Film Festival 09 - We Live In Public
We Live in Public
USA 2009, 90m
Director: Ondi Timoner
Festivals: Sundance, New Directors/New Films, Sydney 2009
Grand Jury Prize - Documentary, Sundance Film Festival 2009
Foremost chronicler of mad prophets, Ondi Timoner (Dig!) weighs in
with this densely suggestive, insightful portrait of Josh Harris,
the dotcom millionaire and Internet pioneer who predicted our
virtual society before falling prey to his own extravagant
experiments in surveillance. Raised on a diet of TV and neglect,
Harris learnt early to turn alienation into profit, with a swift
rise from web consulting whiz to founder of Pseudo (the first
Internet TV network) during the mid-90s dotcom boom - a bizarre
moment when computer geeks became the rock stars of downtown
Manhattan.
None partied harder than Harris, who threw wild raves to recruit
staff and created a repellent clown persona called Luvvy. At the
turn of the millennium, his twin obsessions with technology and
bacchanalia culminated in Quiet, an art 'installation' in which 100
bohemians lived under 24-hour mutual surveillance in an underground
bunker for 30 days. Along with free-flowing booze, Harris supplied
a gun range, sleeping pods communal showers and interrogation
rooms. He then hired inmate Timoner to document his Orwellian
experiment. Her footage and Quiet's own tapes capture every nuance
of the ensuing insanity. Not content with driving others mad,
Harris then turned his own life into television, switching the
cameras on himself and his girlfriend to create weliveinpublic.com
where you could watch the couple doing the things couples do 24/7
live online. Only Harris was surprised when the monster he created
devoured him too. It took Timoner years to track down her subject
again. Quite what the ultimate TV-raised genius is doing in deepest
Ethiopia provides yet another fascinating conundrum.
www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com
