Erasing David

With this laughably overdramatic documentary, filmmaker David Bond sets out to discover the truth behind the surveillance culture which supposedly tracks our every move. But instead he unwittingly reveals the existence of an even more powerful force at work in our society: rampant, unsubstantiated middle-class paranoia. By taking himself off the grid for 30 days and hiring a team of private investigators to track him through his online presence and government records, Bond was hoping to prove how much the state knows about us. But while he shivers in contrived terror in a Welsh potting shed, the investigators are miles away, content to sift through his rubbish and Facebook pictures. The most bizarre thing is that Bond and his cohorts believe it proves their point. In fact, it proves the opposite: while online searches and web-tracking devices get the investigators nowhere, all it takes is an old-fashioned phone call to wrap the whole mess up.