Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Dumpster diving is a practice as old as, well, dumpsters (or waste containers) are themselves. But a confluence of factors over the past several decades – including income inequality, wasteful food systems, and environmental and anti-consumerist movements – has given rise to an emerging subculture built around making use of what wealthy societies deem disposable. The short documentary Spoils: Extraordinary Harvest (2012) profiles three groups, each with their own philosophies and motivations, converging on the grocery story Trader Joe’s in Brooklyn to mine for imperfect but still-very-much-edible foods that would otherwise be bound for landfill. With its cast of eccentric characters, the US director Alex Mallis’s film succeeds as both an entertaining study of a subculture and an invitation to reflect on food waste as a matter of economic, environmental and social justice.
Director: Alex Mallis
video
Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
video
Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
video
Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
video
History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
video
Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
video
Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
There’s a dirty side to clean energy in the metal-rich mountains of South Africa
10 minutes