Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
to
to
Exclude
Only includes titles with the selected topics
to
In minutes
to
1-43 of 43
- An anthology of short films that pairs directors with leading economic advisers to create stories that offer a better understanding of how the economy impacts all of our lives.
- What is the real value of a dollar? You think that a dollar bill is money and that banks are where your cash is stored and safeguarded. Well, you're wrong. Like, really wrong. The seventh film in the WE THE ECONOMY series.
- 13-year-old inventor Aidan has discovered that trees use a mathematical formula to gather sunlight in crowded forests. Now he wonders why we don't collect solar energy the same way.
- Biologists spent ten years trying to map the structure of the elusive Mason Pfizer Monkey Virus, a problem that could unlock the cure for AIDS. The Contenders solved it in three weeks. Using the online puzzle game Fold It, scientists are enlisting video gamers to solve real- world problems. Fold It allows regular people from all over the world to team up and contribute to scientific breakthroughs by discovering the shape of proteins. The Contenders is one such team. How did these citizen scientists solve a problem that was once thought uncomputable?
- Dr Edie Widder is a biologist and a deep sea explorer. She's been fascinated with bioluminescent sea creatures since she her very first dives in the ocean. Using her underwater photography, we travel through the cabinet of curiosities that floats beneath the sea: creatures that sparkle, that fizz, that send of puffs of smoke. Edie explains how bioluminescent sea creatures possess special properties - their special light isn't just pretty, it has remarkable properties that can help us in the fight against pollution. Edie shows us some simple science: in her laboratory, she mixes a sample of sediment with a Vibrio fischeri - a common bioluminescent bacteria, easy to mix and use. She shows us how the light given off by the bacteria will dim in a polluted sample - if it dims quickly, the sample is very polluted, and if it dims slowly, the sample is relatively clean. From these samples, Edie creates "pollution maps" of waterways near cities. Edie takes us from the ocean world, to a world of science, and back to the world above. This is the story of how all things are connected, and how the smallest things in the ocean can have the most surprising properties.
- The Sky Is NOT The Limit profiles Peter Diamandis, his character and passion to dream big, through his work as founder and visionary behind the X Prize Foundation. From his recent successes (e.g. the 2011 Oil Clean Up X Prize) to his vision for the next big thing - revolutionizing global health care by partnering with communications companies to bring the knowledge of the medical world to people in developing and rural areas without easy access to doctors - the film envisions the world through Diamandis' inspired point of view, mixing dynamic visuals of recent X Prize challenges with artful animated sequences to visually express Diamandis' vision of a world of abundance.
- ROBOT is set in the Yale Social Robotics Lab where Brian Scassellati designs robots we enjoy being around and are helpful in our homes and schools. The film features NICO and KEEPON, robots who are becoming socially intelligent: they teach us lessons, learn to dance and even cheat while playing games with us.
- MUSIC MAN tells the story of professor and inventor Ge Wang who teaches computer music at Stanford University where he began the innovative Stanford Laptop Orchestra. Wang believes everyone who loves music should be able to play it. To that end, Wang was the first to turn the IPhone into a musical instrument when he created the "Ocarina" phone app which became one of the most popular in the world when it was launched in 2009.
- Dan Nocera has a simple equation to save the planet: sun + water = energy for the world. Taking his cues from nature, what the father of photochemistry Giacomo Ciamician called "the guarded secret of plants", Nocera has invented an artificial leaf with a self-healing catalyst that can power the earth inexpensively by using sunlight to split water and store energy.
- America has the world's highest incarceration rate. As a culture, we're clear on whatconstitutes punishment but have little consensus or care going into reform.Sometimes "innovation" is just a way out. A redirection. Compassion; patience.NOE is an ex-gang member in his late 20s who is just out of prison and has neverheld a job. He might never get one, given the tattoos that cover his body and face.But without a job, he has no training. It's a catch-22.learns valuable job skills, Herb learns what it's like toteach a workforce that comes straight from the streets.In a microcosm of Homeboy's mission, we see Noe learn the ropes - from sifting tomixing to topping to baking - as he shares his story. Bread can be considered manythings - warm; delicious; sustaining. It's also slang for money. This literal slice ofNoe's life underscores the meaning - and the lasting contribution - of "good bread."
