The End of America Double Feature: WTO/99 and Hello Dankness
Soda Jerk | Ian Bell
In-Person
Sidewalk Film Center + Cinema
Jan 16
Jan 17
How did we get here? Join us at Sidewalk for a special double feature presentation of two films that examine that question: the archival documentary about the "Battle in Seattle," WTO/99 and the kaleidoscopic contemporary political fable Hello Dankness. These films will be presented with a 15-minute intermission.
WTO/99 (1hr 42 min, directed by Ian Bell)
An immersive archival documentary that depicts the four-day clash between the then-emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and the 40,000+ people who took to the streets of Seattle in 1999 to protest the WTO Conference and the WTO’s impact on human rights, labor, and the future effects of continued globalization.
Hello Dankness (1 hr 10 min, directed by Soda Jerk)
The Sidewalk Film Festival hit returns to the Sidewalk Cinema. Hello Dankness is a political fable that bears witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021, and the mythologies and lore that took root around it. Taking form as a suburban stoner musical, the film follows a neighborhood through these years as consensus reality disintegrates into conspiracy and other contagions. What unfolds is a rogue retelling of history in which hotdogs debate the culture wars, trashcans preach QAnon, zombies rally for revolution, and real events are refashioned as Broadway bangers from Cats, Les Miserables, Annie, and The Phantom of the Opera. Created with Soda Jerk’s signature methodology, Hello Dankness is entirely composed of sampled media. Utilizing extensive rotoscoping and digital VFX, the feature length narrative has been grafted together from almost one thousand film, television and audio sources.