[Nettime-bold] Culture Jam, The Film

[geert lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

contact email: culturejamthefilm@hotmail.com

http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/arccom/culturejamthefilm/index.htm

A film by Jill Sharpe. A Right To Jam Production Inc. Produced by Lynn Booth
and Jill Sharpe.

A new breed of revolutionary stands poised along our information highways
waging war on logos and symbols. They're "Culture Jammers" and their mission
is to artfully reclaim our mental environment and cause a bit of brand
damage to corporate mindshare. Director Jill Sharpe's subversively savvy
one-hour documentary film - culturejam - Hijacking Commercial Culture-
bursts our last bubble of illusion about free speech in public space and
gives us spanking brand-new hope at the same time. Scream at the TV, but
don't touch that dial! Yet. In the hour long film, Culture Jam: Hijacking
Commercial Culture, we follow three outlandish jammers; media tigress Carly
Stasko, Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping, and Jack Napier with
the Billboard Liberation Front. Armed with DIY anti-ad stickers, custom
neon, and stuffed mice on crosses, these jammers hijack, subvert and reclaim
corporate media space. Enter the intriguing worlds of midnight billboard
raids and the mid-afternoon hijacking of public space.

Ultimately Culture Jammers wage a war of "meaning". They use the tools of
the medium to re-wire the "message". Will Disney's Mickey represent a "world
of laughter" or will he become the anti-Christ representing "sweatshop
labour practices". The verdict of public perception lies in a battle between
billion dollar PR campaigns and guerrilla tactics of rebel activists. A
relatively young movement, contemporary Culture Jammers first appeared in
the early 80's in San Francisco. But court jesters of medieval Europe, and
movements like Dada, Surrealism, and the Situationist International of
Paris, as well as the recent range from punk to "post", all provide a
philosophical lineage for this new brand of rabble rousers. French
Situationist Guy Debord declared in the 1960's that we inhabit the "society
of the spectacle" - where leisure and real living had been replaced by
pre-packaged media simulated experiences. The moment has come for a new
message to take back the medium. Through their interventions culture jammers
make a spectacle of ad-culture.

Hard hitting, controversial, wacky and engaging, this film captures the
drama of jammers in action and asks: Is Culture Jamming civil disobedience?
Senseless vandalism? The only form of self-defense left?

order information:

http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/arccom/culturejamthefilm/ordervideo.htm


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