Lucky People Center International Review

Pre-millennial documentary mood piece capturing a world view using DJ-style cut-up editing techniques.

by Tom Doyle |
Published on
Release Date:

29 Oct 1999

Running Time:

81 minutes

Certificate:

12

Original Title:

Lucky People Center International

While its title may prove misleading - Lucky People Center are a Swedish multi-media collective who spawned this film, International signifies the world outlook - this is an ambitious and at times astonishing work.

In capturing the pre-millennial mood, the film makers travelled the globe, shooting interviews - with the likes of a voodoo priestess, an American rapper/rush hour flower salesman, a former porn star-turned-spiritual adviser - and documentary footage of rituals, dances and drumming, before piecing it together with the pulse of a music video.

Filmed by visual artist Pauser and edited by self-styled 'video percussionist' Soderberg, the result is a multi-layered collage that combines panoramic vistas and nape-tingling sounds and rhythms with varying notions of profoundity and absurdity.

Highlights are numerous: the fiercesome Maori dancers Te Waka Huia chanting against the horror of the credit card; banker Toshiji Mikawa in primal screaming performance artist mode; Indian contortionist Baba Ghi dryly reading the time from his wrist watch with his knees behind his ears; Skander Chand, jungle-dweller fluent in gibbon-speak, perilously abseiling down a cable car line in an ape suit.

Lucky People Center International throws up the bigger questions, but sagely, never attempts to provide answers.

Thought-provoking, funny and funky, it's Koyaanisqatsi rebuilt for the post-rave generation.
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