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| Questions? Don't hesitate to call us at 212.243.0600 x20 or send us an email. |
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Surviving Progress
Director - Mathieu Roy & Harold Crooks
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| Technological advancement, economic development, population increase - are they signs of a thriving society? Or too much of a good thing? Based on the best-selling book A Short History of Progress, this provocative documentary explores the concept of progress in our modern world, guiding us through a sweeping but detailed survey of the major "progress traps" facing our civilization in the arenas of technology, economics, consumption, and the environment. Featuring powerful arguments from such visionaries as Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood, Stephen Hawking, Craig Venter, Robert Wright, Michael Hudson, and Ronald Wright, this enlightening and visually spectacular film invites us to contemplate the progress traps that destroyed past civilizations and that lie treacherously embedded in our own. Leading critics of Wall Street, cognitive psychologists, and ecologists lay bare the consequences of progress-as-usual as the film travels around the world - from a burgeoning China to the disappearing rainforests of Brazil to a chimp research lab in New Iberia, Louisiana - to construct a shocking overview of the way our global economic system is eating away at our planet's resources and shackling entire populations with poverty. Providing an honest look at the risks and pitfalls of running 21st Century "software" (our accumulated knowledge) on 50,000-year-old "hardware" (our primate brains), Surviving Progress offers a challenge: to prove making apes smarter was not an evolutionary dead end. "Koyannisqatsi meets The Corporation in this thought-provoking, brilliantly crafted film about nothing less than the history of the modern world and the fate of civilization." - Kevin Laforest, Montreal Hour "In the tradition of the best 'issue docs' of recent times, this economically crafted, exquisitely argued essay makes its disquieting case without hysteria or prejudice, without irony or jingoism, and with just a soupçon of self-loathing." - Toronto Star |
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