ARTIVIST FILM FESTIVAL
hosts "ZEITGEIST : MOVING FORWARD" directed by PETER JOSEPH
LOS ANGELES PREMIERE
On January 15, 2011 ARTIVIST hosted the official global premiere
of “ZEITGEIST : MOVING FORWARD”, with director Peter Joseph.
This is the largest independent global theatrical premiere of our time,
covering the most languages (30), countries (60), and locations (320), simultaneously.
- Harris with you and we are standing at the world premiere,
actually the Los Angeles premiere of the world premiere, of "Zeitgeist : Moving Forward",
being released in 325 theatres simultaneously, multiple countries, multiple languages,
and standing next to us is a man who is now considered an American hero. Why ?
'Cause he’s left off the high dive on behalf of other people who he's never even met.
In short, it’s about changing the world, and not just doing it at home while gnawing on a pizza,
but it’s actually about being into action, into the solution, and laying out the solution in an easy to understand way.
And I’m talking about Peter Joseph. You’ve not only directed "Zeitgeist : Moving Forward",
but you’re responsible for the previous two that have done so much to awaken the American mindset.
- Well, I hope so, I would hope so. It depends on who you ask.
Some people agree with that statement, some people vehemently deny such a statement, so...
We have a certain controversy with the films, but, overall, I think anyone who watches
all of the series will need to walk away with a very positive world view
and a very clear understanding that we are on a downward spiral on many levels of society, so…
You know, we complain a lot in society. That’s a point I’d like to bring up
is people love to complain, everyone complains, and I’ve done my fair share of complaining too in the films.
But this new film is about solutions. It’s about showing a direction of something
that’s very possible, very feasible, that can happen if the public wanted it to.
We have to overcome some tremendous barriers to do so, you know.
There’s a establishment orthodoxy that exists in any society through any culture throughout history.
Any kind of great social change that’s ever happened has been met with a great deal of resistance.
So my goal here with the film is to kind of generate a feeling,
not only an intellectual understanding, but a feeling and an interest,
an emotional drive to want to see the world change for the better.
And that’s the point of art in and of itself, wouldn’t you say ?
- Well, absolutely, at least in its better moment.
Now, of course, people would love to say that art creates maniacs out there
and maniacs can also create art, so who’s to say ?
But the beautiful thing is so many of us lust for a solution.
So many of us feel disenfranchised from our environment.
People are getting kicked out of their houses,
people don’t understand why inflation is happening yet.
The great Bernanke says something differently
and they don’t even understand how stuff is actually interconnected.
And I have to tell you if American history books
had even four pages of what you have in "Zeitgeist", there’d be, well, a small revolution.
- I think so, well... Well, I’d like to give a clear example :
a lot of people still believe that Columbus founded America.
This statement resonates throughout all of culture.
It’s almost cliché for me to bring it up,
because anyone that’s... of a general understanding knows that that’s nonsense.
That there were hundreds of millions of people throughout the entire Americas
that were more or less systematically slaughtered,
but you don’t see that in any of the textbooks in American history.
We have statues of this mass murderer.
So, you know, you have to realize that history is written by the winners
and the… basically, the propaganda machine,
which I hate to use that word because it’s so loaded,
but propaganda is how you more or less control a people,
whether it’s in China or whether it’s in America.
If you were to compare two different forms of totalitarianism,
you could have a kind of overt totalitarianism and, say, this sort of China Republic,
Republic of China, where they control the medias and they control things very deliberately,
very obviously, where they shut down the Internet.
In America, it’s different, the control is done through value systems
and taboos and things that people are not supposed to talk about.
You’re not supposed to talk about certain things,
you’re not supposed to talk about anything that goes against, say, the monetary system.
"Oh ! the free market ! It’s about freedom, you know !" You’re not supposed to…
And people get very uncomfortable naturally when you do as well.
You get called a kook and you’ll be called all sorts of lovely names
if you attempt to challenge anything that the status quo maintains in that particular point in time.
And that goes all the way back to Socrates. Socrates never challenged the slavery in his time.
He’s considered a great philosopher, but it was presupposed.
Everyone presupposes their reality. They think its normality, it is normality.
They think normality is empirical. It never is, ever.
