This is fantastic—or would have been—except somewhere along the way, the suits at Powerhouse shut down the project due to fears of liability exposure and corporate greed sparked by the maker’s lab products threatening corporate profits.
I asked Grenzfurthner how he connected the dots for these seemingly disparate islands of information. He elegantly describes the contact points: “There is a direct connection showing that hospitals in Farmington and Durango were overwhelmed by Navajo patients because the impact on the Navajo Nation was immense. Notably, there isn’t a single hospital on the reservation, only small clinics. Therefore, the influx of patients necessitated the hackerspace initiative. This is also a story about communities. It narrates not only the history of the Navajo Community and its struggles but also the history of hacking and hackerspaces and how such communities function within mainstream culture. Both have their specific issues, yet there are overlaps. For example, the obvious challenges faced by the Navajo Nation, and the issues that arose as part of the PPE operation in Durango, which, in the end, wasn’t entirely a success story.”
“…it’s tempting to hear what they are saying as playing at the edge of conspiracy theory nonsense.”
The people interviewed are outliers and renegades, and as such, it’s tempting to hear what they are saying as playing at the edge of conspiracy theory nonsense. Some of it does sound that way, and there’s a challenge for a critical-thinking audience to sort out what is inaccurate. Parts of what is said are based on opinions coming from generalized strangeness and personal bias. On the other hand, the narrated information from the filmmaker is solidly researched and avoids editorializing.
Grenzfurthner has an amazing knack for weaving various threads together to tell a story. His other documentaries, Traceroute and Glossary of Broken Dreams, do the same. He speaks a language unique to old-school digital nerds but also makes the information accessible to anyone who comes along for the ride.
In the end, as a menacing Uncle Sam expresses his displeasure with Grenzfurthner down the barrel of an AK-47, we leave the experience feeling sickened at what we’ve allowed. Hacking at Leaves explores the corruption eating away at the core of American social and political structures and provides yet another example of capitalism’s dismal failures.
"…provides yet another example of capitalism's dismal failures."
