''Glossary of Broken Dreams'' is a 2018 Austrian/American documentary film directed by
Johannes Grenzfurthner
Johannes Grenzfurthner (; born 1975 in Vienna) is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurthner is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of ''monochrom'', an international art ...
. The essayistic feature film tries to present an overview of political concepts such as freedom, privacy, identity, resistance, etc.
Grenzfurthner calls his project an "ideotaining cinematic revue" about political ideas he considers important. Grenzfurthner cites frustration about the current level of political debate as a primary influence for making the film. He couldn't tolerate "ignorant and topically abusive comments on the 'Internet' anymore." So he teamed up with writer and activist Ishan Raval to "explain, re-evaluate, and sometimes sacrifice political golden calves of discourse."
The film features performances by
Amber Benson
Amber Nicole Benson (born January 8, 1977) is an American actress, singer, writer, director, and producer. She is best known for her role as Tara Maclay on the TV series ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' (1999–2002), and has also directed, produced ...
,
Max Grodenchik
Max or MAX may refer to:
Animals
* Max (dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog
* Max (English Springer Spaniel), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of OBE)
* Max (gorilla) ...
,
Jason Scott Sadofsky
Jason Scott Sadofsky (born September 13, 1970), more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist, historian of technology, filmmaker, performer, and actor. Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms Sketch, SketchCow, The Slipped ...
and others.
The film was produced by art group
monochrom
Monochrom (stylised as monochrom) is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. It was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop att ...
.
Concept
Johannes Grenzfurthner, who defines himself as a '
lumpennerd' in the film's intro, functions as a storyteller and host who guides the viewer through the narrative. ''Glossary of Broken Dreams'' does not make use of classic documentary-style interviews and aesthetics. Instead, the film presents different political and philosophical concepts in the form of short films and essayistic chapters featuring fictional characters. These bizarre and exaggerated characters are performed by actors, voice performers and musicians (for example
FM4
FM4 is an Austrian national radio station operated by the ORF. Its main target is the youth audience, and much of the music output is characterised by an alternative rock and electronic music slant.
Programmimg
The programming of ''FM4'' is als ...
's Hannes Duscher and Roland Gratzer). The film can be seen in the tradition of
reflexive documentary films and
performative documentary films.
In an interview with ''
Film Threat
''Film Threat'' is an online film review publication, and earlier, a national magazine that focused primarily on independent film, although it also reviewed videos and DVDs of mainstream films, as well as Hollywood movies in theaters. It first ...
'', Grenzfurthner describes his project as follows:
It's a peculiar film for nerds of a peculiar set of interests, but at the same time it's talking about topics that are so goddamn important that more people should know about it. I guess that's why I made it. No idea if there is even a target audience for it, but one can try. There is a lot to process. And cat meme drunk masses will probably not even scratch the surface. But my idea was: better to challenge the audience than to dumb it down.
The film incorporates art and illustrations by Bonni Rambatan, Matt J. Frith, James Brothwell, Clemens Kindermann, Stevyn Prothero and Steve Reeder in a variety of different cinematic styles. The film thus works as a fast-paced collage, utilizing a singer-songwriter duo, puppet shows,
LucasArts
Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game brand licensing, licensor that is part of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as ...
-style
pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the smal ...
animation, Japanese
anime
is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
, live action sequences and
stock footage
Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock ...
.
''Glossary of Broken Dreams'' can be considered a loose follow-up of Grenzfurthner's first documentary feature ''
Traceroute
In computing, traceroute and tracert are computer network diagnostic commands for displaying possible routes (paths) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The history of the route is recorded as th ...
'', but expanding his critique of capitalist (nerd) culture.
The film was produced by Günther Friesinger and Johannes Grenzfurthner, with Michael McEnroe acting as an associate producer.
Austrian and German media personalities such as Stefanie Sargnagel, Gerald Votava, Peter Hörmanseder, Katharina Stemberger and Jolyne Schlien Schürmann make cameo appearances in the film.
Chapters
Capitalism/Market/Freedom
''With Stuart Freeman (as Brian Ewok) and Conny Lee (as Madame Juju)''
An introduction to the basic ruleset of capitalist society and its historical formation.
