My Film Recommendations 📺

Doomscroll is now available in audio form on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and everywhere else.

If you’ve spent a lot of time on the internet, there is a high probability that your brain has been hijacked by a bunch of bad memes that you have mistaken for actual politics. If this applies to you or a friend, follow the work of

Jen Pan

— a forthcoming guest on Doomscroll.

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When I first began this project, I did a weekly Twitch stream for the duration of a college class, usually about three hours. On these streams, I would review materials from my syllabus that I taught at universities such as the Rhode Island School of Design and the School of Visual Arts in NYC. I’ve given talks at MoMA, UPenn and many others.

Every six weeks or so, we would take a break from the usual lecture format and watch a film on the Twitch stream. For this week’s newsletter, I’ve compiled a list of movies and documentaries from my live streams and syllabi as well as many other new picks. Most of the these are available for free on various streaming services or cheap to rent. I’ve included a link for each in the descriptions:

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (2011), Marshall Curry & Sam Cullman

The ELF was responsible for large-scale acts of property destruction in the late 1990s as a radical form of environmentalist action. They would sabotage logging operations, commit arson to buildings, or burn down entire dealerships of SUVs. Between 1997 and 2009, ELF members caused over 40 million dollars of damage in the United States. A decade later, the film follows their story, legal battles and internal conflicts with unbelievable access and first-person accounts. As the climate crisis accelerates, some have begun to reevaluate the actions of this fringe group.

Daz Netz (2003), Lutz Dammbeck

The Net (translated to English) may be the most bonkers art documentary film of all time. Dammbeck weaves an incredible mesh of radical ideas, leading from the hippie movement, to MK ultra, to the early internet, into California ideology and eventually to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Keep an eye out for the Whole Earth Catalog’s Stewart Brand. (There are a few scenes in German but 90% of the film is English language.) There is simply nothing else like it.

In Time (2011), Andrew Niccol

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried star in a Marxist allegory about the labor theory of value — I promise this is not a joke. This sci-fi action film explores class conflict and exploitation in a dystopian future set between the proletarian inner city of New York and the ultra-elite fortress of Greenwich, Connecticut. I cannot imagine how this film ever got made or why it is not more widely known.

The Balcony (1963), Joseph Strick

I screened this film as part of an exhibition that I curated back in 2018. At the time, I was seeking to understand how irony poisoning had gripped a generation of young people who had gone from being online comedic trolls to earnest participants in radical politics. In the film, Johns visit a “role-play brothel”, not to buy sex but to indulge in elaborate fantasies about the lives they wish to lead. Many visitors dream of having authority and powerful positions in society. The Balcony is an amazing precedent for what society looks like when the LARPers take political power and live out their psycho fantasies for real.

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Share this post with someone you watch movies with. If you’re receiving this newsletter from a friend or loved one, this is a sign that they accept the blame for recommending In Time (2011) — and they recognize that a Marxist allegory about the labor theory of value was not an especially romantic or appropriate choice for date night. Despite the fascinating incongruence of revolutionary propaganda and Hollywood film production, it was not a very considerate pick for the girl because it is still an action movie that mostly appeals to 15 year old boys. In hindsight, it was a pretty embarrassing move and demonstrates that they might not have great taste in film, yikes! The good news is that this list also contains some rather deep cuts that will enrich your understanding of the world and broaden your aesthetic horizons. You will literally be a more interesting person for having seen these films.

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Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee (2016), Nanette Burstein

I guess some people don’t know this but the inventor of McAfee anti-virus software was a huge anarcho-capitalist. After getting unimaginably rich from his software, he moved to Belize to create a drug fueled sovereign compound with lots of armed guards and prostitutes. He met his wife because she was a hit-woman that was hired to kill him but instead he seduced her and they later got married. He eventually flees the country because he murdered his neighbor over a property dispute. It’s a true libertarian story that goes far beyond parody.

The Hunt (2020), Craig Zobel

The Hunt is the most under-recognized film of the Trump 1.0 era. The story explores the phenomena of progressive liberal rage. In this case, a group of coastal elites literally hunt conservative working class Trump voters for sport. There are few pieces of mainstream culture that address this topic — director Craig Zobel expertly pulls it off with grace and humor. This one is only free to stream for ~another week, so act quickly.

Syllabus: Artists After the Internet v.2020 - fall

We Live in Public (2009), Ondi Timoner

Tech entrepruener of the dot com era, Josh Harris, is a visionary artist who creates the most perverse piece of performance art / social experiment of the Y2K period. Hundreds of participants are locked inside an underground bunker where every moment of their lives is broadcast on video as a form of proto-social media. Its a true story about the madness of online life and an important historical document.