Media 3.14

Once upon a time... consumer goods were built to last. Then, in the 1920’s, a group of businessmen realized that the longer their product lasted, the less money they made, thus Planned Obsolescence was born, and manufacturers have been engineering products to fail ever since. Combining investigative research and rare archive footage with analysis by those working on ways to save both the economy and the environment, this documentary charts the creation of ‘engineering to fail’, its rise to prominence and its recent fall from grace.

In a few years, technology will merge with our bodies in ways that today seem unimaginable, and will redefine the limits of what is a human being. There are already people who, driven by the desire to experiment, have crossed the biological limits by introducing electronic devices that provide them with capabilities that go beyond what is "normal." They are the first hybrids, and they face the reaction of society, which goes from malignancy to enthusiasm. Today they are only a small minority, and many people consider them as disrupted experimenters, but in the near future we may recognize them as pioneers.

Every year, up to 50 million tons of electronic waste - computers, television sets, mobile phones, household appliances - are discarded in the developed world. 75% of this waste disappears from the legal recycling circuits, with much of it being dumped illegally in the Third World, where it destroys landscapes and harms lives. This film takes the viewer on a journey of investigation to Europe, China, Africa and the US and reveals a toxic global trade fuelled by greed and corruption. - Written by Cosima Dannoritzer