Truth in Numbers? Everything, According to Wikipedia (2010)

Director
Scott Glosserman; Nic Hill

Main cast
Alan Schwartz; Ed Chi

Genres
Documentary

Description
Although Wikipedia is the 8th most popular website on the Internet today, and it is already the 3rd most widely read 'publication' in human history, attracting 100 million unique visitors a month, this great social and academic experiment of our age is riddled with vandals and challenged by skeptics, posing compelling questions about whether Wikipedia's model can truly achieve its goal. The film intersperses founder Jimmy Wales' unusual rise to Internet super-stardom among the global implications of Wikipedia. Are entries factually accurate? Biased? Accountable? Does 'Jimbo' Wales posses the wisdom to ensure that Wikipedians aggregate knowledge correctly?


Similar movies

Steal This Film focuses on Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde, prominent members of the Swedish filesharing community. The makers claimed that 'Old Media' documentary crews couldn't understand the internet culture that filesharers took part in, and that they saw peer-to-peer organization as a threat to their livelihoods. Because of that, they were determined to accurately represent the filesharing community from within. Notably, Steal This Film was released and distributed, free of charge, through the same filesharing networks that the film documents.
Programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz achieved groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing. His passion for open access ensnared him in a legal nightmare that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26.
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were effected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
When National Geographic photographer James Balog asked, “How can one take a picture of climate change?” his attention was immediately drawn to ice. Soon he was asked to do a cover story on glaciers that became the most popular and well-read piece in the magazine during the last five years. But for Balog, that story marked the beginning of a much larger and longer-term project that would reach epic proportions.
Spin doctors spread misinformation and confusion among American citizens to delay progress on such important issues as global climate change.
Let’s Make Money is an Austrian documentary by Erwin Wagenhofer released in the year 2008. It is about aspects of the development of the world wide financial system.
In WikiRebels, we learn about the early hacker life of Julian Assange, and his later decision to form an organization where whistleblowers can anonymously pass information that documents crime and immorality. His stated goal is to expose injustice, and nothing exemplifies this more than the leaked film entitled “Collateral Murder.” WikiRebels shows other films released by WikiLeaks, and catalogs the most significant leaks since its 2006 inception, including the Iceland banking scandal, Kenya corruption and death squads, and toxic dumping in Cote D’Ivoire.
Jack Rebney is the most famous man you've never heard of - after cursing his way through a Winnebago sales video, Rebney's outrageously funny outtakes became an underground sensation and made him an internet superstar. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer journeys to the top of a mountain to find the recluse who unwittingly became the "Winnebago Man.
Documentary about freedom defense movements on Internet.
A documentary focusing on the life of dot-com entrepreneur Josh Harris, and his exploits over the last decade.
Werner Herzog's exploration of the Internet and the connected world.
Deep Web gives the inside story of one of the the most important and riveting digital crime sagas of the century -- the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the convicted 30-year-old entrepreneur accused to be 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' creator and operator of online black market Silk Road. The film explores how the brightest minds and thought leaders behind the Deep Web are now caught in the crosshairs of the battle for control of a future inextricably linked to technology, with our digital rights hanging in the balance.
Warcraft III is the most popular real-time strategy computer game, thrilling over 2.5 million North Americans and 10 million people worldwide everyday. The game creates an alternate universe, where players challenge each other with a mythically-charged online world of humans, orcs, the undead, knights, and elves. In Beyond the Game, we meet - in real life and within the game - two of the game's leading figures, known as Grubby and Sky. Acclaimed filmmaker Jos de Putter tracks these Kasparovs of a new generation and a new game across the world all the way to the world championships in Seattle. A fascinating, surprising, and genuinely touching portrait, Beyond the Game is a study of, and participation in, the reformation of our communities in the internet age.
A chronicle which provides a rare window into the international perception of the Iraq War, courtesy of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news outlet. Roundly criticized by Cabinet members and Pentagon officials for reporting with a pro-Iraqi bias, and strongly condemned for frequently airing civilian causalities as well as footage of American POWs, the station has revealed (and continues to show the world) everything about the Iraq War that the Bush administration did not want it to see.
The film in a charming and original way compares the first ascent to the first free-climb ascent of the Face of Sphinx, located in the most prominent part of the North Face Triglav. The aesthetic and breathtaking footage present beautiful and powerful environment of the Slovenian national symbol, with the mystical Sphinx at the forefront and all four protagonists of the two crucial ascents, which are separated by a period of three decades. The central story tells us that the Sphinx does not want that the climbers to solve her riddle, taken from her famous question: 'Who walks in the morning on four, at moon on two and in the evening on three (legs)?'
