Filmmaker Ari Gold is angry. The creator behind the award-winning films Helicopter and Culture is so upset over recent political events, he saw fit to send out this note. We feel it’s important enough to share with you. Here’s Ari Gold heartfelt letter: ^ “In honor of the Bush administration’s walkout on the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming and now the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, all profits from sales of my videos will be MATCHED by me, and sent to the alternative-energy programs of the Earth Island Institute. Go to Ari Gold films if you’d like to buy my short films as stocking stuffers. Also feel free to take real political action on your own, please, perhaps something more substantial than this. I will.
It has been an honor to have my film reach 70 festivals worldwide this year. The whole point of all the effort to make Helicopter was to communicate an experience of death, an attempt to look it in the face. It makes me happy to know people may be getting something from the films. If you like them, pass them on.
Meanwhile, I’m in Haiti with my dad, who used to live here. I was shot at on the way from the airport. Haiti is not what it used to be. Overpopulation is choking the capital and the island is getting scraped dry by deforestation. It’s too hot for the normal December, even in the tropics. But the music in Port-au-Prince is wonderful.
Last night was one of those nights I awoke and couldn’t get back to sleep, worried about the state of the world. To have an anatomically-correct experience of life, I thought in my insomnia, I should live in Las Vegas, because that’s today’s reality — a lush, pre-packaged Experienceâ„¢ in the middle of a dying desert. I thought about film, all the intense work it takes. Eventually, everything will be forgotten. We tiny beings eat our food and fall in love and some have children and pass illusions on to them too. I felt pretty awful and couldn’t find solace in anything. Even the mosquitoes seemed unbearably sad. Then, an amazing thing happened. I thought how hard everyone tries to find meaning, and we look to God or love or filmmaking or ukulele playing or whatever it is that helps us through the sleepless nights. And suddenly that struggle seemed funny and entirely the point.”
Get more info from Ari Gold’s official web site.
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