasks such as harvest and building of new huts.

The Kogi Mamas have remained isolated from the rest of the world since the Spanish Conquistadors came to plunder South America for gold. In order to preserve their traditional way of life, they rarely interact with the modern world or with outside civilization. Outsiders are not allowed inside their ancestral lands. The Kogi Mamas say that the balance of the earth's ecology has been suffering due to the modern-day devastation of resources by Younger Brother. The Kogi Mamas in turn believe that their work as Elder Brother is instrumental in helping to prolong and protect life on earth. In a desperate attempt to prevent further ecological catastrophe and destruction, the Kogi Mamas broke their silence and allowed a small BBC film crew into their isolated mountaintop civilization to hear their message and warning to Younger Brother.

High Anxieties – The mathematics of chaos (2008)

The documentary looks at the modern advances in mathematics and how they affect our understanding of physics, economics, environmental issues and human psychology. In the 20th Century mathematics has affected our view of the world, and particularly how the financial economy and earth’s environment are now seen as inherently unpredictable.

The film examines the work of Henri Poincare and Alexander Lyapunov and its influence on later developments in mathematics. It includes interviews with David Ruelle, about chaos theory and turbulence, the economist Paul Ormerod about the unpredictability of economic systems, and James Lovelock the founder of Gaia theory about climate change and tipping points in the environment.

As we approach tipping points in both the economy and the climate, the film examines the mathematics we have been reluctant to face up to and asks if, even now, we would rather bury our heads in the sand rather than face harsh truths.