In 1955, Tobias Schneebaum disappeared into the depths of the Peruvian Amazon. He had no guide, no map, and only the vaguest of instructions: Keep the river on your right. A year later Schneebaum emerged from the jungle…naked, covered in body paint, and a modern-day cannibal. Titled after Schneebaum’s 1969 cult classic memoir about his formative experiences living in the Amazon, Keep The River On Your Right is the extraordinary stranger-than-fiction story of Schneebaum’s return to the jungle, 45 years after his original visit, to reunite with the very tribesmen he loved and who gave him nightmares for nearly half a century. A deeply affecting and searing portrait, sibling filmmakers Laurie and David Shapiro capture a man in utter conflict, a fearless adventurer, and one of the most charming, enigmatic, and perplexing men ever captured on screen.
The fascinating complexity of high school debate gives way to a portrait of the equally complex racial and class bias of American education in Greg Whiteley's riveting documentary.
This film examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news, and provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangerous impact on society when a broad swath of media is controlled by one person. Media experts, including Jeff Cohen (FAIR) Bob McChesney (Free Press), Chellie Pingree (Common Cause), Jeff Chester (Center for Digital Democracy) and David Brock (Media Matters) provide context and guidance for the story of Fox News and its effect on society. This documentary also reveals the secrets of Former Fox news producers, reporters, bookers and writers who expose what it's like to work for Fox News. These former Fox employees talk about how they were forced to push a "right-wing" point of view or risk their jobs. Some have even chosen to remain anonymous in order to protect their current livelihoods. As one employee said "There's no sense of integrity as far as having a line that can't be crossed."
Fusion spent two years with the production team of Disney's smash hit film. In 'Imagining Zootopia,' you will travel with the team to Africa to explore the animals in their natural habitat and find out how the storytellers and animators dealt with the very real themes of prejudice and bias.
For two years the crew of 3 MINUTE GAPS have followed the world's best mountain bike racers around the globe documenting them as they trained, prepared, rode, ate, traveled, raced, celebrated, commiserated, and made sacrifices simply because of the weight of ambition to be the fastest. There is no truer, more accurate and intimate depiction of the hallowed worlds of the very best World Cup rider's than 3 MINUTE GAPS.
Beauty Is... the film by community educator and guerrilla film maker Toyin Agbetu asks ‘what is beauty?’ and examines the answer from a philosophical position through discussions on hair, skin shade, body image and character. It's a serious, yet often humorous cross between Chris Rock's "Good Hair" and Bill Duke/D. Channsin Berry's "Dark Girls" documentaries with some sensitive Oprah styled interviews mixed in. The film explores the risks posed by chemical straighteners and skin bleaching, it shares insights on conditions like Vitiligo and Alopecia whilst discussing the impact of biased media on children and personal relationships. Backed by a global campaign to challenge governments and the pharmaceutical industry, this is edutainment that may just change your life.
A response to the failure of the American mass media to provide the public with relevant and accurate information about the standoff between the US and Iran, as happened before with the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. We have heard that Iran is a nuclear menace in defiance of the international community, bent on "wiping Israel off the map", supporting terrorism, and unwilling to negotiate. This documentary disputes these claims as they are presented to us and puts them in the context of present and historical US imperialism and hypocrisy with respect to Iran. It looks at the struggle for democracy inside Iran, the consequences of the current escalation and the potential US and/or Israeli attack, and suggests some alternatives to consider.
Set in China during the Warlords Period of the1920s, notorious bandit chief Zhang descends upon a remote provincial town posing as its new mayor, an identity that he had hijacked from Old Tang, himself a small-time imposter. Hell-bent on making a fast buck, Zhang soon meets his match in the tyrannical local gentry Huang as a deadly battle of wit and brutality ensues.
Phil Spector is a pioneer of American music, a legendary producer to John Lennon and Tina Turner, and, as of April 13th 2009, a convicted murderer. Yet the Spector who appears in Vikram Jayanti's documentary is not the severe, outlandishly coiffed defendant seen in sensationalistic accounts of his trial, but a charming, savvy music executive with a generous, but arguably accurate, estimation of his place in the history of popular music.