- You're humming along, tapping your toe, maybe nodding your head, listening to your favorite song, the artist's vocals ascending higher and higher up the scale to that heart-stopping, tear inducing pitch perfect note. Flawless. Inhuman? Auto-tune is transforming music. Listening will never be the same.
- Brooklyn painter Marie Roberts comes from a family long entrenched in Coney Island's Sideshow. Her family home once housed the famous freaks and oddities of the 1920's and 1930's where her uncle was the "talker" luring audiences in to see them. Marie paints beautiful banners for the current Sideshow.
- In today's context of biological and ecological destruction caused by chemical farming, industrial agriculture and genetic engineering, the film explores the core philosophy of "Navdanya" movement ignited by Dr. Vandana Shiva who believes seed is a gift of life, heritage and continuity and saving seeds leads to conserving biodiversity, knowledge, culture and sustainability.
- Meet Maxim, the young inventor of a truly jaw-dropping new technology with limitless applications that will eliminate the need for screens and monitors -- and all manner of electronic junk.
- Panmela Castro was born and raised in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has own personal history and desire to make people aware of Domestic Violence Against Women through graffiti art. Panmela is proof that no matter how young you are, you have the power to make change. She created an organization called Rede Nami. Through these organization, Panmela Castro uses her graffiti to help spread the word, and so she took to the streets of Rio's hillside favelas, partnering with human-rights organizations to turn underground public art into messages condemning domestic violence. She travels the world with her art and has been honored with numerous international awards for her social work, including the Diller Von Furstenberg Family Foundation for Extraordinary Women, the Vital Voices Global Leadership Award for human rights, and, on 2012, she was nominated by the Newsweek magazine one of the 150 women that are shaking the world. The strength and the focus of these young activist, whose artistic work has been denouncing, protecting and even saving lives.
- Interface designer Dr. Diane Gromala has experienced chronic pain for the last 25 years. Working with concepts of mindfulness meditation--where a patient focuses on their pain to control it--Dr. Gromala and her team have built an immersive virtual reality environment that essentially allows patients to interface with the self by using biofeedback and sensory cues to modulate pain levels.
- Who would dare to pit one fatal disease against another... inside the body of an six-year-old patient? Dr. Carl June and his team of researchers and scientists at Penn Medicine and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have taken cliff-hanging risks in their patients' treatment. With profound results, their medical trials are shattering long-held expectations in the field of cancer research.
- Tech entrepreneur Rehan Allawala is on a mission to empower Pakistan's most disenfranchised before they're left behind by the Internet revolution.
- Dutch artist Ap Verheggen is determined to inspire people to respond to climate change in a creative and innovative way. Is the idea of building a glacier in the desert so crazy after all?
- A moving portrait of Hilary Lister, a quadriplegic champion sailor whose metal-and-circuit-board navigational tool, invented with friends, led her to conquer the oceans of the world.
- A short documentary focused on inventor Dean Kamen (Segway) and his work to solve the world's safe water crisis.
- Shun's passion for flight isn't simply about airplanes; it's ultimately about the passion in all of us that gives us a reason to live. Shun's mystical vision of the world in the sky versus the monochromatic Japanese lifestyle reflects the fight against the mundane in all of us.
- Design students Anna and Terese took on a giant challenge as an exam project. Something no one had done before. If they could swing it, it would for sure be revolutionary. The bicycle is a tool to change the world. If we use bikes AND travel safe: Life will be better for all.An invisible bicycle helmet is a symbol for the impossible. If you can swing it everything is possible. Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin took on a very special exam project at their southern Sweden design school seven years ago. An airbag bicycle helmet. In Malmö, Sweden everybody use bikes, if other cities in world would have the same amount of bikes on the streets we would live in a much better world. A greener and healthier world. The bicycle is a tool for changen. Bike safety will make more people use bikes, Anna and Terese believes. They want to save the world. A good thing.November 2011 the Hövding bicycle helmet was launched in Sweden. Now Anna and Terese has 20 employees and works hard to make their dream come trough.
