• Author’s Note: Contains spoilers for Knives Out (2019), Bacurau (2019), and The Wandering Earth (2019)
How can I confound myself with those who today already find a hearing? — Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, 1895
They say “the art of art, the glory of expression, and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.” And indeed, there is something mystic about simplicity. And watching “Walking Over Water” was a similar kind of experience for me. It was earthy and fresh. A child always gets stuck in between the never ending quarrel of parents. This[Read More...]
GWPF | May 18, 2020
Attempts by eco-activists to censor and shut down Planet of the Humans reveals the green movement’s authoritarian nature that turns most aggressively on its own apostates.
Jeff Gibbs’ and Michael Moore’s new film, Planet of the Humans has been watched more than eight million times. It has cast doubt on the green movement’s claims to be concerned with the environment and questioned the motivations and integrity of its leaders and backers.
The backlash may be more revealing than the film itself, but both inform us where we are at in the fight against climate change and ecological collapse. The environmental establishment’s frenzied attacks against Planet of the Humans says a lot about its commitment to big money and technological solutions.
The chief causes of the environmental destruction that faces us today are not biological, or the product of individual human choice. They are social and historical, rooted in the productive relations, technological imperatives, and historically conditioned demographic trends that characterize the dominant social system. Hence, what is ignored or downplayed in most proposals to remedy the environmental crisis is the most critical challenge of all: the need to transform the major social bases of environmental degradation, and not simply to tinker with its minor technical bases.
By John Steppling | OffGuardian | May 3, 2020
Michael Moore is estimated to be worth 50 million dollars. He is a wealthy man. His political support is for the Democratic Party. He has stumped for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in New York and for Rashida Tlaib in Michigan (does one need to say more?). Moore is essentially a brand.
The final message of Jeff Gibbs’ new documentary Planet of the Humans can hardly be faulted: rejection of the centuries-old anthropocentrism which has justified dominion over, and exploitation of, all other life-forms. Without mentioning Deep Ecology or the anti-industrial critiques of radical environmentalists, the movie does implicitly follow the lead of earlier thinkers such as Arne Naess. For decades, such a radical critique of the Industrial Revolution, presented by maverick theorists (Mumford, Ellul) and developed in obscure ‘zines (e.g., Fifth Estate), was on the i
Celebrating 50 years of Earth Day, Michael Moore, executive producer and the director Jeff Gibbs re-released their daunting and alarming documentary about the heart and soul of America’s Green Movement in a compelling film: Planet of the Humans (2019).
According to Michael Moore: “This is perhaps the most urgent film we’ve shown in the 15-year history of our film festival.” (Traverse City Film Festival)
There’s an early scene in Terrence Malik’s masterful new film – what I would call a moving painting – where the central character Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant farmer from an isolated small mountainous village who refuses to take an oath to Hitler and fight in the German army, is talking to an older man who is restoring paintings in the local Catholic church. Franz, a devout Roman Catholic, is deeply disturbed by the rise of Hitler and the thought of participating in his immoral killing machine. The older man tells Franz – who has already been admonished that he has a duty to de
