This topic exists so that our members can share their insight on non-fiction films of interest to the Kinist community.

Demographic Winter

From their press release:

...groundbreaking documentary, “Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family,” on the catastrophic consequences of rapidly falling birthrates – a global phenomenon. Worldwide, birthrates have declined by 50% in the past half-century. There are now 59 nations, with 44% of the world’s population, with below replacement birthrates.

A birthrate of 2.1 is needed to replace current population. Continent-wide, the European birthrate is 1.3. By 2030, Europe is expected to have a shortfall of 20 million workers. Russia is expected to lose one-third of its current population by 2050.

In nations with declining populations, who will operate the factories and farms? Who will guard the frontiers? With a graying population (a declining birthrate combined with growing longevity), who will support pension systems and otherwise care for the elderly?

The documentary addresses these and other crucial questions.

Speakers: Maria Sophia Aguirre (Professor of Economics, Catholic University), Patrick Fagan
(Senior Fellow, Family Research Council), Phillip Longman (Senior Fellow, New American
Foundation and author of “The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity
And What To Do About It”), Dr. Allan Carlson (International Secretary, World Congress of
Families), Jennifer Marshall (Director of Domestic Studies, the Heritage Foundation) and
Christine Vollmer (Latin American Alliance for the Family).

I recently ordered and viewed this documentary, and found it of interest to Kinists for a number of reasons. We all know about the decline in birthrates among Whites, however, the demographers/number crunchers in this documentary assert that the decline in human fertility is among all populations. They also claim that immigration damages third-world countries as well as the developed nations because the immigrants are predominately male, and of the age brackets that would ordinarily be building families in their home countries.

The problem of declining birthrates is covered in a great deal of detail, and the consequences addressed in an interesting manner. While this could have been a boring, talking-heads film, the filmmakers have managed to pull together an engaging look at a problem that is deeply rooted in the decline and destruction of the two-parent, heterosexual family. The conclusion is reached that the only demographic groups where population decline is not occurring, and where families are growing, are within communities of faith. Fundamentalist Christians are one group named. Islamist families are another grouping where numbers are growing.

A conclusion they do not overtly state, but which I came to after viewing the film, is that without a love of God and His ways, humans fill the gap with love of self, and love of self has little or no room for loving other people. Only by being obedient to God’s command to be fruitful and multiply can we reverse the birth dearth.

My favorite quote (paraphrasing it here) from the film is from one of the demographers. He says that the increase in human population in the 19th and 20th centuries was not so much because people went out and started breeding like rabbits, but because they finally stopped dying like flies.

Well worth watching and sharing with friends. This is not a religious film, however, the conclusions for Christians are unmistakable.

God bless,
Laurel

Laurel,

This documentary is worth considering:

“Classical Destinations: Explore Europe’s most spectacular cities and landscapes while luxuriating in the great classical music composed within their precincts.”

Classical Destinations

The Business of Being Born is a Riki Lake production but it is a very good film.

There is an Italian physician in the movie that has some really amazing monologue in some of the scenes.

Important resource: Best Online Documentaries - There are a hundred or so here.

Children of Beslan
On September 1, 2004, a group of heavily armed rebel extremists stormed into School No. 1 in Beslan, Russia. For three days, more than a thousand children and adults were held hostage in a sweltering gymnasium, denied food and water, and forced to keep their hands over their heads. The harrowing siege ended on September 3 with a series of explosions and a hail of gunfire that killed some 350 people - half of them children. In this film, the youngest survivors of Beslan tell their story.

Children of Beslan (The Beslan School Massacre on Youtube)
Children of Beslan Part 1
Children of Beslan Part 2
Children of Beslan Part 3
Children of Beslan Part 5
Children of Beslan Part 6

A Conversation about Race
a film by Craig Bodeker

I just finished watching this film. It’s well worth the time spent observing interviewees show how disconnected their attitudes about race really are. It succeeds in making the viewer willing to examine their own “disconnects” on the subject, which can be a positive in promoting real-world discussions about race.

That being said, there are a few production values that could have been improved. Many of the interviews took place against a background (or backgrounds) the filmmaker felt compelled to remove via some awkward masking/bluescreening/greenscreening, which left little halos around the edges of the heads of anyone with curly hair. The halos move in an uncomfortable to watch manner.

Other than that, though, it’s well worth purchasing and sharing with friends.

God bless,
Laurel

Demographic Bomb

Just received this, the second film in what I’m starting to think is a series put out by the producers of Demographic Winter. While I think Demographic Winter is required watching for pretty much anyone, the fact that they used this portion to go over the assumptions that created the birth dearth in this film makes it seem like an anticlimax. Paul Ehrlich is interviewed; his position is unchanged since the 1970s. The UN’s role in population control is covered in some detail, especially as it relates to third world population control. There is a particularly nasty-seeming woman interviewed who is a high honcho with the UN’s population control division. She gave me the creeps.

I think this film would have been better released as the first release in the series. Watch it and tell me if I’m wrong.

Laurel

A rather depressing film about life in Post-Soviet Russia:

Portable Fashion Festival presents: Miss Gulag

Through the prism of a beauty pageant staged by female inmates of a Siberian prison camp emerges a complex narrative of the lives of the first generation of women to come of age in Post-Soviet Russia. Miss Gulag explores the individual destinies of three women: Yulia, Tatiana, and Natasha, all bound together by long prison sentences and circumstances that have made them the vigilantes of their own destinies. For these women, undoubtedly, life is harsh under the constant surveillance of UF-91/9, but it is no less so on the outside. Today they, their families, and loved ones are sustained by hope for a better life upon release. This is a story of survival told from both sides of the fence.