AFS Documentary Tour: EXAMINED LIFE February 18, 2009

Filmmaker Astra Taylor has achieved a most difficult task – making a fascinating documentary about philosophy. It is her choices of speakers, settings, and questions that make this film riveting and unforgettable. Starting with Socrates’ always appropriate assertion that the “unexamined life is not worth living,” the film explores evil, ecology, gender, garbage, material consumption, the social contract, global citizenship, revolution, the body, disabilities, the meaning of “meaning,” “otherness,” and compassion. But this is not a studio-bound talking heads movie. We and the subjects are constantly moving through environments that contextualize, complement, and challenge their ideas, whether we are in a taxicab, walking through a park, shopping in San Francisco, rowing on a Central Park lake, staring in 5th Avenue shops, or wading through garbage. Taylor’s nine philosophers represent some of the most cutting edge thinkers on the planet today -- Avital Ronell, Cornel West, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler, and Sunaura Taylor.

Official Website: http://www.austinfilm.org/film/examined_life