On Wednesday evening, I went to the Prince Charles to a free screening of Us Now, courtesy of the lovely NESTA Connect people. It was pretty interesting; a snapshot of the last few years and the rise of media being used towards positive social change. There were some interesting case studies, such as Slice The Pie, a site where bands can go directly to fans and raise money to record, instead of wishing and hoping for an A&R man to discover them, and Ebbsfleet United FC, who've taken a big leap and let the fans vote on game tactics. This approach actually took the team all the way to Wembley for the very first time, and I must confess to even getting a little bit teary-eyed myself when I saw that.
Us Now is not a perfect film, and it runs the danger of preaching to the already-converted and those in-the-know. Pundits are sometimes captioned with job titles or company names that have no context unless you already know who they are (which is a hell of an assumption to make of your audience), so that there's no explanation as to why they should be a particular authority over anyone else, and captions often don't linger on the screen long enough to read them, anyway. The narrative voice can be confusing; voiceovers are sometimes made with certain authority, but with no indication as to whose authority it is (which was particularly noticeable during the Conservative Party section, for some reason). And, obviously, the film doesn't cover everything. Each of the examples used in the film could easily warrant its own individual documentary, a fact which director Ivo Gormley readily acknowledges.
However, it's got a positive outlook and is eager to look to the future, to see what wonderful things might happen next, something that most of the people taking part in the post-screening Q&A session were not. It was unfortunate that the overwhelmingly positive message of the film was completely negated by the nay-sayers who dominated the Q&A, moaning about all the things that the film wasn't about, instead of appreciating it for the small celebration it is. The essential message of the film is that there are tools (blogging, forums, social networks etc.) which are easily available and can empower you to make change yourself; you don't have to wait for someone else to get the ball rolling for you. The people who complained about all the things missing from the film were themselves missing the point: instead of sitting in a cinema enjoying (or not enjoying) a film screening that someone else had generously provided for free, and then moaning about it, they could use those same tools to get their own agenda heard in the communities which support it, and do something creative and positive instead of complaining that no one else has done it for them. But what can you expect from people who insist on spending all their time only focussing on everything that is wrong with the world, instead of reaching for the celebratory once in a while?
