Note: There are two versions of this program on the same DVD: the original 92-minute theatrical version and a 60-minute classroom version. Also the filmmaker, Liz Marshall, is available to speak at screenings. If you would like to book her to speak at your screening, please email her at liz@lizmars.com.

With the exception of our companion animals and a few wild and stray species within our urban environments, we experience animals daily only as the food, clothing, animal-tested goods and entertainment we make of them. This moral dilemma is often hidden from our view.

This multi-award winning documentary gently removes our blinders by illuminating the lives of individual animals living within and rescued from the machine of our modern world. Through the heart and photographic lens of acclaimed photographer Jo-Anne McArthur, we become intimately familiar with a cast of non-human animals. The film follows Jo-Anne over the course of a year as she photographs animal stories in North America and in Europe. Each story is a window into global animal industries: Food, Fashion, Entertainment and Research. THE GHOSTS IN OUR MACHINE charts McArthur's efforts to bring wider attention to a topic that most of humankind strives hard to avoid. Are non-human animals property to be owned and used, or are they sentient beings deserving of rights?

Web Page: http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/giom.html

Reviews
"This groundbreaking film is at once profoundly moving, utterly stilling, and one of the most educational exposés of how we use and abuse other animals as if their lives don't matter even to them, as if they're ghosts who really don't exist and whose lives are valued only if they can be useful to us. By portraying animals as individuals this film provokes us to move into a future that does not rely upon reprehensibly exploiting them for our own ends. We suffer the indignities to which we subject animals and when we treat them better it's a win-win situation for everyone."