The Mindscape of Alan Moore

An audience with Alan Moore, the visionary comic author of The Watchmen, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, who saw in his fifth decade by styling himself a magician. 'All culture must have arisen from cult,' he declares, elaborating his theory of the artist as shaman, manipulating symbols (words, images) to achieve changes in consciousness. Art is not entertainment, but a transformative force. 'If the audience knew what they wanted then they wouldn't be the audience, they would be the artist.' Moore also offers us his thoughts on comic books, superheroes and mythologies, celebrity and advertising, the search for the Self, 'intelligent pornography', monotheism and cloth-eared gods, materialism, deconstructive and reconstructive art, conspiracies and chaos, the chauvinism of Western civilisation and the rising temperature of a culture defined by ever accelerating exchanges of information. Modestly illustrated, the film stands on Moore's level-headed erudition and acute range of thought.