Documentary
Takes a first hand look at what happens to children when they are taken from their abusive families and become dependents of the State of Florida. 'Foster Shock' examines Florida's 'privatized' foster care system. It explains the Community Based Care (CBC) concept: how CBC's…

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D Carleton Gajdusek won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Prions - the particles that would emerge as the cause of Mad Cow disease - while working with a cannibal tribe on New Guinea. He was a star of the scientific world. Over his years working amongst the tribes of the South Seas, he adopted 57 kids, bringing them to a new life in Washington DC. His adoptions were hailed as wonderful fatherly beneficence. But, at the height of his career, rumours began to spread he was a paedophile. Gajdusek would argue that if sex with children was okay in their own cultures, he wasn't wrong to join in. How could a great mind like Gajdusek's lose insight so totally, and why would the scientific community to which he was a hero be so quick to leap to his defence and dismiss the allegations? (Storyville)
The four adult heroes and heroines of the film, who were selected in a casting call posted on TV, speak candidly on camera from the very beginning of their memories. Through individual stories, they describe their childhoods, family backgrounds, life at school, and how they spent their free time. The stories complement each other and are intertwined; we see emotions and hear things that reveal the horrific DNA of domestic violence. The documentary addresses the issue of abuse with an emphasis on the entire social environment of the victims and the societal underpinnings. Typical of domestic violence is that victims often hide it within themselves; they do not talk about it, and sometimes they do not even admit it. But in the documentary, they were determined to speak out.

Gives voice to the experiences of Irish institution survivors and focuses on the life and upbringing of one survivor, Anne Silke. Silke was fostered out of the St. Mary, Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam at the age of 9 to the Killileas, a prominent political family from Tuam. Untold Secrets recounts her often brutal and abusive treatment at the hands of her foster family and reveals never seen before interviews with fellow survivors. Although Silke is now deceased the documentary gives a posthumous voice to Anne and possibly some closure to her family.

British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind -- and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.