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VIFF 2009 | We Live in Public
By VIFF Correspondent Daniel GuillemetteWe Live in Public
USA, 2008, 90min
DIR: Ondi Timmoner
While watching director Ondi Timoner's third documentary We Live in Public, I was surprised that I could get through it without a headache. It's a jittery film about excess and it emulates what it depicts. Culled from 5,000 hours of footage collected over 10 years of shooting on video tape, film, digital cameras, security tapes, and camera phones, the movie struggles hard to get as much in as possible - with split screens, fast cuts, and one soundtracked song following another. A few years ago, I wouldn't have been able to watch straight through such a film, but I've clearly grown more comfortable with the twitchy world it portrays.
The movie is in essence a cautionary tale about Josh Harris, one of the original internet tycoons. He is portrayed as an emotionally stunted "charlatan" who is obsessed with web culture and virtual correspondence, and possesses the funds (for a time) to follow that
obsession to extremes. At the fin-de-siecle, he most famously creates "Quiet", an underground bunker in Manhattan, where residents ate, drank, drugged, and shot guns for free, but lived with video cameras everywhere, and were subjected to fascistic interrogations.
After the project is shut down by city officials on January 1st, 2000, Harris begins planning his next project, weliveinpublic.com, where the cameras are trained on him and his girlfriend. On the web and in life, his girlfriend leaves him and he loses most of his assets in the dotcom crash.
Throughout the movie, Harris acknowledges the dangers and stupidity of his projects, but he embraces the fascism and the emotional poverty of virtual connection in pursuit of fame and a public life. He also argues that we all will too. At the Q & A after the screening, Timoner asked how many of us use Facebook. About 90% of the audience had a hand raised. She then asked if she could take a picture of us for the movie's website, but, before we had time to respond, her camera-phone had already clicked.
Winner, Grand Jury Prize, Sundance 2009
Upcoming Screenings:
Fri. Oct. 9, 1:20pm, Granville Theatre
Wed. Oct. 14, 9:30pm, Granville Theatre
Schema Magazine's coverage of VIFF 2009 is sponsored by the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival
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October 4, 2009 at 11:34 PM
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