Competition
''With Harald Homolka List (as Hans Platzgaumer) and Bronwynn Mertz-Penzinger (as Platzgaumer's Cerebral Cortex)''
An analysis of the pros and cons of competitive systems (like capitalism and biological evolution).
Accumulation
''With Johannes Grenzfurthner (as Doktor Ullmaier) and Alexander E. Fennon (as bank clerk)''
This section demonstrates accumulation of capital in an ironic way by squandering 50 euros in a money exchange office.
Resistance/Activism
''With Johannes Grenzfurthner (as Frau Schlammpeitzinger) and Robert Stachel (as Waiter Walter Peckinpah)''
A story about the ongoing shift in Western societies from a disciplinary society to a society of control and how this affects subversion in art, politics and activism.
The Media
''With
Amber Benson
Amber Nicole Benson (born January 8, 1977) is an American actress, singer, writer, director, and producer. She is best known for her role as Tara Maclay on the TV series ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' (1999–2002), and has also directed, produced ...
(as Pfefferkarree McCormick) and
Michael J. Epstein
Michael J. Epstein (born 1976), is an American filmmaker, musician, writer, and auditory scientist. Epstein has also spoken and written about the impact of local media on the arts, music service gatekeeping, effective social networking, and crowd ...
(as DeForest Schbeibi)''
An analysis of the function of media in liberal societies (including
freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogni ...
,
fake news
Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue.Schlesinger, Robert (April 14, 2017)"Fake news in reality ...
and other concepts)
Privacy/Data
''With Achmed Abdel-Salam (as Modern Subject) and Jim Libby (as Information Gaze)''
This section delves into the co-evolution of privacy as a social value and the bourgeois economy, and critiques the current emphasis on privacy as failing to address underlying dominations in society. It introduces the idea, explored later in the film ("The Left"), of how computation and information could be liberatory under different property relations.
Nature Vs Nurture
''With David Fine (as Pansexual German Paratrooper)''
This story of a chimpanzee debates social conditioning.
Politics/Identity
''With Andrea Nitsche (as Dr. Bulletpoint von Sganarelle) and Michael Smulik (as Politics)''
A critique of the preponderance of politics today, predicated on identity, in contrast to a universalist approach to politics.
Democracy/Social Democracy
''With Jeff Ricketts (as President Ödem von Horvath),
Max Grodénchik
Max Grodénchik (born November 12, 1952), also known as Michael Grodénchik, is an American stage, film, and television actor, best known for his role as Rom, a recurring character on the television series '' Star Trek: Deep Space Nine''.
Biogr ...
(as Biological Male) and Kudra Owens (as Biological Female''
The section questions the viability of social democracy in a globalized and financialized post-Fordist economy.
The Left
''With Martin Auer (as Professor Alain Xavior Schnürlsamt), Johannes Grenzfurthner (as Harnulf Rohrkrepierer), David Dempsey (as Sven Shitpornson), Anna Behne (as Lady Unsquaredance),
Jason Scott Sadofsky
Jason Scott Sadofsky (born September 13, 1970), more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist, historian of technology, filmmaker, performer, and actor. Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms Sketch, SketchCow, The Slipped ...
(as Billy Bob Turingengine) and Franz Ablinger (as Sailor Dieselfink)''
Looking at the Left's inability to think or move past twentieth-century tactics, affects and campaigns, this section questions, ultimately, whether the correct course of action today might just be to give up on the Left, and try something better, more attuned to the possibilities and needs of the times.
Production
Process
The basic script was written by Johannes Grenzfurthner and Ishan Raval, supported by language consultant Chris S. Sims.
Due to the fast production process, the different chapters were written while other parts were already being shot and edited. Final decisions about length and content were made in the editing room.
On the basis of he theoretical texts I went on to develop the characters and the plot of the movie and started filming with the actors. At the same time, I was cutting scenes that were finished and started to put the movie timeline together. Everything was happening simultaneously. Compiling, writing, filming, cutting. And sometimes not even in this order. It felt like creating a jigsaw puzzle and trying to solve it at the same time. But in a short time – the production took about 5 months – it was doable without losing track completely.
