A tribute to the poet Harry Hooton, the film is 'an exploration of Hooton's philosophy, in which he advocated a state of Anarcho-technology: a liberation of man through the perfection of technology, a fulfillment through a new involvement with matter: machines, materials of art and science, rather than the continuing incestuous preoccupation of Man with Man, as practised in politics, psychology and most contemporary literature and cinema. He held that the human situation was exhausted as subject matter for the arts'. (Source: Promotional flyer Canberra season, Centre Cinema, 1 November 1971)
'A line from 1855, first published by Walt Whitman in the poem ‘Song of Myself’, appears again at the beginning of a film produced during a Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University in 1969. Out of the 19th century transcendentalism of New England, the film’s subject emerges as ‘Anarcho-Technocracy’, specifically as it was theorised and transmitted by expatriate poet Harry Hooton (1908-1961). Hooton had died in middle age in Sydney, celebrated as the ‘poet of the 21st century’ by his friends and devotees. In this way, the trans-mediation of his poetry and philosophy onto film seemed strangely appropriate for his ambitious idealism: Leave man alone, man is perfect. Concentrate instead on matter.' (Introduction)
'A line from 1855, first published by Walt Whitman in the poem ‘Song of Myself’, appears again at the beginning of a film produced during a Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University in 1969. Out of the 19th century transcendentalism of New England, the film’s subject emerges as ‘Anarcho-Technocracy’, specifically as it was theorised and transmitted by expatriate poet Harry Hooton (1908-1961). Hooton had died in middle age in Sydney, celebrated as the ‘poet of the 21st century’ by his friends and devotees. In this way, the trans-mediation of his poetry and philosophy onto film seemed strangely appropriate for his ambitious idealism: Leave man alone, man is perfect. Concentrate instead on matter.' (Introduction)
