Why Not Watch?
Don’t worry world! We always support watching documentaries legally and many of the films we recommend on Influence Film Club are available where you live too. We suggest using your preferred method for watching a film – such as searching iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, VOD platforms (video-on-demand), or renting/buying a DVD.
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With a gun in one hand and a camera in the other, 28-year-old OCD-afflicted Matthew VanDyke set off on a 35,000-mile motorcycle trip through Northern Africa and the Middle East, where he undergoes a self-described “crash-course in manhood.”
Director: Marshall Curry
Share this film. Give others the chance to be gripped by its story.
Watch Matthew VanDyke’s short film, NOT ANYMORE: A STORY OF REVOLUTION, about the conflict in Syria.
Expand your own worldview. If VanDyke’s approach seems too daring, study and work abroad programs offer tailor-made opportunities to experience life beyond your familiar borders.
Follow Matthew VanDyke’s blog, The Freedom Fighter Blog.
Support the International OCD Foundation, that conducts research into obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as offering advice and assistance to those afflicted with or affected by this disorder.
“…the comparison that kept barging its way into my mind was with Darren Aronofsky. No, the two filmmakers have nothing in common stylistically; one works in fiction, the other in non; one makes $150-million biblical epics while the other performs miracles with public television money. But the thing they share — the engine of their filmmaking, in fact — is an obsession with obsession.”
Read the full review here.
Watch this in-depth interview with filmmaker Marshall Curry and star Matthew VanDyke, who never fails to surprise us, or the documentary filmmaker interviewing him!
Read the full interview on Vulture.
Our Spotlight on Point and Shoot,
“More irritating to the media is a Heminwayesque self-promotional approach to documenting and participating in conflict…In the modern world of love-hate relationships between journalists and their subjects, he may be the most valid, embarrassing and intelligent litmus test of moral purpose in modern conflict coverage.”
Read this fascinating article profiling Matthew before the film.
Matthew Van Dyke projects a very specific image of himself on camera- yet don’t we all do this to some extent on social media? Read more about this phenomenon here.
Tensions have run high in Libya since the revolution in 2011. Stay up to date on what’s what is happening in the region here.
VanDyke pushes the limits of citizen participation, yet the role of citizen journalism dramatically important in our changing world.
This TEDx Talk with Brian Conley, the director of Small World News who has been involved in media literacy and media democracy work for more than ten years and has trained journalists and citizen media makers in a dozen countries, explains the importance of this practice.
RUN ALONG THE EDGE OF MADNESS…
The following six films allow us a view of the world detached from logic through the eyes of dreamers and madmen.
"A gripping non-fiction thriller. Riveting... suspenseful, densely edited... an extraordinary and quietly disturbing film."
The Hollywood Reporter
"An incredible tale of growth and transformation that is at once global and intensely personal."
Washingtonian
"Steeped in enough drama, action, and tragedy to put the most outlandish work of fiction to shame."
GALO
