Lucky People Center International

The Lucky People Center is a Swedish collective of dance musicians and multi-media artists, here concerned with complementary concepts of sensual and spiritual fulfilment offered by cultures or individuals from around the world. Thus we meet a voodoo priestess; a man inspired to mimic gibbon song; a yoga virtuoso; an angry forest tribe; a Japanese banker-cum-avant garde headbanger; a benevolent community rapper; a troupe of Maori activists; erotic adventurer Annie Sprinkle; and, in occasional counterpoint, less happy glimpses of the physically or spiritually misguided - Chinese soldiers, Heaven's Gate cultists, Bill Clinton. Advocations of song and dance, positive thinking, and wild living mingle with critiques of Western urban gridlock and credit cards; none of which is radically illuminating, but the cumulative effect is a palatable representation of alternative life styles. The film's most obvious formal antecedents are Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka where the collision of landscapes produced a pat, self-contradictory polemic. But here the slightly slipshod technique never enables the director/editors to editorialise - instead it's their subjects who are given voice.