The crises of civilisation

On Wednesday night we were invited to go and watch one of the first film screenings of new film documentary The Crisis of Civilisation at Imperial College London. The film investigates how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of  a single failed global system.

With brilliant animations throughout, the film doesn’t sidestep any of the big issues. Each chapter always refers back to capitalism as the system that is causing and perpetuating almost every global social issue. If you haven’t quite got your head around the massive problems in the world and what is causing them then this is a great film to watch as each crisis is broken down and explained extremely well.

Particularly interesting to us at Grow Heathrow was the emphasis placed on the centralisation of land ownership in the hands of very few people as being a root cause of many of the failures of the current system. The film proposes that it is only through reclaiming land and returning it to productivity that we will be able to build resilient communities and start to create alternatives. Dispossession and the loss of skills necessary to sustain ourselves have left us dependent on a deeply destructive global system that is addicted to oil – leading to climate change, the exhaustion of the world’s oil supplies, food instability, and underpinning much of the geopolitics that lead to international terrorism.

Check out the trailer HERE and keep an eye out for its future release soon. It’s definitely worth watching.