[Film] Brotherhood of the Sea and the Fucking Machine

Produced by AWM's Bassist John Fesken and 58 Gallery's Orlando Reyes, Brotherhood is the final struggle between a power saturated President Fuchface, who controls all of the world's land mass and the Brotherhood of the Sea, his obstacle against his Fuc*ing Machine.

So a couple of weeks ago, February 17th of 2007, to be exact, I attended the debut of John Feskin and Orlando Reyes's new film, Brotherhood of the Sea and the Fucking Machine at the Dictators and Tyrants party at 58 Gallery in Jersey City.

This short digital film was an absolute riot, starring Tony Susco as President Fuchface. It was a mega-over-the-top story of an underground movement of super humans and criminals systematically assassinating a world empire by taking out its leaders (Black Skull #1 and Black Skull #2). The fight scenes were half faux kung fu, half WWF, featuring the heros of the story literally beating the bejeezus out of the President's men, then braking into his compound as he slowly breaks down while chain smoking and screaming the dying throes of his sexually charged domination of the world, ending in his assassination.

The world of the Brotherhood is without any women at all, making the suggestion that this power struggle is taking place at the end of humanity -- in otherwords, there's nothing left to fight for, cuz this is it.

The footage is cleverly set on beaches, stock footage of submarines, Grace Church Van Vorst, somewhere in the woods (of South Jersey?), and what appears to be an old office building.

One of the most moving scenes in the film was in Grace Church Van Vorst, a low angle shot of the leader of the revolutionary movement The Brotherhood of the Sea, screaming and preaching away about choice, mixing it with syllabic things, ("A BA BA BA BWWAAAAYYYYYY!") doing what was apparently an improvised rant in the thunder of the Church's reverberation.

There definitely seemed to be some general element of insidiousness to the revolutionary movement, with the leader being clearly pretty nuts, and the assassins of the movement being emotionless executioners.

The filmed ended with a shot of the twin towers, which had a few folks (myself included) wondering if that was really necessary, or distracting from the rest of the film's point. I've definitely changed my mind, reflecting on it without being so inebriated, I like how it throws the whole Never Forget thing into your face after a cold blooded farce to which you're basically cheering along because it's intentionally symbolic of current events and President Bush (and his hidden number two calling the shots). It's entirely confrontational and that's why I loved it. John and Orlando really did a great job putting it together, along with the cast, and the soundtrack by American Water Color movement really kept the film going, adding extreme tension and excitement to many of the scenes. It was a really fun movie to watch.

After the showing of the film the party really got started, and 58 Gallery turned into a dance party, which was really just good kleen fun for everyone involved.

A small booklet was handed out to attendees to accompany the film, titled after the movie, with the introduction: "What happens when you ask schoolchildren to write about their leaders in their private journals, using the following prompt: (Are) we being run by dictators, tyrants, ....????" It purports to be "taken from various student's journals, grades 3-12 – Jersey City, NJ," and it certainly seems to be the case, neat little read with random pictures of women being hung (since they had all been killed in the world of the film).

Here are a couple of quick scans: