sweating Be Kind Rewind.

How many folks are sweating the opening of Be Kind Rewind with Mos Def and Jack Black? I gather this collaboration may be another big film for Hollywood and both actors. In the movie, two DIY movie-makers gain mucho juice (and lots of FBI heat) by recording and independently distributing 20-minute spoofs of Hollywood films irreverently. These hilarious renditions poke post-modern humor at blockbuster cinema and verify a widened popcult that includes us consumers as star producers.

I am intrigued by the movie’s secondary theme developed around copyright enforcement. To many, copyright liberation is a less regarded consumer benefit and distribution catalyst for our digital common grounds. However in real-life NYC, the stakes have risen for bootleggers participating in the trade of copywritten material. One of our hard-working street merchants got stuck with new super-sized piracy penalties.

BKR raises the question, What is the place for digital folk aesthetics of self-taught, (non)/manual-bred programmers within the realm of art and commerce? With fatal optimism, many artists are swallowed up in the sea of New Media. Check out the filmworks of exittheapple productions. They are widely appealing and keenly produced. Pierre Bennu shot a mockumentary, RBG Red Bone Guerillas back in 2005. It is a mockumentary of a fictional performance group mocking the media.