As filmmaker Jen Senko tries to understand the transformation of her father from a non political, life-long Democrat to an angry, Right-Wing fanatic, she uncovers the forces behind the media that changed him completely: a plan by Roger Ailes under Nixon for a media takeover by the GOP, The Powell Memo urging business leaders to influence institutions of public opinion, especially the universities, the media and the courts, and under Reagan, the dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine. This documentary will shine a light on how it happened (and is still happening) and lead to questions about who owns the airwaves, what rights we have as listeners/watchers and what responsibility does our government have to keep the airwaves truly fair, accurate and accountable to the truth.
The Cove tells the amazing true story of how an elite team of individuals, films makers and free divers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate the hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The shocking discoveries were only the tip of the iceberg.
Deep in the wilds of Southern Appalachia, lifelong moonshiner Popcorn Sutton runs 1 last batch of accurate moonshine whiskey. By means of the exhausting work of clearing the site, building a rock and clay furnace, brewing corn mash and producing high-proof moonshine, Sutton reveals the craft of standard distillation, the character of his Scots-Irish ancestors, and a lifetime of memories in the trade.
Rocky Road to Dublin is a 1968 documentary film by Irish-born journalist Peter Lennon and French cinematographer Raoul Coutard, examining the contemporary state of the Republic of Ireland, posing the question, "what do you do with your revolution once you've got it?" It argues that Ireland was dominated by cultural isolationism, Gaelic and clerical traditionalism at the time of its making.
We are living at the dawn of a new epoch. Year by year, degree by degree, Earth is growing warmer... a legacy of the Industrial Revolution, population growth, and our addiction to technology, speed and power. Just as other generations spoke of a Great Plague and a Great Depression, our children will be compelled to endure The Great Warming - and find a way to conquer its consequences. Filmed in eight countries on four continents, endorsed by dozens of the world's leading scientists, this is the most factually accurate, visually stunning and wide-ranging production ever mounted about this complex, fascinating subject.
The Startup Kids is a documentary about young web entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Europe. It contains interviews with founders of Vimeo, Dropbox, Soundcloud and more who talk about how they started their company and their lives as an entrepreneur. Along with that people from the tech scene speaks about the startup environment including the venture capitalist Tim Draper and MG Siegler, tech blogger at Techcrunch.
Three-part historical miniseries on the life of the founder of Islam.
A look at the extraordinary world of Penthouse founder, visionary and provocateur Bob Guccione.
A candid and introspective look at the extreme beliefs and motives of Ingrid Newkirk, the British-born co-founder and driving force behind People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world's largest animal-rights organization.
"The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story" tells the full bizarre, tragic, but also celebratory story of Syd Barrett, the co-founder of Pink Floyd.With contributions from friends, managers, lovers and of course the members of Pink Floyd themselves. The film includes rare early television appearances of Pink Floyd and home movies too.
On the 11th Annual National Day of Silence, Erin Davies was victim to a hate crime in Albany, New York. Because of sporting a rainbow sticker on her VW Beetle, Erin's car was vandalized, left with the words "fag" and "u r gay" placed on the driver's side window and hood of her car. Despite initial shock and embarrassment, Erin decided to embrace what happened by leaving the graffiti on her car. She took her car, now known worldwide as the "fagbug," on a 58-day trip around the United States and Canada. Along the way, Erin discovered other, more serious hate crimes, had people attempt to remove the graffiti, and experimented with having a male drive her car. After driving the fagbug for one year, Erin decided to give her car a makeover.
Indian documentary about Indian film history and P. K. Nair, the founder of the National Film Archive of India and guardian of Indian cinema. He built the archive can by can in a country where the archiving of cinema was considered unimportant.
24 Hours on Craigslist is a 2005 American feature-length documentary that captures the people and stories behind a single day's posts on the community-focused, classified website Craigslist. The film, made with the approval of Craigslist's founder Craig Newmark, is woven from interviews with the site's users, all of whom opted in to be contacted by the production when they submitted their posts on August 4, 2003. The documentary screened in nine film festivals during 2004 and 2005, winning a 'best feature documentary', and played in a limited, self-distributed, theatrical release in 2005 and 2006. The film was released on DVD on April 25, 2006
"Touring makes you crazy," Frank Zappa says, explaining that the idea for this film came to him while the Mothers of Invention were touring. The story, interspersed with performances by the Mothers and the Royal Symphony Orchestra, is a tale of life on the road. The band members' main concerns are the search for groupies and the desire to get paid.
Since the end of World War II, one of kind of urban residential development has dominate how cities in North America have grown, the suburbs. In these artificial neighborhoods, there is a sense of careless sprawl in an car dominated culture that ineffectually tries to create the more organically grown older communities. Interspersed with the comments of various experts about the nature of suburbia
A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.
