Category: films

1987 was not so long ago, but technological development has unleashed such rapid change that the Danish film, Babette’s Feast, seems to depict an era so far removed from the contemporary world as to be as likely as a fairy tale. Nonetheless, this film with its G rating for General Audiences, while devoid of graphic depictions of sex and violence, challenges viewers to question assumptions about the way they live. As a result, while certainly mild in terms of its content, this contemporary film may be more unsettling to viewers than many of the high-tech action films and torture porn issuing from Hollywood each month. Luddite Film of the Century, for sure:

Some of the best neo-Luddite films were made in the 1980’s, but maybe the best film about the neo-Luddite worldview was made about the 1980’s. High Life tells a tale of young men dissatisfied with the rise of the corporate prison system, the dehumanizing reduction of all life to random transactions with machines, and their quest for a meaningful and fulfilling existence in a society determined to deny anyone that right. Although deeply significant in its ability to criticize the bleakness and inhumanity of contemporary pop culture, regardless of how widely it is celebrated, this film remains accessible, enjoyable, and satisfying on many levels, especially to discriminating viewers who share the main characters’ distaste for the changes initiated in this tragic decade.

Fight Club may be the most important film of the second half of the twentieth century. Granted, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton give it blockbuster status, and Helena Bohnam Carter adds the credibility without which this film might otherwise have been relegated to obscurity or even an outright blacklisting. But Fight Club does a lot more than captivate and entertain. A generation of young people disillusioned with life in a mechanized and computerized society, deadened to all the possibility that life is supposed to offer, can find a voice in the schizophrenic personality of the nameless, therapy-addicted main character. Even feminists regretful of the irreparable damage they have unintentionally done to a generation of young men cite Fight Club as the expression of rage that unavoidably follows from denying to anyone their right assert their humanity. Luddite themes echo throughout every scene of the film–from the dissatisfaction of insurance company employees resigned to life on a predetermined course in which the only guarantee is that survival will increasingly approach zero to an ultimate showdown with a global financial corporatocracy. All anyone wants is for the time in between to mean something.

The ugliness and inescapability of life in our contemporary age of mediocrity, ennui, dissatisfaction, annoyance, and overcrowding is expressed with comic brilliance in Office Space. While films like Fight Club sustain the raw human emotion that our modern world seems to be making an uninterrupted effort to suppress, Office Space explores the equally realistic consequences of what waking up from this forced somnambulance might look like. An average office worker employed in an average office park by an average IT-company to generate endless tech reports full of data someone is paid a lot of money to pretend to care about sees a hypnotist at the urging of his girlfriend who is tired of his reticence. Unfortunately, the hypnotist has a heart attack before the office worker is brought back to the real world, so his consequent release from subconscious inhibitions sparks a chain of events simultaneously agonizing but also long overdue. The poetry of Fight Club is transformed to the constipated mundaneness of suburban life, with a no-less-effective cathartic expression of Luddite rage.

Pain. That seems to be the underlying theme of all pop culture artifacts. Songs, books, films, pastimes–they all seem to involve pain…. The pain of loss, of want, of need, of frustration, of deprivation, of injustice, of betrayal–all these forms of pain seem to be at the base of contemporary pop culture. But does this mean that people want to feel pain? That pain is the goal? Or is the pain ever-present in pop culture, like pain in medical terminology, really just a symptom? Probably we only cry out in pain because we crave the joy the pain tells we aren’t feeling. In 1970, the Grateful Dead released the Album American Beauty. Full of bluegrass-themed acoustic songs celebrating the joys of the natural world, it is an artifact from a world not so far in the past, but vastly different from the one we inhabit today. The 1999 film American Beauty makes great strides in addressing the sense of loss and despair as it takes a look at the emptiness and abyss that has opened up between people in the generations between. Even in the darkest of times and places, people never seem to stop looking for what’s worth salvaging, even when the cost appears too steep:

In collaboration with Groowinky.com, Luddite Online will begin providing access to original films and reflections about the growing atmosphere of depersonalized, nihilistic, tech-heavy absurdity as the corporate takeover of planet Earth continues apace, unchecked, unregulated, and with apparently no end in sight. We hope that by including original, contemporary contributions, we can avoid trapping ourselves in a self-deluding bubble of neo-Luddism.

Among other things, Groowinky produces, films, and releases short, independent movies featuring independent actors and independent script writers. We believe these films are a better representation of the value of the media of film than what is typically produced in the major Hollywood studios.

We are excited that Luddite Online has attracted the support of independent filmmakers, and we believe that such ventures will lend a voice to others who feel drowned out in the increasingly technological world order. We also hope that the filmmaking efforts at Groowinky and elsewhere will lead to a renewal of classic filmmaking more concerned with quality acting and writing that addresses themes that are concerned more with film viewers and art lovers, and less with generating box office receipts or catering to the dictates of the film rating associations.

BELOW IS A SORT FILM ENTITLED, “HIS CLOUDS ARE MADE FROM CORNSTARCH.” 

HEAL ME WITH CORNSTARCH!

