Anti Corruption Documentaries

Monday, July 19, 2010

Transparency International Anticorruption Commercials

TI Bangladesh produced four television spots to raise public awareness and encourage people to participate in the anti-corruption movement. The spots are in Bengali with English subtitles.

TI Chile Transparente is broadcasting a series of messages promoting best practice and probity on the radio. In Spanish only.

View and Listen Here

Africa: Open for Business (2006)

Voted BBC World Documentary of the Year 2006, this claims to show "...Africa as you’ve never seen it before. Imagine an Africa with entrepreneurial spirit that is striving to take care of itself and finding African solutions to African problems. That’s what you will see in this groundbreaking one-hour documentary by award-winning producer Carol Pineau...Africa Open for Business offers a tour of the continent, profiling ten companies throughout Africa. Some operate in countries with good governance. One operates in a country with no government! What they have in common is hard work and good business sense. Taken together, they are inspiring stories of human force of will."
Link to permanent website.

Open the Books / Publish What You Pay (2009)

This 4 minute video from Open The Books / Publish What You Pay promotes the Extractive Industries Transparency Disclosure Act. According to the video description: "In many developing countries that are rich in natural resources, governments do not provide the most basic of information concerning natural resource revenues. This lack of transparency facilitates and even encourages corruption. Large sums of money that are not subject to oversight or disclosure are hijacked by corrupt leaders and are misappropriated, funding wars and inciting civil strife, diverting much needed funds from the citizens who own these resources. These citizens lack any method of recourse in holding the government accountable for their expenditures. Publish What You Pay calls for transparency in the oil, gas and mining industries and is asking Congress to introduce the Extractive Industries Transparency Disclosure Act. This bill will get much-needed information about natural resource revenues into the public domain."

Dispatches: How to Get Ahead in Africa (2007)

In this 2007 Channel 4 (UK) documentary "BAFTA Award-winning journalist Sorious Samura shows how in Africa corruption has become normal and accepted, even though it's tearing the continent to pieces. Despite the billions in western aid poured in, Samura claims Africa is heading into oblivion: but it's not war, famine and disease strangling development; it's corruption." The permanent link is here, but there is a grainy uploaded version available (unofficially) online:

Good Fortune (2010)

This new film broadcast just this month on PBS is "is a provocative exploration of how massive international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they aim to benefit. In Kenya’s rural countryside, Jackson’s farm is being flooded by an American investor who hopes to alleviate poverty by creating a multimillion-dollar rice farm. Across the country in Nairobi, Silva’s home and business in Africa’s largest shantytown are being demolished as part of a U.N. slum-upgrading project. The gripping stories of two Kenyans battling to save their homes from large-scale development present a unique opportunity see foreign aid through eyes of the people it is intended to help."

What Are We Doing Here? (2008)

This 2008 feature length documentary explores why the charity given to Africa over the last five decades has been largely ineffective and often harmful. The film tells the story of Brandon, Nicholas, Daniel and Tim Klein who travel across Africa in an attempt to understand one of the great problems of our time; the failure to end poverty.

Aid and Anti Corruption, Oxfam forum (2010)

This recording of a meeting/presentation by Oxfam America and leading developing world voices explores "how U.S. foreign aid can produce better results by promoting country ownership and bolstering anti-corruption efforts".

Click here for video

It's Your Money (2009)

This 2 minute campaign song and accompanying slideshow/video was commissioned for the release of the Open Budget Index 2008, which rates 85 countries by the amount and type of budget information their governments make available to the public. This is viewable at Peter Gabriel's nonprofit organization, WITNESS.

It's Our Money. Where's It Gone? (2009)

The International Budget Partnership posted this 18 minute video about budget monitoring and oversight in Kenya. According to the IBP "In Kenya, members of parliament receive approximately one million dollars per year to spend on development projects in their constituencies through a scheme called the Constituency Development Fund. The MPs are able to spend this money with no meaningful oversight, so the CDF has been plagued with mismanagement and corruption. This documentary presents the powerful story of a civil society organization, MUHURI, that helps a local community in a Mombasa slum investigate their local CDF and take on the challenge of holding them accountable."

Follow the Money (2010)

This 2 minute animated short from Oxfam America explores where the money goes when we fill up at the pump. According to their website “Standing at the pump, watching the numbers tick away, do you ever wonder where the money goes? You’re not alone: People on the other end of the pipeline are wondering too. While we feel the pinch in our pockets, citizens of oil-producing countries are often not seeing the profits.”

Sweet Crude (2009)

Sweet Crude tells the story of Nigeria’s Niger Delta. According to the film's website "In a small corner of the most populous country in Africa, billions of dollars of crude oil flow under the feet of a desperate people. Immense wealth and abject poverty stand in stark contrast. The environment is decimated. The issues are complex, the answers elusive."
Check out a clip below:

Kikulacho: The Bite Within (2010)

This new documentary highlights the progress of reforms in Kenya in relation to the war against corruption and the constitutional review process. (produced by Transparency International and Camerapix/A24 Media and is written and directed by Kenyan filmmaker Murad Rayani)
There's no embeddable media yet, but you can read more about the film and see a clip at their website.

Oil Gotten Gains

This documentary from Al Jazeera's People & Power series looks at how the leaders of Congo Brazzaville have misappropriated the country's oil wealth, condemning the majority of citizens to live in poverty.
You can read more and see the whole things by clicking here or watch part one below:

Shadows and Light: Oil, Power and the Niger Delta

In this audio slideshow produced by OSI and partner Revenue Watch Institute, Social Action director Asume Isaac Osuoka and photographer Ed Kashi describe the struggles of Niger Delta citizens and the dire need for fair and responsible revenue management.

Looking for Anticorruption Documentaries!

I'm collecting online and offline documentaries and other AV materials about anticorruption issues in developing nations. I've posted clips to many that I've found here. But if you know of others, please email me and tell me about them.