American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince is a 1978 documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. Its subject is Scorsese's friend Steven Prince, best known for his small role as Easy Andy, the gun salesman in Taxi Driver. Prince is a raconteur telling stories about his life as an ex-drug addict and a road manager for Neil Diamond. Scorsese intersperses home movies of Prince as a child as he talks about his family. When talking of his years as a heroin addict, Prince tells a story about injecting adrenaline into the heart of a woman who overdosed, with the help of a medical dictionary and a Magic Marker. This story was re-enacted by Quentin Tarantino in his screenplay for Pulp Fiction. Prince also tells a story about his days working at a gas station, and having to shoot a man he caught stealing tires, after the man pulled out a knife and tried to attack him. This story was retold in the Richard Linklater film Waking Life.
SOMETHING FROM NOTHING: THE ART OF RAP is a feature length performance documentary about the runaway juggernaut that is Rap music. At the wheel of this unstoppable beast is the film's director and interviewer Ice-T. Taking us on a deeply personal journey Ice-T uncovers how this music of the street has grown to dominate the world. Along the way Ice-T meets a whole spectrum of Hip-Hop talent, from founders, to new faces, to the global superstars like Eminem, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West. He exposes the roots and history of Rap and then, through meeting many of its most famous protagonists, studies the living mechanism of the music to reveal 'The Art Of Rap'. This extraordinary film features unique performances from the entire cast, without resorting to archive material, to build a fresh and surprising take on the phenomenon that is Rap.
Twenty years ago, seven superstar artists left Marvel Comics to create their own company, Image Comics, a company that continues to influence mainstream comics and pop culture to this day. Image began as more than just a publisher - it was a response to years of creator mistreatment, and changed comics forever. The Image Revolution tells the story of Image Comics, from its founders' work at Marvel, through Image's early success, company difficulties during the comics market implosion, and ultimately the publisher's new generation of properties like The Walking Dead. Filled with colorful characters, the film is a clarion call to artists to take control of their destiny.
A chronological look at films by, for, or about (or "by, for, and about") gays and lesbians in the United States, from 1947 to 2005, Kenneth Anger's "Fireworks" to "Brokeback Mountain." Talking heads, anchored by critic and scholar B. Ruby Rich, are interspersed with an advancing timeline and with clips from two dozen films. The narrative groups the pictures around various firsts, movements, and triumphs: experimental films, indie films, sex on screen, outlaw culture and bad guys, lesbian lovers, films about AIDS and dying, emergence of romantic comedy, transgender films, films about diversity and various cultures, and then mainstream Hollywood drama. What might come next?
Ten women, most of them in Vancouver or Toronto, talk about being lesbian in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s: discovering the pulp fiction of the day about women in love, their own first affairs, the pain of breaking up, frequenting gay bars, facing police raids, men's responses, and the etiquette of butch and femme roles. Interspersed among the interviews and archival footage are four dramatized chapters from a pulp novel, "Forbidden Love": Laura leaves her hick town and heads for the city, where she meets Mitch in a bar. Sparks fly, and so do laughter and joy. Ann Bannon, one of the writers of those paperback novels about forbidden love, talks about the genre.
This documentary by Theo Kamecke from 1970 gives an indepth and profound look at the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. NASA footage is interspersed with reactions to the mission around the world as the film captures the intensity as well of the philosophical significance of the event. Won special award at Cannes. Written by Adam Bernstein .
In 1995, Kelli Peterson started a gay and straight club at her Salt Lake City high school. The story of her ensuing battle with school authorities in interspersed with looks back at the diary of Michael Wigglesworth, a 17th-century Puritan cleric, at the 30-year love affair of Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Adams Fields, at Henry Gerber's attempt after World War I to establish a gay-rights organization, at Bayard Rustin's role in the civil rights movement, and at Barbara Gittings' taking on of the American Psychiatric Association's position that homosexuality is illness. One person comments, "To create a place for ourselves in the present, we have to find ourselves in the past."
This documentary pays tribute to the contributions and importance of the title watering hole in the creation of the psychedelic dancehalls that littered the West during the late '60s and helped launch such super groups as The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and The Quicksilver Messenger Service. The Red Dog Saloon had its genesis in 1964 when a group of free-thinking, LSD-enhanced Northern California students and young folks had a party and began thinking about starting up a saloon that would evoke the old West. They decided to build their saloon in Virginia City, Nevada, a once prosperous town that was by then nearly empty. The ambience of the saloon blended Old West sensibilities with modern psychedelia, go-go girls and plenty of illegal drugs. The film is comprised of interviews with surviving founders, actual archival footage, and even a performance of some of the musicians who appeared there.
