Lucky People Center International (1998) Documentary

Johan Soderberg and Erik Pauser examine world culture, using multimedia art and flash-cuts of varied speakers and artists, all set to music.
World culture gets the channel-flipping treatment in this oddly named docu, which has more in common with “Baraka” and “Powaqqatsi” than with regular travelogues or music-and-dance pics. Irreverent eclecticism is geared to computer-literate age groups, and it already has some buzz on the club circuit.

Using the name Lucky People Center, co-helmers Erik Pauser and Johan Soderberg work as multimedia artists in Stockholm. In “International,” they apply their mixmaster mentality to cinema, slicing and dicing innumerable clips, shot over several years of intense world touring, into a bouillabaisse of art pieces, rapping rants, straight-on conversations and impressionistic images of urban flux.
The flash-cut result is enough to send some viewers into mild catatonia (remember “Max Headroom”?), but when things slow down enough to let you hear from a good-natured Tibetan lama on the American fear of death or a bunch of tattooed Maori warriors chanting in unison about the evils of ATM cards, it drives home their point that the world has already left many people behind.

Other highlights include Russian troublemaker Alexander Brener, seen reading poetry and throwing a brick through a window; gray-suited Tokyo banker Toshiji Mikawa, who moonlights as a screechy electronic performance artist; gorgeous Indian dancer Pragati Sood, in sacramental form; and New Mexico shaman Franklin Bearchild Eriacho, whose common-sense recipe for religion includes “no blind faith, but intelligent devotion.”

These segs, united by thumping electro music provided by the helmers, seem to have little in common (except exhilaratingly varied, color-rich lensing), but themes of spiritual renewal and embrace of the strange keep coming up. Pic may look formless to over-40s, but it’s well-geared to MTV-saturated youth, especially those hungry for something positive but not Polyanna.

Initial release: March 27, 1998 (Sweden)
Directors: Johan Söderberg, Erik Pauser
Running time: 85 minutes
Producer: Lars Jönsson
Music composed by: Bub Wehi, Dr. Nobody, Johan Söderberg, Erik Pauser,

RESOURCE: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0148428/
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://variety.com/1998/film/reviews/lucky-people-center-international-1200456135/