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 information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period of research and the current Source page on the Zeitgeist web site lists the basic sources used / referenced and the Interactive Transcript includes exact source references and further information.

Now, it's important to point out that there is a tendency to simply disbelieve things that are counter to our understanding, without the necessary research performed.
For example, some information contained in Part 1 and Part 3, specifically, is not obtained by simple keyword searches on the Internet. You have to dig deeper. For instance, very often people who look up "Horus" or "The Federal Reserve" on the Internet draw their conclusions from very general or biased sources. Online encyclopedias or text book Encyclopedias often do not contain the information contained in Zeitgeist. However, if one takes the time to read the sources provided, they will find that what is being presented is based on documented evidence. Any corrections, clarifications & further points regarding the film are found on the Clarifications page. Non-Profit DVDs / Free Video Downloads are available through the Downloads page.

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.

Thank You

Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream, The End of Suburbia introduced the concept of peak oil. Now, in Escape from Suburbia, theory gives way to reality as a global debate rages over when demand will outpace supply, an emerging movement of citizens’ groups confront our addiction to oil, and three disparate characters and a small California town take on the most dramatic shift in modern history.

Escape from Suburbia is a wake-up call that challenges the illusion of never-ending growth based on the availability of cheap and abundant oil. Expert opinion and commentary from government and industry are countered by on-the-street skepticism from a growing segment of the population who’ve had personal experiences with natural disasters, rising gas prices and fragile energy grids. In Escape from Suburbia, viable local alternatives for citizens and communities are explored to ensure the survival of a sustainable civilization in the 21st Century and beyond.

Writer/Director Chris Paine's documentary feature film Who Killed the Electric Car? premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 before its release by Sony Pictures to critical acclaim in 100 U.S. markets. The film was the third highest-grossing theatrical documentary of 2006 and screened with An Inconvenient Truth in many markets.

Currently in wide DVD release, Paine’s film investigates the events leading to the quiet destruction of thousands of new, radically efficient electric vehicles. Through interviews and narrative, the film paints a picture of an industrial culture whose aversion to change and reliance on oil may be deeper then its ability to embrace ready solutions.

Who Killed the Electric Car? and Chris Paine were nominated by the Writer's Guild for Best Documentary of 2006. The film also received nominations from The Broadcast Critics Awards and The Environmental Media Awards for Best Documentary of 2006. The film won the audience award at the Canberra International Film Festival and won a special jury prize at the Mountain Film Festival.

"HEMP and
the Rule of Law"

Nov 17th, 2007

A documentary by Kevin Balling
Blending history with current events, this one-hour documentary traces hemp’s legendary past in U.S. agriculture and chronicles the heated debate to return the crop to American farmers.

Hemp is a crop with a rich history in U.S. agriculture. In the last decade of the twentieth century consumer demand for hemp products resulted in the crop’s resurgence on farms throughout the western world.

Thirty-one nations, including Canada, France, England, and China grow industrial hemp. Although hemp has no psychoactive potential, hemp shares the same plant family as marijuana. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) makes no distinction between hemp and marijuana, and a decade after hemp’s revival American farmers are still not permitted to grow it.

Includes footage of:

• Woody Harrelson’s Kentucky Court Trial
• DEA eradicating hemp on Pine Ridge Reservation
• Greg Herriott, Hempola Family Farms
• Michael Brady, Alterna Hair Care
• Jean Marie Laprise, Kenex
• James Woolsey, former CIA Director
• Dr. Paul Mahlberg, University of Indiana
• Dr. David West, Biologist
• Bud Sholts, North American Industrial Hemp Council
• Joe Hickey, Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative
• Andy Graves, Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative
• Jake Graves, Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative

"SICKO"

Oct 2007

http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/dvd/

"War Made Easy"

Sept 2007

War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media critic Norman Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse, and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.

"In Debt We Trust"

August 2007

IN DEBT WE TRUST is the latest film from Danny Schechter, "The News Dissector," director of the internationally distributed and award-winning WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception), an expose of the media's role in the Iraq War. The Emmy-winning former ABC News and CNN producer's new hard-hitting documentary investigates why so many Americans are being strangled by debt. It is a journalistic confrontation with what former Reagan advisor Kevin Phillips calls "Financialization"--the "powerful emergence of a debt-and-credit industrial complex."

While many Americans may be "maxing out" on credit cards, there is a deeper story: power is shifting into fewer hands.....with frightening consequences.

"The Power of Community:
How Cuba
Survived
Peak Oil"

July, 2007

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call "The Special Period." The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.

"Salud"

July, 2007

A timely examination of human values and the health issues that affect us all, ¡Salud!looks at the curious case of Cuba, a cash-strapped country with what the BBC calls ‘one of the world’s best health systems.’  From the shores of Africa to the Americas, !Salud!hits the road with some of the 28,000 Cuban health professionals serving in 68 countries, and explores the hearts and minds of international medical students in Cuba -- now numbering 30,000, including nearly 100 from the USA.  Their stories plus testimony from experts around the world bring home the competing agendas that mark the battle for global health—and the complex realities confronting the movement to make healthcare everyone’s birth right.

Against the alarming backdrop of the global health crisis and deteriorating public health systems in even the richest nations, ¡Salud! tells the little-known story of Cuba:  a poor country overcoming its lack of resources to provide universal health care and help other developing nations do the same. 

A feature documentary, ¡Salud! is directed by Academy Award nominee Connie Field and co-produced by Gail Reed.  The film spans three continents to look at the philosophy and health professionals placing Cuba on the map in the worldwide movement to make health care a global birthright.  Today, Cubans are among the world’s healthiest people, despite the island’s poverty.  Cuba’s volunteer corps now posts 28,000 health professionals in 68 countries; and Cuban medical schools will graduate an unprecedented 100,000 new doctors from developing countries over the next decade.

The film’s cameras reach into The Gambia, rural South Africa, coastal villages of Honduras and river settlements in the Amazon, where a Cuban is often the first doctor a poor community has ever seen. In some nations they staff entire health systems.  In all, they take with them the experience and philosophy of their own community-oriented, preventive and universal health care model fundamentally at odds with a global wave of healthcare privatization.

¡Salud! questions what propels Cuban doctors to serve where most others won’t, and grapples with the tensions their presence sometimes provokes.