We Live in Public
Joining the experiment in We Live in Public
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By Darren Estwick. |  |
Monday, 12, Oct 2009 10:39
Showing at the London Film Festival on October 23rd (18:15, 18:30), October 25th (13:30) and October 26th (15:30)
General release on November 13th
By Lewis Bazley.
Four years after her brilliant rockumentary Dig!, Ondi Timoner's latest effort is a fascinating and terrifying look at the seductive power of instant celebrity and virtual living.
At a breezy 80 minutes, We Live in Public chronicles the rise and fall of Josh Harris, "the greatest internet pioneer you've never heard of". One of the earliest dotcom millionaires through his groundbreaking pseudo.com webTV network, Harris' fascination with lives lived through a lens and his childhood-fuelled emotional froideur saw him dubbed the "Warhol of WebTV" with his Quiet art installation. One hundred volunteers were housed, prodded and poked in a underground New York bunker that soon descended into Bacchanalian chaos and prevented a foreboding warning of the loss of privacy and dignity that could come with a desire for connection through technology.
A forerunner of the reality TV phenomenon with his We Live in Public project - which saw Harris and his girlfriend under constant surveillance - he's an incredible, sharply intelligent but frightening subject. He sends a goodbye video message to his dying mother and reveals both self-destructive and fascistic tendencies through his innovative but invasive creations.
While this superbly made and engaging documentary could suffer with mainstream audience through its indulgence of the underground art world, this is still an unmissable film in an era in which our lives are increasingly played out online.