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  • ARTIVIST FILM FESTIVAL

  • hosts "ZEITGEIST : MOVING FORWARD" directed by PETER JOSEPH

  • LOS ANGELES PREMIERE

  • On January 15, 2011 ARTIVIST hosted the official global premiere

  • ofZEITGEIST : 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. Youve not only directed "Zeitgeist : Moving Forward",

  • but youre 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 thebasically, 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.

  • Youre not supposed to talk about certain things,

  • youre not supposed to talk about anything that goes against, say, the monetary system.

  • "Oh ! the free market ! It’s about freedom, you know !" Youre not supposed to

  • And people get very uncomfortable naturally when you do as well.

  • You get called a kook and youll 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.

  • Were 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, theyre 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 ofZeitgeist : 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.

  • Youll 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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  • a greater You, a greater World.

ARTIVIST FILM FESTIVAL

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