Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers

The Happy Worker - Or How Work Was Sabotaged

May 2022 •English

Our premise is that work has become an act of self-sabotage. Empty corporate jargon, ever-changing management fashions and self-serving bureaucracy masquerading as efficiency hijacked the purpose of work. Creative documentary The Happy Worker will show how we got to this point and the very human behavior that led us here. We want to show how this unhealthy system is maintained and what keeps us from calling bullshit.

The Shock Doctrine

September 2007 •English

Drawing surprising connections between market methods and CIA torture techniques developed in the 1950s, the film explores how well-known events of the recent past have been theaters for the shock doctrine, from Pinochet's coup in Chile, to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, to the war in Iraq today.

Master of the Universe

November 2013 •German

He was one of Germany's leading investment experts with an income of several million Euros per day. Now, he sits on one of the upper floors of an empty bank building in the middle of Frankfurt, overlooking a skyline of glass and steel. And talks. In an extended mix of a monologue and an in-depth interview, which is as frightening as it is fascinating, he shares his inside knowledge from a megalomaniac parallel world where illusions are the market's hardest currency. Marc Bauder's 'Master of the Universe' is based on meticulous research and provides us with geniune insight into the notoriously secretive and self-protective 'universe' of which our nameless protagonist experiences himself a master. Where other films on the financial meltdown have focused on the epic nature of larger-than-life business, Bauder probes the mentality that made it possible in the first place. A tense drama where psychology meets finance - two things that are more closely linked than you would like to believe.

Exergo

May 2024 •Basque

Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.

The Bloodline: The Complete Story

March 2023 •English

Watch the entire saga of The Bloodline, featuring moments and matches from Roman Reigns, The Usos, Solo Sikoa and even Sami Zayn that made The Bloodline the most dominant group in WWE.

In Ictu Oculi

October 2020 •Basque

The six-decade transformation of a block of houses, shown by means of artfully featured archival shots, highlights the beauty and sadness of human-made decay. In the blink of an eye 66 years pass by and a savings bank replaces a church.

The Great Contemporary Art Bubble

October 2009 •English

On September 15th 2008, the day of the the collapse of Lehmans, the worst financial news since 1929, Damien Hirst sold over £60 million of his art, in an auction at Sotheby’s that would total £111 million over two days. It was the peak of the contemporary art bubble, the greatest rise in the financial value of art in the history of the world. One art critic and film-maker was banned by Sotheby’s and Hirst from attending this historic auction: Ben Lewis.

What Would Jesus Buy?

March 2007 •English

A serious docu-comedy about the commercialization of Christmas. What Would Jesus Buy? follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir as they go on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse: the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt!

Affluenza

September 1997 •English

A look at the modern-day problem of "affluenza," an epidemic of stress, overwork, shopping and debt caused by the pursuit of the American Dream. The history of the condition is explored, as well as the advertising and marketing ploys used to sustain it. Men and women from around the country share their stories of personal debt and suggestions for financial recovery.

Black Thoughts

August 2020 •English

A man that is a stranger, is an incredibly easy man to hate. However, walking in a stranger’s shoes, even for a short while, can transform a perceived adversary into an ally. Power is found in coming to know our neighbor’s hearts. For in the darkness of ignorance, enemies are made and wars are waged, but in the light of understanding, family extends beyond blood lines and legacies of hatred crumble.

The Family

July 2016 •English

Anne Hamilton-Byrne was beautiful, charismatic and delusional. She was also incredibly dangerous. Convinced she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Hamilton-Byrne headed an apocalyptic sect called The Family, which was prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s through to the 1990s. With her husband Bill, she acquired numerous children – some through adoption scams, some born to cult members – and raised them as her own. Isolated from the outside world, the children were dressed in matching outfits, had identical dyed blonde hair, and were allegedly beaten, starved and injected with LSD. Taught that Hamilton-Byrne was both their mother and the messiah, the children were eventually rescued during a police raid in 1987, but their trauma had only just begun.

Cruel Architecture, a Tool of Gentrification

December 2021 •English

A Day in the Life of a Consumer

June 1993 •German

The film shows one day from waking up in the morning all the way to waking up again the next morning. The everyday situations that many commercials are made of, the little dramas that they create and solve through the product or service they sell, are stitched together into one day. This is a film about the everyday in (German, or Western-European) society because the commercials are part of the everyday of most people (everyone who watches television) and they depict an ideal image of society. The film abundantly uses repetition as an editing technique, in visual ways as described above, but also because commercials can be read in different ways. For instance, Brat baking foil shows up at the evening dinner sequence, when an ovendish is put on the table, and again later on in the sequence about going out to a classic concert, because the clip has classic music.

Derren Brown: The Great Art Robbery

December 2013 •English

In this brand new episode, master illusionist and showman Derren Brown plans to pull off the perfect crime. He’s bet renowned art collector Ivan Massow that he can steal a painting from right under his nose. In true Derren style, he will tell Ivan exactly which painting he plans to target – a work by Turner-nominated British brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman no less – as well as what time the theft will happen. He’ll even give him a photograph of the person that’s going to take it.

Bananaland: Blood, Bullets & Poison

August 2016 •English

For consumers, bananas are a delicious and nutritious start to the day, a healthy snack and a fixture in our fruit bowls. For millions of residents in the banana lands, the production of bananas means social upheaval, violence and pesticide poisoning. Banana Land explores the origins of these disparate realities, and opens the conversation on how workers, producers and consumers can address this disconnect.

Beyond Fordlandia

January 2017 •English

An environmental account of Henry Ford’s Amazon experience decades after its failure. The story addressed by the film begins in 1927, when the Ford Motor Company attempted to establish rubber plantations on the Tapajós River, a primary tributary of the Amazon. This film addresses the recent transition from failed rubber to successful soybean cultivation for export, and its implication for land usage.

Fordlandia Malaise

February 2019 •Portuguese

Fordlandia Malaise is a film about the memory and the present of Fordlandia, the company town founded by Henry Ford in the Amazon rain forest in 1928. His aim was to break the British rubber monopoly and produce this material in Brazil for his car production in the United States. Today, the remains of construction testify to the scale of the failure of this neocolonialist endeavor that lasted less than a decade. Nowadays, Fordlandia is a space suspended between times, between the 20th and 21st centuries, between utopia and dystopia, between visibility and invisibility: architectural buildings of steel, glass, and masonry still remain in use while traces of indigenous life left no marks on the ground.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

April 2005 •English

A documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to its fall.

Logistics

January 2012 •

Logistics or Logistics Art Project is an experimental art film. At 51,420 minutes (857 hours or 35 days and 17 hours), it is the longest movie ever made. A 37 day-long road movie in the true sense of the meaning. The work is about Time and Consumption. It brings to the fore what is often forgotten in our digital, ostensibly fast-paced world: the slow, physical freight transportation that underpins our economic reality.

Fuel

November 2008 •English

Record high oil prices, global warming, and an insatiable demand for energy: these issues define our generation. The film exposes shocking connections between the auto industry, the oil industry, and the government, while exploring alternative energies such as solar, wind, electricity, and non-food-based biofuels.