In collaboration with Groowinky.com, Luddite Online will begin providing access to original films and reflections about the growing atmosphere of depersonalized, nihilistic, tech-heavy absurdity as the corporate takeover of planet Earth continues apace, unchecked, unregulated, and with apparently no end in sight. We hope that by including original, contemporary contributions, we can avoid trapping ourselves in a self-deluding bubble of neo-Luddism.

Among other things, Groowinky produces, films, and releases short, independent movies featuring independent actors and independent script writers. We believe these films are a better representation of the value of the media of film than what is typically produced in the major Hollywood studios.

We are excited that Luddite Online has attracted the support of independent filmmakers, and we believe that such ventures will lend a voice to others who feel drowned out in the increasingly technological world order. We also hope that the filmmaking efforts at Groowinky and elsewhere will lead to a renewal of classic filmmaking more concerned with quality acting and writing that addresses themes that are concerned more with film viewers and art lovers, and less with generating box office receipts or catering to the dictates of the film rating associations.

BELOW IS A SHORT FILM FROM GROOWINKY ENTITLED, “THE HANDS OF A PUSHER.”

ONE VIEWER SAID OF THIS FILM, “IN PAGAN CHRISTIAN MYTHOLOGY, THE GOAT REPRESENTS THE DEVIL, AND ALSO A WORK ETHIC. HENCE, TO WORK LIKE THE DEVIL. IN MANY MYTHOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE SPIRITS OF MEN AND WOMEN—THE ANIMUS AND THE ANIMA—WOMEN CHOOSE EVIL BECAUSE IT’S EASIER.  SOMETIMES WHEN THE WORLD HAS ITS WAY, THE EVIL SEEMS LESS TERRIFYING AND MORE OF A COMFORT. I SUPPOSE IT’S NOT GOING ANYWHERE. “

THE FILMMAKER REPLIED, “YES, THE GOAT IS A SYMBOL OF EVIL IN CHRISTIAN TEACHINGS.  BUT “PAN” THE GOAT IS ALSO A PRE-CHRISTIAN SYMBOL WHICH REPRESENTS A SORT OF OPEN, ANIMALISTIC SEXUALITY REMOVED FROM SOCIAL CONSTRAINTS.  THAT’S MORE OF WHAT I WAS GOING FOR WITH THAT FILM.  IT’S REALLY ABOUT THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MODERN RELATIONSHIPS… BECAUSE THERE’S SO MUCH JUNK INSIDE OF US THAT OUR EFFORTS TO EXPRESS OUR LOVE OFTEN COME OUT MORE AGGRESSIVELY, OR JUST DISTORTED, THAN WE HAD PLANNED (IN THIS CASE, THE “PUSHING”).  THAT WAS FILMED IN THE NORTHWEST, AND ALSO IN RIVERSIDE CA, AND WAS TRULY A BEAUTIFUL AND INSPIRING EXPERIENCE.  I ESPECIALLY LOVE ALL THE IMAGERY OF THAT ONE, AND THE EROTIC UNDERTONE AND SUPERIMPOSED IMAGES.

In collaboration with Groowinky.com, Luddite Online will begin providing access to original films and reflections about the growing atmosphere of depersonalized, nihilistic, tech-heavy absurdity as the corporate takeover of planet Earth continues apace, unchecked, unregulated, and with apparently no end in sight. We hope that by including original, contemporary contributions, we can avoid trapping ourselves in a self-deluding bubble of neo-Luddism.

Among other things, Groowinky produces, films, and releases short, independent movies featuring independent actors and independent script writers. We believe these films are a better representation of the value of the media of film than what is typically produced in the major Hollywood studios.

We are excited that Luddite Online has attracted the support of independent filmmakers, and we believe that such ventures will lend a voice to others who feel drowned out in the increasingly technological world order. We also hope that the filmmaking efforts at Groowinky and elsewhere will lead to a renewal of classic filmmaking more concerned with quality acting and writing that addresses themes that are concerned more with film viewers and art lovers, and less with generating box office receipts or catering to the dictates of the film rating associations.

BELOW IS A SHORT FILM FROM GROOWINKY ENTITLED, “SIDESHOW CHICKEN.”

ONE VIEWER SAID, ” I LOVE ‘SIDESHOW CHICKEN.’ I FEEL LIKE WATCHING THAT MOVIE, ALL THE PEOPLE WHO GET BAD PRESS AS UNDERREPRESENTED, IGNORANT, HOPELESS CRIMINALS LOST FOREVER IN THE GHETTOS AND BROKEN NEIGHBORHOODS THROUGHOUT AMERICA HAVE QUIETLY OVERCOME ALL OF THE DONALD TRUMPS AND GEORGE W. BUSHES OF THE WORLD.” 

THE FILMMAKER REPLIED, “THAT ONE WAS PAINFUL TO FILM BUT I DID MANAGE TO GET ACTUAL SLAUGHTERHOUSE FOOTAGE, WHICH ADDED A SORT OF SHOCKING REALISM TO IT.  I EDITED IT A THOUSAND TIMES TO GET IT JUST RIGHT, AND I THINK THIS IS THE VERSION THAT REALLY ALLOWS THE STORY TO MOVE.”