- We legislate things like slavery as we saw in the state of Maryland in 1640,
where if you owned land, you had to have slaves. It was illegal not to.
Therefore, it must be OK 'cause the grown-ups in Washington declare it so.
And equally we see this kind of interesting paradigm, just to wrap it up.
You have jumped off the high dive in a really huge way tonight.
I mean your dream of telling the truth is now manifest into a huge international vehicle.
Excitement might be understating it slightly ?
- And there's a little nerve-racking simultaneously.
You know, the goal here is to get these ideas out permeating
where they detach and have their own life.
It shouldn’t always come back to, say a director,
or shouldn’t come back to even a movie series.
It shouldn’t be about that. It should be about the actual data
and the ideas and the understanding and logic, and how to move forward with that information
to make a better world, and that’s what I’m going for with the work in the film.
And as you might know, I’m the founder of a social movement that is very different from the films.
The films are my expression. The movement is explicitly about going into a very different social design
based on science and humanity, based on updating society to present day knowledge.
I mean we live in the dark ages with regard to what we're doing systematically
through the monetary system, through our health practices, through...
Almost every facet of modern culture you see today is, I’d say, at least decades
behind where it should be with respect to what science has shown us.
Now, I’m not some kind of, you know, magical science individual.
You know, you say those words and people read into them.
They say : “Oh, science, L. Ron Hubbard ?”
They don’t really understand what you're talking about.
They don’t even know what science is.
- L. Ron was God in Scientology, curiously enough.
- Yes, indeed. So you always deal with the semantic problems
with any of these arguments, and when people view this film
and when people review this film, which I’m fascinated to see,
I’ve already seen a few of them, the projections go crazy :
people just see whatever they want to see and it’s an unfortunate reality in our culture.
People don’t… Critical independent thought is a scarce, scarce thing out there. And...
- Let me offer an unsolicited compliment, because if you remember in eighth grade,
let’s pretend it was eighth grade, where we were all taught word problems.
If Sally drops out of an airplane at 300 miles an hour
and the cat runs across the ground and the manhole cover shoots up,
when did Timmy eat the apple ? Right ? And all of this was to teach us how to think,
how to give us analytical prowess, and I would tell you that your work here, as a director,
as a storyteller, once again, puts us in that place where we actually have to think about stuff,
and if anything you're making the dendrites and synapses fire for the first time in many a noggin.
- I hope so, I hope so. I mean... Even information that could be suspect,
even information that someone might not believe in the end,
but getting them in that process of thought, simply activating critical thought processes
that someone would never even consider because of their social influences.
We’re all victims of culture. If you were born into a racist family, you might be a racist.
You might have a blocked element in your mind, sort of a… sort of a…
- A Tilly in "Lin Bick" ?
- Well, there’s a special term for it. I can’t quite think of right now,
but it has to do with blinkering out…
- Bigot ? - Well, I’m talking about a way of thought.
A process of blinkering out information to support your world view.
And we do this subconsciously, just like we have muscle memory.
A pianist doesn’t think about all the notes he’s playing.
It becomes part of this sort of cycle of neurological structure.
The same thing happens with people's thought processes and beliefs.
So if you're deeply religious, for example, you're not gonna rationalize things sometimes.
Some will, this isn’t universal, but many often they don’t. They don’t, they’re locked,
mind-locked. And it doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter what you do,
it doesn’t matter any logic you apply at any particular scenario, they blinker it out
just to maintain their identity. And anything that challenges their identity triggers a lot of pain.
You know, we see this a lot in the culture today
when anyone challenges anything, but I won’t go on that tangent.
- We want to congratulate you and let you know this's going to be a very exciting night.
Here the Los Angeles premiere of “Zeitgeist : Moving Forward”
to collide with a 325 movie theatre release around the world,
international countries, international languages.
This is a major leap forward and I can’t wait to talk to you Wednesday, by the way, live.
You’ll be in our KPFK studios for a full hour, where we can unravel
the mysteries of humankind, the ontological perspective, why we tick the way we do
and what’s the answer, my favorite part.
- Of course and that’s what matters.
- Well, we thank you Peter Joseph. - Thank you very much. - We thank you.
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