The first animation I've got to see by RSA (the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) came to me through a tweet by @renatalemos (thanks, Renata!). It was "Smile or Die", a critical reflection by Barbara Ehrenreich about positive thinking (or willful ignorance). I found it to be a piece of rare, straight, realist thinking (video below).
Another thought-provoking talk and animation is this: "Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us". Food for thought for whoever is in Social Web:
In "The Secret Powers of Time", "professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world". The second half of the talk will appeal deeply to educators:
... and there are many others - animations or plain talks (but the animation is definitely a plus). You might want to check other RSA short films in their YouTube channel. RSA, together with TED, is a great source of interesting stuff on the Web.
Among the non-animation talks, I choose to point to one still to happen (July 13, 2010) at the time of this post: "The Woolwich Model - How citizens can tackle anti-social behaviour". Are your executive/representative candidate dealing with this issue? (Are you?) (An initiative worth mentioning in Brazil regarding this is WikiCrimes).