The slow death of culture

Essential viewing: A short called "Stories Untold," which shows doc filmmakers explaining in their own words what it is like to attempt to make films about our culture when that culture is owned--and the owners are, by turns, capricious, extortionate or unavailable.

Media companies work hard to push their messages into every nook and cranny of our lives, public and private. Then, when you naturally happen to capture some of that stuff while documenting the world around you, those same companies threaten to punish you for having caught the messages they threw out there in the first place--the material that is virtually inescapable in the world you are trying to represent in your art.

It's impossible for a healthy culture to exist under these conditions. It's a culture of fear.

(via Creative Commons)