Hello Dankness

Hello Dankness
by Soda Jerk
2022, US, 70 min., English subtitles

On the evening of the ultimate American culmination of The Society of the Spectacle, WORM presents Hello Dankness, a political fable reflecting American politics from 2016 to 2021, framed as a suburban stoner musical. The film combines sampled media, rotoscoping, and digital VFX to create a narrative featuring characters like Tom Hanks and Annette Bening, and political figures like Vladimir Putin. Premiering at Berlinale in 2023, it received critical acclaim, including awards and extended runs at iconic theaters such as Manhattan’s Film Forum.

Hello Dankness is a political fable that bears witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021, and the mythologies and lore that took rootaround it. Taking form as a suburban stoner musical, the film follows a neighborhoodthrough these years as consensus reality disintegrates into conspiracy and othercontagions. What unfolds is a rogue retelling of history in which hotdogs debate theculture wars, trashcans preach QAnon, zombies rally for revolution, and real eventsare refashioned as Broadway bangers from Cats, Les Miserables, Annie, and ThePhantom of the Opera. There are songs and dancing, moments of menace andmelancholy, shitposting and deep sincerity.
Created with Soda Jerk’s signaturemethodology, Hello Dankness is entirely composed of sampled media. Utilizingextensive rotoscoping and digital VFX, the feature length narrative has been graftedtogether from almost one thousand film, television and audio sources.Begun in 2016 and labored on throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Hello Dankness isa record of the time, written from the time.

Soda Jerk is an Australian artist duo creating sample-based films that explore the politics of images—how they circulate, who benefits, and how they can be subverted. Based in New York for over a decade, they recently relocated to Europe. Their 2023 feature Hello Dankness premiered at the Berlinale and won several awards, including Best Feature at the Atlanta Film Festival.
The film features a cast blending pop culture icons like Tom Hanks, Ice Cube, Wayne and Garth, and Maya and Ana, alongside politicians playing themselves, with Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg and The Phantom of the Opera as Vladimir Putin. Hello Dankness follows their controversial political satire Terror Nullius, which was disowned by its commissioning body but praised by The Guardian as one of the best Australian films of the decade. Soda Jerk’s work has been exhibited globally at venues such as the Centre Pompidou, Moderna Museet, and the British Film Institute.

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