Stylish film of the British progressive rock band Pink Floyd in 1971 performing a concert with no audience, in the ancient Roman Amphitheatre in the ruins of Pompeii, Italy. Songs are interspersed with interviews, and footage of Pink Floyd in the studio working on their next album, the legendary Dark Side of the Moon. [Tracklist:] 01 Echoes Part I 02 Careful With That Axe Eugene 03 A Saucerful Of Secrets 04 Us And Them 05 One Of These Days 06 Mademoiselle Nobs 07 Brain Damage 08 Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun 09 Echoes Part II
A documentary about the circumstances during a party at a University of Florida fraternity that led up to what may or may not have been a rape. Interspersed with actual footage shot by the fraternity brothers on the night of the incident, including the sexual acts. This video led to the police not pressing charges and the involvement of NOW, and eventually led to the fraternity getting kicked off campus.
Mary Magdalene's encounter with the resurrected Jesus was the spark that ignited the flame of Christendom. Some argue that had it not been for her, Christianity would not have come into existence. But instead of praise her as one of the founders of the faith, the Gospels tell us hardly anything about her. The church of the early days called her a prostitute, and Western art and literature have constantly reinvented her story over the centuries. She remains one of the most mysterious women in history. This program goes in search of the real Mary Magdalene.
In 1983 the upstart United States Football League (USFL) had the audacity to challenge the almighty NFL. The new league did the unthinkable by playing in the spring and plucked three straight Heisman Trophy winners away from the NFL. The 12-team USFL played before crowds that averaged 25,000, and started off with respectable TV ratings. But with success came expansion and new owners, including a certain high profile and impatient real estate baron whose vision was at odds with the league’s founders. Soon, the USFL was reduced to waging a desperate anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL, which yielded an ironic verdict that effectively forced the league out of business. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, Academy Award-nominated and Peabody Award-winning director Mike Tollin, himself once a chronicler of the league, will showcase the remarkable influence of those three years on football history and attempt to answer the question, “Who Killed the USFL?”
"The Principle" brings to light astonishing new scientific observations challenging the Copernican Principle; the foundational assumption underlying the modern scientific world view. The idea that the Earth occupies no special or favored position in the cosmos has launched the last two scientific revolutions - the Copernican Revolution and Relativity - and, as Lawrence Krauss has said, we could be on the verge of a third, with "Copernicus coming back to haunt us". Interviews with leading cosmologists are interspersed with the views of dissidents and mavericks, bringing into sharp focus the challenges and implications not only for cosmology, but for our cultural and religious view of reality.
The best of Led Zeppelin's legendary 1973 appearances at Madison Square Garden. Interspersed throughout the concert footage are behind-the-scenes moments with the band. THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME is Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden in NYC concert footage colorfully enhanced by sequences which are supposed to reflect each band member's individual fantasies and hallucinations. Includes blistering live renditions of "Black Dog," "Dazed and Confused," "Stairway to Heaven," "Whole Lotta Love," "The Song Remains the Same," and "Rain Song" among others.
Fat Wreck Chords... The influential music label proud to say they've spent the past 25 years "ruining punk rock". A Fat Wreck tells the story of founders Fat Mike (of the legendary punk band NOFX) and his ex-wife Erin Kelly-Burkett, spanning the birth, growth, struggles, and survival of the Fat Wreck Chords label.
In THE CASE FOR FAITH journalist Lee Strobel investigates two of the most emotional objections to Christianity. Barriers to faith confronted by believers and skeptics alike: Why is Jesus the only way to God? And, how could a loving God exist if there is evil and suffering in the world?
This Australian educational documentary concerns venereal disease in the pre-AIDS era and reveals that it is a problem that should be taken seriously by everyone — whether young or old, gay or straight. Factual segments are interspersed with humorous skits depicting how people of varying degrees of innocence can contract awful but treatable diseases.
Documentary written and presented by scientist Richard Dawkins, in which he seeks to expose "those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell", including mediumship, psychokinesis, acupuncture, and other forms of alternative medicine.
Four children enter a high-stakes lottery. If they win, they can attend one of the best schools in New York. A look at the crisis in public education, The Lottery makes the case than any child can succeed.
Commentator-comic Bill Maher plays devil's advocate with religion as he talks to believers about their faith. Traveling around the world, Maher examines the tenets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and raises questions about homosexuality, proof of Christ's existence, Jewish Sabbath laws, violent Muslim extremists.

© Valossa 2015–2024