Perfect timing: the screening of The Murder of the Honeybee as part of the Centre for Investigative Journalism’s Investigative Film Week in London coincides with a European Food Safety Authority announcement that its scientists have identified a number of risks posed to bees by three neonicotinoid insecticides.

Using one of those puns so beloved of our media and NGOs, Friends of the Earth said today: "The clear link between neonicotinoid pesticides and declining bee health must sting the Government into action – we can’t afford to dither when it comes to protecting these key pollinators."

Film-maker Manon Blaas looks not only at the allegation that the decline in bee numbers is caused by a pesticide, but also the claim that corporate power outweighs other considerations and can affect what a university investigates.

Other excellent offerings during the Film Week include Bahrain: the Forbidden Country, with rare, secretly filmed footage; Bloodcoal on the consequences of large-scale coal mining and the involvement of Dutch energy companies; Tracked on the role of surveillance and digital technology by both governments and activists; Cotton for my Shroud, a moving documentary about the ongoing farmer suicide crisis in India and the culpability of the multinational Monsanto and the Indian government; and Law of the Jungle, about a group of indigenous men’s fight against corrupt police and Peruvian courts system.

+ The largest wave of suicides in history
+ Bahrain uprising through women's eyes
+ Tracking the trackers of the internauts
+ Honeybee whodunnit

 

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