Antonín Zíb

It's the musical phenomenon of the moment: K-Pop, short for "Korean Pop," has taken the world by storm in just a few years. But behind the powerful lyrics, elaborate choreography, and polished looks lies a ruthless industry.

A resistance writer and pioneer of nature writing with a controversial personality, Edward Abbey wrote more than twenty books on the theme of eternal nature. A gem of counterculture, his 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired a generation of environmental activists and readers with rebellious souls. Portrait of a rebellious, lyrical, and rude writer.

It's 1948 and hydro-electric power is transforming Scotland's Grampians.

Discipline and productivity are more regimented in Japan than in many other parts of the world. For the Japanese, survival means doing things together rather than asserting North-American-style individualism. Japan's industry has automated and computerized at an unparalleled rate. Open-concept offices and collaborative work styles offer a model of the changing style of modern work that could inspire the West to modify their processes as well.

Lee Anne Schmitt explores California's landscape and past to document the history of one-time boom towns built and abandoned by the industries that necessitated their creation. Sold as a limitless land expansive with free opportunity, California was actually, from its onset, fissured by the interwoven needs of private and public interests. Schmitt's film covers various locations through time, as the major industries of the early 20th century (mining, lumber, oil) give way to the military, eventually leading to multinational corporations, and the use of small towns as satellites for growing urban metropolises.

A study of the automobile and its pervasive effect on the history of North America. Focusing on the Ford dynasty, from the original Henry car through to Henry II, the film demonstrates how society has adapted to fit the needs of the automobile.

Facing deteriorating machines and the advance of new technologies, Argentine printing presses are closing up their shops. A group of young designers has rediscovered this great technical innovation in the history of the written word – the typesetting printing press – but the technique is difficult to learn, passed down from master to apprentice. The last press mechanic in the country will be in charge of teaching them so that this historic technique endures.

In 2007, unable to compete with cheaper offshore production, Hooker Furniture Co. closed its plant in Martinsville, Virginia, after 83 years in operation. With These Hands follows the last load of wood down the assembly line as it is cut, honed, and assembled into fine furniture. Along the way, employees at the factory share their perspectives on work, community, and survival in a country devastated by de-industrialization and outsourcing.