30 Jul 2023

Dan and Dominique Angeloro on Soda Jerk

From Sunday Afternoon, 2:20 pm on 30 July 2023

If there's one film in the Film Festival that draws a line in the sand in the Culture Wars, it's the Incredibly Strange Hello Dankness, by a duo calling themselves Soda Jerk. Seriously funny, it tackles the Trump years by assaulting the screen with film clips and audio samples - from American Beauty and Robo Cop to Wayne's World and Zombieland - that upend the idea of "When America was Great". But for all the technical editing marvels - blending young Tom Hanks with old Donald Trump, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Black Lives Matter and QAnon - it's out for blood, taking a hard look at who we are and what the Internet has made us. For all the fact that the target is often the Baby Boomer generation that built this, the politics of Soda Jerk seems very Sixties hippie. Not the earnest protest movements with all the answers, more the doped-up questioning of Bob Dylan, Sergeant Pepper and yes, Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of Silence". Simon Morris talks with Soda Jerk - Dan and Dominique Angeloro

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