Utopia in Four Movements

\i Utopia in Four Movements\i0 is a unique event. No two "performances" of this documentary about the battered state of the utopian impulse are ever the same. Filmmakers Sam Green and Dave Cerf call it "live documentary." Green stands onstage to one side of the screen, telling the story as he projects the images. Opposite him, Brooklyn-based band The Quavers performs a live soundtrack. Green's idea of a live documentary arose from the utopian notion of a film that cannot be replicated for viewing on an iPod and must be experienced together with other people in the theater. The 20th century and its attendant faith in technological processes produced a resurgence of utopian ideals. Green starts off by discussing the history of the constructed language Esperanto. We are then transported by the unremitting optimism of an American activist in exile in Cuba, to China. Here we find the largest shopping mall in the world - but where are all the customers? And in the final scene, human remains in mass graves remind us of the great tragedies of the 20th century. The same mall appeared last year at IDFA in Green's short film \i Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall\i0 .