Zeitgeist, the Movie is a 2007 non-profit web film produced by Peter Joseph that provocatively characterizes American culture in light of myth of god, country, and prosperity. The film is divided into three parts - Part I: "The Greatest Story Ever Told", Part II: "All The World's A Stage", and Part III: "Don't Mind The Men Behind The Curtain" - and discusses topics that include Christianity, 9/11 and the Federal Reserve Bank. A remastered version was presented as a global premiere on November 10, 2007 at the 4th Annual Artivist Film Festival & Artivist Awards.
Since its free online release in the spring of 2007, the film has been downloaded approximately 5 million times. In addition to attracting significant public interest, the low-budget film has been criticized for relying too heavily on anecdotal evidence and for using unidentified, undated, and unsourced video news clips, voice-overs, quotes, and book citations without page numbers.
Part I: The Greatest Story Ever Told. Part I evaluates Christian beliefs established in the Bible and delivers a critique of the Bible as fiction over fact. In furtherance of the Jesus myth hypothesis, this part argues that Jesus is a literary and astrological hybrid, and that the Bible is based on astrological principles documented by many ancient civilizations pertaining to movement of the sun through the sky and stars.
Part II: All The World's a Stage. Part II asserts that the United States was warned about the impending September 11, 2001 attacks, that NORAD was purposely confused through wargames to allow the planes to reach their targets, and that the World Trade Center buildings underwent a controlled demolition. Additionally, the film argues that some of the named hijackers are still alive, that Hani Hanjour could not have flown Flight 77 into the Pentagon, that the Bush Administration covered up the truth in the 9/11 Commission Report, and that the mainstream media has failed to ask important questions about the official account.
Part III: Don't Mind The Men Behind The Curtain. Part III asserts that the powerful bankers of the world have been conspiring for world domination and increased power. According to the documentary, the rich of society have been using their wealth to increase financial panic and foster a consolidation of independent competing banks. The film details the Theory of Electronic Conspiracy that the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States, was created in order to steal the wealth of the nation. It showcases the amount of money that has been made by these rich few during World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War and now the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It describes the goal of these bankers as world power over a completely controllable public.
Wikipedia
Una lástima que Zeitgeist, the Movie haya devorado a American Zeitgeist, que parece mucho más atractiva. En cuanto a la primera, después de verla no me ha quedado muy claro si el autor es un radical de izquierda o un ultranacionalista. En todo caso, se le va bastante la olla.American Zeitgeist (American Zeitgeist: Crisis & Conscience in Age of Terror)
(Usa, 2006) [Color, 118 m.]
Dirección: Rob McGann
Productora: Avenue E Productions, Inc / Aaron Blasius, Rob McGann
http://imdb.com/title/tt0759952
Reparto: Tariq Ali (as Himself), Paul Berman (as Himself), Richard Bulliet (as Himself), Noam Chomsky (as Himself), Steve Coll (as Himself), Hamid Dabashi (as Himself), David Frum (as Himself), Christopher Hitchens (as Himself), Samantha Power (as Herself), Craig Unger (as Himself)
IMDb. American Zeitgeist is a feature length documentary by filmmaker Rob McGann that offers an historical look at the War on Terrorism from 1979 through 2006. The narrative of American Zeitgeist is woven out of more than 40 in-depth interviews with leading experts on terrorism, U.S. foreign policy, Islam and Middle Eastern studies.
Sinopsis oficial: Before the United States entered the crossfire of war and nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq, and suicide bombs poured flames across the skylines of London, Beslan, Madrid, Istanbul, Bali and downtown Manhattan, there was an optimistic moment at the turn of the millennium, when almost anything seemed possible.
But with the War on Terrorism entering its sixth year, that pre-9/11 spirit already seems a long way behind us. As public relations disasters like the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay prison scandals roil throughout the Muslim world, images of the kidnapping and execution of Americans and civilian contractors by a committed insurgency offer chilling evidence of the hatred provoked by U.S. foreign policy in recent years. American soldiers—and twenty times the number of Iraqis—are dying every week in lands where they are seen as occupiers. Meanwhile, only the barest roots of democracy have taken hold in the rattled capitals of Baghdad and Kabul.
With instability looming across a swath of territories in the Middle East, and Al Qaeda vowing to attack America at home again, an alarming amount remains unclear about the extent of the dangers we are facing. Rumors of Osama bin Laden’s imminent death or capture waft intermittently through the media, while fear of intifada-style attacks are an unspoken tension on subways in every major city.
In one of the most divided periods in U.S. history, questions of American empire and unilateralism are being levied abroad by friend and foe alike through the splintered lens of the War on Terrorism. What began as a widely supported effort to protect American lives has led us to an uncertain crossroads, more alone now than we have ever been.
Slated for release in 2006, Avenue E Productions’ latest film American Zeitgeist explores the underlying fractures of the War on Terrorism, considering how what America is, what it does and what it represents have become the most explosive questions on the world stage since September 11th.
Saludos.
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