For Immediate Release

Friday, March 10, 2000

A Digital Odyssey into Electronic Dance Culture

Los Angeles, CA - Cleopatra Pictures and Academy Award-winning theatrical distributor 7^th Art Releasing presents Better Living Through Circuitry - A Digital Odyssey into Electronic Dance Culture. Following highly successful festival screenings at numerous independent and international festivals as well as a sold-out tour with the acclaimed RESFEST Digital Film Festival, Better Living Through Circuitry will hit theaters in May and June 2000.

The theatrical tour will kick-off on May 26^th at the Nuart (Los Angeles), the Lumiere (San Francisco) and the Cinema Village (NYC) and hit 15 cities through June including Atlanta, GA (Cinefest), Austin, TX (Dobie Theatre), Berkeley, CA (UC Theatre), Boston, MA, Chicago, IL, Dallas, TX, Denver, CO, Detroit, MI, Miami, FL (Regal South Beach 18), Ft. Lauderdale, FL (Regal Las Olas 23), Minneapolis, MN, San Diego, CA (Ken Theatre), Seattle, WA, Tampa, FL (Hollywood Regal Theatre), Washington, DC. Each city will have a premiere event featuring DJs in a multimedia atmosphere. The events begin at this year's Winter Music Conference in Miami on March 27^th with a screening and party featuring Roni Size on turntables.

Better Living Through Circuitry is a rare insightful look at the electronic dance community and the culture it has produced. A cross-section of the techno subculture is represented as ravers, DJs and musicians speak for themselves about their music and ideals. Insightful and entertaining, the film presents such dynamic aspects of rave culture as empowerment through technology, the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethic, and the flowering of a new spirituality embracing transcendence through sound and rhythm.

In-depth interviews reveal such diverse personalities as NY deconstructionist philosopher-cum-electronic mixmaster DJ Spooky, hedonistic streetsmart "Superstar" DJ Keoki, the Vegas-reared big beat sonic wizards The Crystal Method, Bristol, England's prophet of drum-and-bass Roni Size, and the ethereal desert tribalism of Electric Skychurch. Better Living Through Circuitry equally emphasizes graphic designers, promoters, fans and other essential components of the scene, such as Mike Szabo whose NASA flyers are part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum and the Pure Children collective who work and live communally in a New York City loft space from which they create graphics, promote raves and run their own record label. The film also includes original interview and/or performance footage of Moby, Lords of Acid, Überzone, Scanner, Freaky Chakra, and System 7.

In keeping with the theme of "empowerment through technology" the production is "decidedly digital", utilizing some of the latest digital filmmaking equipment. It was all filmed on a tiny Sony VX1000 digital video camera that was usually taken by the director into raves in a backpack. Virtually all post-production including editing, on-line, titles and effects were performed in a spare bedroom of the producer's apartment using the Media 100 non-linear digital editing system and utilizing Adobe After Effects software on a Power Macintosh computer.

The nearly 200 hours of footage shot or acquired during the making of the film will add depth to the project beyond its theatrical release. Through an expanded DVD and internet streaming, the film's rich content marks Better Living Through Circuitry as a new breed of convergent media utilizing the most current technology available to consumers. The Circuitry project is more than just a film and will allow consumers to explore and participate in all aspects of digital underground culture. The film is featured on Media 100's site along with The Blair Witch Project.

Directing the film is acclaimed filmmaker Jon Reiss, who recently completed his first narrative feature Cleopatra's Second Husband which has screened at the Los Angeles Independent, Houston, Montreal, Hampton, Seattle, Sao Paulo and Bangkok film festivals. It won Best First Feature at Cinequest. He is the first director to have back to back feature length film debuts in the LAIFF. His past credits include a series of documentaries on the notorious San Francisco performance art group Survival Research Laboratories. He has also directed infamous and celebrated music videos, for such notable artists as, The Black Crowes, Diamanda Galas, Kottonmouth Kings, and his legendary "Happiness in Slavery" video for Nine Inch Nails which won awards at the Chicago and San Francisco film festivals. In 1995 the Toronto Film Festival curated a retrospective of his music videos.

Producers Brian McNelis (Cleopatra/Hypnotic Records) and Stuart Swezey (Amok Books) each bring their own unique experiences and perspectives to the project to create a synergistic collaboration with director Reiss. McNelis is the General Manager of Cleopatra Records whose releases span from such seminal electronic pioneers as Kraftwerk and The Future Sound of London to the most cutting-edge trance, drum-and-bass and big beat sounds on its Hypnotic label. Swezey's Amok Books publishing house is an internationally renowned source of extreme and subversive information. He recently edited the critically acclaimed Amok Journal: Sensurround Edition compilation, which explores such phenomena as infrasound and trepanation in pursuit of a neurological basis for mystical and ecstatic experience.

7^th Art Releasing's strong slate of documentaries includes last year's Radiohead biopic Meeting People Is Easy and this year's Oscar nominee Speaking In Strings. Upcoming releases include Good Machine's The

America's premier independent rave culture record label Moonshine Music is releasing the soundtrack on April 25^th. Featured artists include Future Sound of London, Psychic TV, DJ Spooky, Roni Size, Keoki, Überzone and Electric Skychurch. The Crystal Method's unreleased mix of "Now Is The Time" (Millennium Remix) and an unreleased Meat Beat Manifesto "Parts 1-4" song have both been included. There are dialog samples from the film between tracks. The enhanced CD features Loop Based "ACID" Music Software for PC by SONIC FOUNDRY.

Provocative and insightful, Better Living Through Circuitry explores with a passionate intensity one of the most significant cultural movements of our time.

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