- The Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, epitomizes what can be achieved by progressive government working with local activists to adopt the latest technology - but it's the award-winning architecture and design courtesy of New York City's Percent for Art program that will drop your jaw, especially those eight magnificent Digester Eggs.
- Billie has a rare condition that causes her estrogen to form dense tumors in the soft tissue of her body. Her body is filled with tumors that, on days, like this, make bed a place called home.
- You'll be hard-pressed to find a more unusual circus, or father-daughter performing duo. The Moscow Cat Theater is just that: a traveling show of cats that perform amazing tricks for the owners who love and train them. Everybody in Russia may be used to seeing cats perform tricks, as the theater's manager explains in this funny, charming film, but felines walking tightropes, crossing the stage on giant balls and walking upside down is not a common sight in most countries. As a balalaika and accordion circus score plays in the background, Creative Director Vladimir and his daughter Maria combine their love of cats and stage to create a captivating act and illustrate the tricks of the trade - giving new meaning to the expression 'herding cats'.
- Trash becomes energy at a small New York landfill where people are thinking differently about garbage.
- After waiting 50 years, some exceedingly rare pigs help Dr Bob Elliott preform a medical miracle.
- Scott, an Idaho engineer, was pained to see that the US alone used 3,741 Billion kWh of electricity per year, and nothing is being done. He and his wife came up with a real solution: cover roads with solar panels, collecting energy from the sun and providing to the areas around.
- There are three main drawbacks of the traditional prosthetic: low functionality, low controllability and low cosmesis. When Marco Controzzi and Christian Cipriani developed 'Azzurra', a fully functional bionic hand which can be controlled by the human mind, they achieved more than a revolution in prosthetics. Thanks to a bionic interface, not only can an amputee 'talk' to a bionic hand, which responds as if it were their own, but the hand 'talks' back, offering both tactile sensation and a dialogue with human evolution.
- For those without access to a simple toilet, poop can be poison. Businessman-turned-sanitation superhero Jack Sim fights this oft-neglected crisis affecting 2.6 billion people.
- The Honor Code illustrates the ideas of philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah whobelieves honor is the key to lasting social change from within. With a storyteller's flairand a philosopher's rigor, Appiah shows how the concept of honor propelled moralrevolutions in the past and can do so in the future too.
- The infamous hoarder and poet Lamont B. Steptoe gives you a tour of his cluttered filled Philadelphia apartment and mind.
- The story of Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier, two visionary doctors who attempt to replace a dying man's heart with a rotor-driven device of their own design. If successful, this technology could prove life is possible without a heartbeat, and bring us one step closer to overcoming America's number one killer--heart disease.
- For over 25,000 poverty-stricken children in China, a "free lunch" is their daily reality. Journalist Deng Fei set up the Free Lunch Campaign in 2011, raised USD 3.9 million from Chinese social media users in just one year and pioneered the power of micro-blogging in China's battle against inequality.
- Dr. Joseph Rizzo and Prof. John Wyatt co-founded the Boston Retinal Implant Project. It's a Harvard/M.I.T. collaboration whose "Bionic Eye" technology is aimed at restoring sight to patients who suffer from degenerative blindness. They have invented a microelectronic retinal implant that restores vision to patients, particularly those with age-related macular degeneration and blindness.
- Innovation can arise from even the most unlikely places. A harsh desert. A complicated political landscape. In the midst of the forbidding northern region of Sudan, the technologically magnificent Salam Center bears testimony to the most beautiful and basic human impulse: compassion. Dr. Gino Strada is the founder and idea architect behind the only free cardiac surgery hospital on the African continent.
- All Hail the Beat' celebrates a rhythm machine deemed obsolete in 1984 but still influential until to this day. The Roland TR-808 existed from 1980 to 1984. In that brief time span it was embraced by hip hop and helped inspire the creation of new dance music genres (electro boogie, techno) as we hear in testimony from innovators D-Nice, formerly of Boogie Down Productions, Arthur Baker, producer of the classic "Planet Rock" for Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force, and Juan Atkins, credited with creating the Detroit techno sound. Editor Waajeed, who is also a well known hip hop producer himself, has created a sonic tapestry of 808 beats that runs underneath the film, as if the device itself is giving commentary on its history.