This looks like the film I have been thinking about for a couple of years. I’ve been either wanting to somehow make it myself, or see it made, or whatever. Nevertheless, the documentary, What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire, features a theme and issues that are very important to me and I’ve always wanted to see these topics addressed in the form of a feature film.
There are plenty of books, essays, etc. on topics of civilization, climate crisis, peak oil, population overshoot, etc., and how all of these problems are connected and related to bigger issues. However, there are few films or movies that attempt to draw an overarching picture of this web of social issues that we are faced with as a globalized civilization. But What a Way to Go seems to do just that:
“If film and television have a role to play in our society, if they are capable of helping important social change, if they have a part in the transformation of human society, then T.S. Bennett and Sally Erickson have fulfilled that purpose. What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire is the culmination of the “big social issue documentary” genre of Michael Moore’s films, or An Inconvenient Truth, and particularly of the “using ironic 50’s footage” sub-genre, such as The End of Suburbia. It deals with the same issues, but follows them deeper, all the way to the root of the problem in the Agricultural Revolution. Along the way, it hits all the important points: peak oil, mass extinction, climate change, overshoot, and the stories that keep us on the path to self-destruction.”
Sounds great. It’s a very low budget and independent affair, but I hope it gains some attention. Here’s one of two trailers for the film:
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Thanks for posting this! I was reading along and there was this long quote and I thought: where did this come from? I hadn’t seen Jason’s review yet! I’ve gone back and linked to it on our Reviews and Press page.
One of our dreams has been that, after What a Way to Go gets out there and finds its audience, young filmmakers would start to show up, and we’d have the resources to work with them, assembling a cadre of artists to help document the present predicament, and to help shape the human response to it. I’m glad to read of your filmmaking goals and hope we will keep in touch, as an opportunity to work together in some way could arise. (At this point, I’m so burned out from almost four years or working on WAWTG that the idea of doing another project is hard to wrap my mind around…)
As soon as I get back into a high speed wireless situation, I’ll check out some of your work.
Lots of other stuff on our website, if you haven’t checked it out yet. We’re about a month away from our first screening tour, to the Northeast. Working on DVD menus today…
Onward,
Tim Bennett
Writer/Director What a Way to Go