Movies for Mass Social Change

16-year-old Trent McCauley eats, sleeps, and breathes movies. He wants nothing more than to spend all of his time making movies on his computer by sampling and reassembling footage of long-dead actors he has found online. Unfortunately, in near-future Britain, this is completely illegal and has placed him directly under the scrutiny of local law enforcement units. When Trent is caught breaching “copyright through several acts of illegal downloading” for a third time, his family’s access to the Internet is officially cut off for an entire year, without exception. Without this, his father’s career, his mother’s health, and his younger sister’s education are all nearly destroyed. Ashamed and shattered, Trent decides to run away to London, where he must learn how to stay alive on the streets while still retaining his own self-respect. It is here that he meets the charismatic Jem, the Jammie Dodgers, and the mysterious 26, in a world of artists and activists who are trying to fight a new government bill that will criminalize digital copying on an even more harmless level than what Trent had previously done, making millions of people felons with a single stroke. Things are looking bad, but Trent and his friends are going to try to change people’s minds for the better with the power of a movie.

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow was a very interesting novel. I enjoyed reading all of the movie terminology in Trent’s inner dialogues, and I liked the different film concepts that he and his friends put into play during the story. I felt that the grittiness of life on the streets in London was very realistically portrayed, and I liked seeing Trent’s character mature over the book’s timeline. If you are interested in the world of underground film-making and a story about the kinds of social repercussions that movies can bring about in a near-future setting, then I suggest you take a look through this book.

What do you think of Pirate Cinema? Let me know. :)