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Lucky People Center International
Sweden/Denmark/Norway 1998
Reviewed by Xan Brooks
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Lucky People Center International carries us from a shot of Earth from outer space through a tour of cultures and philosophies. We meet an anthropologist who has found a way to converse with gibbons and an African priestess who explains the rituals of voodoo. New Mexican shaman Franklin Bearchild Eriacho tells us to respect everyone else's religion; holy man Baba Ghi exhorts us to seek out the path that serves us best. Toshiji Mikawa is a Tokyo office worker who moonlights as a performance artist and Annie Sprinkle a former porn star turned DIY sexual therapist. Maori warriors chant their protest over the implications of an international banking system and Rastafarian philosopher Cashus D spells out a revisionist history of the US. Crowds dance in tribal villages and at western clubs. As Tibetan lama Sogyal Rinpoche meditates on the nature of death, the sun sinks slowly on Earth.
Review
Near the beginning of Lucky People Center International, an earnest white anthropologist explains how his association with a band of gibbons led him to a revelation about humankind. "We are singing and dancing apes," he says. "It is built into our nature... Man must dance." If there is one mantra that runs throughout the freeform Lucky People Center International, this is it. It is implicit in the film's fabric and a reflection of the background of its creators. Co-directors Erik Pauser and Johan Söderberg work as multimedia artists in Stockholm, part of a dance-music collective (the Lucky People Center) which has already produced three CDs and a pair of television documentaries. Fittingly, their feature debut sticks close to a dance-music template. There is scarcely an image in LPCI that doesn't throb to a heavy percussive backbeat. A stop-motion camera pan gets played in a loop. Significant soundbites are scratched and repeated for added emphasis. So holy man Baba Ghi the holy man says "Seek, seek, keep on asking" and the film-makers have him say it again, and again. And sex therapist Annie Sprinkle's "My motto is: let there be pleasure on Earth; let it begin with me" is rewound and replayed.
In this way, the film's key phrases serve as anchors, or philosophical signposts in an otherwise map-less global tour. Elsewhere the sights and sounds flash past at an accelerated pace and blur into a mash of multimedia imagery - an ethnic compression with no spine, structure or editorial voice. It is, needless to say, a giddying experience. If LPCI boasts an obvious precedent, it is Godfrey Reggio's eco-travelogue Koyaanisqatsi (the same stop-motion visuals, lush cinematography and National Geographic aesthetic). But where Koyaanisqatsi became a favourite among New Agers, LPCI looks ruthlessly tailored to the rave generation. One can already envisage it being thrown on to the canvas at next year's Tribal Gathering.
Both films , however, share the same dreamy grasp of history, reducing planet Earth to a free-floating set of rituals and gestures and pretty pictures. Because for all its talk to the contrary ("We need to understand who we are and where we come from"), Söderberg and Pauser's film arrives startlingly free of historical context. Instead it appears to subscribe to Marshall MacLuhan's mantra that the medium is the message. At times this confidence seems warranted (the Maori warriors who chant their protest over "the despicable credit card" provide a wonderful insight into concerns of disenfranchised races). But all too often LPCI's lack of editorial structure results in a kind of multicultural channel surf. Interview segments are broken up with unheralded shots of Chinese troops breaking up a Buddhist monastery, or FBI officials wandering among Heaven's Gate's suicide victims, or Bill Clinton saying, "Yes, let us build our bridge." Each time there is no explanation as to why we are being shown these scenes, no attempt to root them in a wider thesis. Struggle, tragedy and atrocity become white noise, eye-wash and infotainment.
Ultimately, then, LPCI is almost too democratic. With borders too wide to frame their exotic material, Söderberg and Pauser's labour of love winds up soulful, idealistic and suspiciously empty-headed. Give 12 movie cameras to 12 (dancing) monkeys and leave them alone for two years. Chances are they'll come up with something rather like this.
Credits
- Producer
- Lars Jönsson
- Screenplay
- Johan Söderberg
- Erik Pauser
- Director of Photography
- Jan Röed
- Editors
- Johan Söderberg
- Erik Pauser
- Music
- Lucky People Center
- ©AB Memfis Film & Television
- Production Companies
- Produced by AB Memfis Film & Television in co-operation with Zentropa Productions/The Swedish Filminstitute [Peter Hald]/Swedish Television Documentary [Björn Arvas]/Stockholm Records/Film i Väst/ TV2 Danmark [Anette Rømer]/The National Film Board of Denmark/ NRK - Norwegian Television/Nordic Film & TV-Fund [Dag Alveberg]
- Supported by Eurimages
- Co-producer
- Peter Aalbæk Jensen
- Production Supervisor
- Anna Anthony
- Location Managers
- Brazil:
- Marcus Wilson
- Benin:
- Marianne N'Lemvo
- Félicien K. Dossah
- Morocco:
- Lotfi Jannat
- Thailand:
- Tsom Tsi
- India:
- Jai Singh Chandel
- Russia:
- Vera Nikitina
- Japan:
- Zbigniew Karkowski
- Assistant Director
- Marc Larose
- Script Consultants
- David Wingate
- Jan Röed
- Photographer Video
- Erik Pauser
- Title Sequence Design
- David Nord
- Opticals/End Titles
- Gunnar Ahlgren
- Janne Lundkvist
- Music
- Lucky People Center
- Simon Hartley
- Jean Louis Huhta
- Johan Söderberg
- Erik Pauser
- Music Performed by
- FleshQuartet
- Jean Louis Huhta
- Konkade
- Incapacitant
- Santos
- Albert Kouvezin
- Nestor Holondi
- Window Rock Pow Wow
- Mohammed Ngoui
- Music Production
- Johan Söderberg
- Music Technicians
- David Österberg
- Martin Landquist
- Soundtrack
- "Let There Be Pleasure", "Look Down", "The Pulse", "Chan Chan", "Taiko-Monkey", "Progress", "Action", "Constant Dance", "Death" by Johan Söderberg, Erik Pauser; "Haka" by Bub Wehi, Te Waka Huia
- Sound
- Johan Söderberg
- Thailand/Borneo:
- Magnus Enquist
- Sound Mixer
- Thomas Langballe
- Sound Consultant
- Ragnar Samuelsson
- With
- Alexander Brener
- Toyoshige Sekiguchi
- Björn Merker
- Djossou Dotche
- Djossou Hounsipké Edwige
- Franklin Bearchild Eriacho
- Baba Ghi
- Gitagong Monastery
- Bruno Manser
- The Penans of Sarawak
- Erina Rhöse
- Cashus D
- Toshiji Mikawa
- Te Waka Huia
- Annie Sprinkle
- Mayuko Hino
- Pragati Sood
- Neginho Valdice
- Americano
- Sagbohan Danialou
- Sogyal Rinpoche
- Iwakichi Yamashita
- Noriko Yamashita
- Mae Gloria
- Jai Singh Chandel
- Orthodox Church of Moscow
- Bill Clinton
- Marshall 'Do' Applewhite
- Navajo Nation
- Kosakai
- EXU
- participants
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Jane Balfour Films Limited
- 7,273 feet
- 80 minutes 49 seconds
- Dolby
- In Colour
- Some subtitles