“Delusions In Modern Primitivism”
This short debuted more than 20 years ago and made the festival circuit back then. I just happened to catch it the one day I was at the Nantucket Film Festival in 2000 with a friend and it has stayed in my mind ever since. As the description goes:
Documentary that follows one man's obsession with tattoos and body modification. Jerome is looking for the ultimate way to express himself by transforming his body into a living canvas.
Directed by Daniel Loflin, who also wrote the script with Kurt D. Christenson and Karl Moore, it’s a well-structured story whose ambiguity slowly melts away to brilliant effect. Moore and Christenson star in it too, joined by Kris Ingersol, with cinematography by Tiffany Toby.
This short has stayed with me for over 20 years for two reasons:
My friend’s shock as I explained to him it was a mockumentary, not a documentary (spoilers, I guess?).
The fact that it made pure intuitive sense that this is the next phase in body modification.
That second step hasn’t come to pass. Without further spoiling the short, I wonder if the reason this never became a fad was for the same reason all those 1999 movies like FIGHT CLUB and AMERICAN BEAUTY kind of quickly became passé in the new century. If you’ve seen DELUSIONS IN MODERN PRIMITIVISM before, I strongly recommend revisiting the ~15 minute short. If you haven’t, then you absolutely should watch it.