THE LUDDITE CLUB
THE LUDDITE CLUB (2026) or possibly "THE LUDDITE BLOOD" or "BLUDD" or "THE INTERNET SUCKS" is a film as a matrix of ideas that grows and accumulates over time. Begun in 2024, after Vexations (2021-23) had reached its performative sell-by-date, I wanted to make a Vampire movie about the Internet, inspired by Jean Rollin's slowness. This movie is an exploitation film about the actual Luddite Club, who are teens who turn away from technology towards nature and other ways of living. In this cinematic incarnation, they are seen frolicking in a park, reciting poetry, tattooing each other's foreheads with typewriters to symbolize ultra-luddite devotion, and expressing their anguish at the trappings of the modern world. A fit of iconoclasm in which they destroy screens with a hammer releases the hunger of the Internet itself, portrayed by a modern dancer of the Isadora Duncan school. The Internet is keen to feast on the pure memories in the blood of the Luddites and the sucking commences. The Luddites, who eke out a meager living dragging encyclopedias to sell door-to door, are joined by Vampire Hunters who attempt to impale the Vampires with stakes made of sharpened Encyclopedias. Several Encyclopedia entries are illustrated, for instance the one on James Joyce's Dubliners and another about childhood as the Vampire vacuums her apartment in a desultory and compromised limbo life. Finally all the characters are seen at the waters edge in a psychedelic dance outside of measurable Time and Spac The symbolic impalement of a vampire and the casting of a typewriter into the East River conclude the 50 minute film, which is silent and scored by a live multi channel tape collage comprised of elements such as recited poetry, irish fiddle music, and breaking glass.
A brief excerpt from the 16mm film-matrix in progress, THE LUDDITE CLUB