Principal photography commenced August 4, 2017, and ended November 14, 2017. The film was completed on January 2, 2018.
With a budget of US$15,000, the film can be considered
microfilmmaking Microfilmmaking is the production of ultra-low budget movies. These films generally are made by impassioned filmmakers operating outside the Hollywood mainstream. While a "low budget" Hollywood film can cost millions of dollars, 80% to 90% of all ...
and
guerrilla filmmaking
Guerrilla filmmaking refers to a form of independent filmmaking characterized by ultra-low micro budgets, skeleton crews, and limited props using whatever resources, locations and equipment is available. Often scenes are shot quickly in real loca ...
. In an interview with ''futurezone'', Grenzfurthner called the making of the film an ongoing process of "radical DIY". He worked with different teams of people on different chapters, for example LA-based filmmakers
Sophia Cacciola
Sophia Cacciola is a Los-Angeles-based, American filmmaker, artist, and musician.
Career overview Film
Cacciola is known for her sociopolitical genre feature films that showcase women: '' TEN'', Magnetic, Blood of the Tribades, Clickbait, a ...
and
Michael J. Epstein
Michael J. Epstein (born 1976), is an American filmmaker, musician, writer, and auditory scientist. Epstein has also spoken and written about the impact of local media on the arts, music service gatekeeping, effective social networking, and crowd ...
, who were visiting Vienna for an art residency with
monochrom
Monochrom (stylised as monochrom) is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. It was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop att ...
at
Museumsquartier.
The film's main language is English, but features various musical interludes by Duscher&Gratzer and other music groups, performed in German.
Sound design
Daniel Hasibar created the sound design and audioscape underlying Grenzfurthner's narration.
Music
![Glossary screenshot 02](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Glossary_screenshot_02.png)
The film features music by Michael Donaldson,
Inti-Illimani
Inti-Illimani (; from Quechuan ''Inti'' and Aymara ''Illimani)'' are an instrumental and vocal Latin American folk music ensemble from Chile. The band was formed in 1967 by a group of university students and it acquired widespread popularity in C ...
, wobblersound,
Kasson Crooker
Kasson Crooker is an American electronic musician, a composer, and the artist behind Symbion Project, his solo moniker. His past bands are Freezepop, Splashdown, Larkspur, and Sirensong. DJ HMX, Komputer Kontroller, and Cosmonaut Zero were alias b ...
, Duscher&Gratzer, Bottervogel, Christoph Burstup Weiss, among others.
Distribution
The film's world premiere took place at
Diagonale
The Diagonale (Festival of Austrian Film) is a film festival that takes place every March in Graz, Austria.
The festival was initially held under the auspices of the Austrian Film Commission in Salzburg from 1993 to 1995 but moved to Graz in 1998 ...
Film Festival in
Graz
Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popul ...
,
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
on March 16, 2018. The festival called it a "popcultural wholesale assault". The North American premiere took place at Vermont International Film Festival on April 11, 2018.
Grenzfurthner has a proactive approach to
peer-to-peer file sharing
Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program tha ...
. In his interview with
Boing Boing
''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice won ...
he mentions that he put donation info into the film, anticipating its appearance on torrent sites.
The film was released on January 31, 2019 on
Vimeo on Demand
Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software as ...
and can be bought or rented.
Reception
Critical response
Boing Boing
''Boing Boing'' is a website, first established as a zine in 1988, later becoming a group blog. Common topics and themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney, and left-wing politics. It twice won ...
says about the film: "Produced with a micro-budget, this monumental mosaic is taking the audience on a ride through an encyclopedia of overused, misconceived, and corrupted concepts and ideas. The fact that it concerns the favorite vocabulary of current discourses, the golden calves of contemporary controversy, makes for a considerably explosive force." Austrian pop culture magazine ''Skug'' calls the film "a swan song to the society of ignorance.".
The Independent Critic's Richard Propes states that "Glossary of Broken Dreams is a nerdgasm of creative consciousness meets good intentions and abundant doses of intellectually informed human compassion. It'll fuck with your mind. Then laugh."
Film Threat
''Film Threat'' is an online film review publication, and earlier, a national magazine that focused primarily on independent film, although it also reviewed videos and DVDs of mainstream films, as well as Hollywood movies in theaters. It first ...
's Bradley Gibson says that it's "aggressive, doesn't pull punches, and burns through ideas at machine-gun rate ... 97 head-spinning minutes of core dump rage and frustration that is also entertaining and witty."
Austrian magazine
Profil
Profil may refer to:
*La Mouette Profil, a French hang glider design
*Profil (band), a French musical group
*''Profil (literary magazine)'', a Norwegian literary magazine
*''profil (magazine)'', an Austrian news magazine
* ''Profil (Russian magaz ...
calls it "a brilliant feat". Gaming and film website ''Press Play'' says that "sometimes it feels as if the entire content of Wikipedia would be rammed into your brain with a USB stick." ScreenCritix (UK) writes: "Grenzfurthner is our guide through a political minefield, giving us his notes like an angry chorus from the ancient Greek and Shakespearean plays ... an unmethodical survey of a gargantuan topic."
''CelebBeat'' writes: "The movie delivered on many more levels than I expected possible. It has the potential to break into echo chambers and filter bubbles; it can empower people by providing them with a deeper understanding of the human condition." "It's really hard to deny the expert way this movie was pieced together. It's a mix and match party of epic proportions. Old school video game graphics. Puppets. Musicians, anime, the kitchen sink. There's no shortage of style but more importantly, somehow these things all co-exist in seemingly perfect harmony." RDTB says: "If
Slavoj Zizek
Slavoj may refer to:
* Karel Slavoj Amerling (1807–1884), Czech teacher, writer, and philosopher
* Slavoj Černý (born 1937), Czech former cyclist
*Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultu ...
would create
Kinder Surprise Eggs, this film would be in them." UK Film Review's Annie Vincent says about the film: "A highly intelligent and topical film, Glossary of Broken Dreams is an engaging epistemological documentary that will have you chuckling about, choking on, and considering the validity of, your political ideology." ''MicroFilmmaker Magazine'' likes the "uncompromising attitude" and "unique taste", but questions the experimental nature of the film and its accessibility: "No real-world interviews were conducted on camera, which surprised me since these are the bread and butter of many documentaries. ... Is it a narrative film? Is it a documentary? Is it both?"
''Film Inquiry'' gave a negative review and called the film an "exhausting, maddening experience" while The 405's Ana Leorne states: "Glossary of Broken Dreams would be a proper
commedia if it weren't so tragic — and yet it cleverly plays with both classifications, either juxtaposing or simply interchanging them, thus contributing to the ultimate proof of the non-existence of binaries."
In the September 2018 issue of ''Ray Kinomagazin'', Oliver Stangl gives the film a positive review and calls it "a crazy survey of the present situation".
Awards
The film won the Award of Merit for Feature Film at the 2018 Accolade Global Film Competition and for Documentary Feature at the 2018 IndieFest. It won Best Experimental Film at the 2018 Subversive Cinema Awards, won Best Feature Documentary Foreign at the 2018 Indie Gathering Awards, won Best Hacker Film at the 2018
HOPE
Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large.
As a verb, its definitions include: "expect with confidence" and "to cherish ...
Conference, won the Award of Merit for Feature Documentary at the 2018 Impact Doc Awards, and won the main award (Best Feature Length Film) at the Austrian Film Festival Awards 2018.
Austrian Film Festival 2018, winner list
/ref>
References
External links
*
Official homepage
Film trailer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Glossary of Broken Dreams
2018 films
2018 documentary films
2018 independent films
Austrian comedy films
Austrian satirical films
Austrian independent films
American documentary films
American independent films
2010s German-language films
Films about technological impact
Documentary films about fandom
Documentary films about the Internet
Documentary films about philosophy
Documentary films about politics
Documentary films about the labor movement
Documentary films about ideologies
Nerd culture
Hacker culture
DIY culture
Monochrom
Internet culture
Internet documentary films
Films directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner
2010s English-language films
2010s American films