Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist, is a 2007 documentary film exposé on contemporary religion, government, and global economics. Focal points of the film are the Jesus myth, the attacks of 9/11, and the US Federal Reserve Bank. A number of conspiracy theories are presented, many stemming from those three topics.

The film was produced by Peter Joseph, who released it for free online via Google Video, in June 2007. A remastered version was presented as a global premiere on 10 November 2007 at the 4th Annual Artivist Film Festival, where it won the award for "Best Feature - Artivist Spirit". The film has attracted significant public interest.

History of the film

Zeitgeist was first released on June 26, 2007 and topped the Google video charts most viewed videos. The film was translated into several languages and is distributed officially via Google Video and BitTorrent. Zeitgeist won the top award of Best Feature Documentary/Artivist Spirit at the 4th Annual Artivist Awards in 2007 in Hollywood, CA.

A sequel has since been released. Zeitgeist: Addendum premiered at the 5th Annual Artivist Film Festival on October 2, 2008, at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, California. Like the original film, Zeitgeist: Addendum was released online -- free of charge -- on October 3, 2008. 

Film Content

The film starts with a speech by Chögyam Trungpa about spirituality, followed by a series of musically synchronized clips of war and explosions culminating with one of the towers of World Trade Center collapsing during 9/11. Then there follows a sequence of clips showing the horrors of war. There is a short clip that shows a hand writing "1 + 1 = 2", but is brushed away by another hand before the first finishes, and is replaced by a bible and an American flag. After a few more war clips, the film then quotes Jordan Maxwell's Inner World of the Occult, criticizing religious institutions, governments, and the banking cartels who "have misled [the people] away from the true and divine presence in the universe." This portion ends with more images accompanied by audio of a portion of a George Carlinmonologue on religion.

Part I, entitled "The Greatest Story Ever Told," denounces the originality of many world religions, arguing they are mainly derived fromastrological myths and traditions established long before them. In furtherance of the Jesus myth hypothesis, this part argues that thehistorical Jesus is a literary and astrological hybrid, nurtured politically in the interest of control.

Horus, the Egyptian Sun God, is introduced as having a number of attributes similar to many other religious deities which came after him, including but not limited to Attis, Krishna, Dionysus, Mithra and Jesus Christ; these attributes including virgin birth on December 25th, 12 disciples, burial for 3 days and resurrection and performing of miracles.^[10]

The film offers that the explanation for these common attributes is that the people involved believed in astrology, for example: death, burial for 3 days and resurrection is cited as being based on the winter solstice, where the film suggests the Sun's peak reaches its lowest point in the sky, resides there perceivably for 3 days, and starts to move north, symbolizing the rebirth of the all-powerful creator. Another alleged Christian-astrological similarity highlighted is how, according to the film, the three stars in Orion's belt (called the "Three Kings") align withSirius on December 25th, the brightest star in the sky, and point to the Sun's rise on the horizon. This is equated to the Nativity of Jesus, where, according to the film, three "kings" follow the star in the east to locate the birth of Jesus.

Christianity is then said to be a Gnostic myth, historized by the Roman Empire for social control of Europe through doctrines established at the First Council of Nicea. The Dark Ages, the Inquisitions and the Crusades are given as events which maintained Europe's submission to The Vatican through Christianity.

The following quote is said in conclusion:

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Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems [...] empowers those who know the truth, but use the myth to manipulate and control societies. [...] It reduces human responsibility to the effect that "God" controls everything, and in turn awful crimes can be justified in the name of Divine Pursuit. [...] The religious myth is the most powerful device ever created, and serves as the psychological soil upon which other myths can flourish. Part II The 9/11 attacks are shown as a staged event which has acted as a pretext for imperial mobilization Part II, entitled "All the World's a Stage," asserts that the events of September 11th were either orchestrated by, or allowed to happen by, criminal elements within the United States government. It claims that 9/11 was engineered to generate mass fear, initiate and justify the War on Terror, provide a pretext for the denial of civil liberties to the general public, and produce economic gain. The claims are followed by the immediate on-screen sourcing of clips from television news, and clippings from newspapers and magazines in order to advance the claims that: The United States government was warned about the impending September 11, 2001 attacks, The planes were allowed to reach their targets, and that The World Trade Center buildings underwent a controlled demolition The film also gives a tour of "notable and credible media" to support the claims that six of the named hijackers are still alive, that Hani Hanjour could not have flown Flight 77 into the Pentagon, that no substantial plane wreckage was found at two of the three crash sites, that the Bush Administration covered up the truth in the 9/11 Commission Report, and that the mainstream media has failed to ask important questions about the official account. Part III, entitled "Don't Mind the Men Behind the Curtain", argues that the four main wars of the United States during the 20th century were waged purely for economic gain for an elite few. Events attempted to be exposed as fraudulent or staged are the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident; all occurrences which carried the U.S into the First World War, Second World War and Vietnam War respectively. According to the film, the U.S. was forced by the Federal Reserve Bank to become embroiled in these wars not to win but to sustain conflict, as it forces its government to borrow more money from the bank, with interest attached, thereby increasing the nation's debt and the profits of those who own The Fed. The film gives a history of the Reserve, claiming it engineered the Great Depression to steal wealth from the American population and was responsible for the attempts to assassinate Louis McFadden, a congressman who attempted to impeach the Reserve. This section also explores the possibility that there is a clandestine movement, promoted by the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, to usurp the American constitution and US dollar, by merging the United States, Canada and Mexico into a North American Union that uses a single currency, the Amero, without the ratification of Congress. This currency union would create a super-state similar to the European Union, which together with the African Union and the proposed Asian Union would gradually be merged into a One World government. The movie concludes that under such a government, every human could be implanted with an RFID microchip that would be used to monitor individuals and suppress dissent. The movie ends, however, on an optimistic note, expressing confidence in the possibility of overthrowing oppressive forces and the ultimate triumph of revolution through enlightenment. Criticism Though the film has attracted significant public interest, a feature article in The Stranger has stated the film is based solely on anecdotal evidence, while other publications have criticized it for using unidentified, undated, and unsourced video news clips, voice-overs, quotes, and book citations without page numbers.In a piece entitled "Internet idiocy: the latest pandemic", an opinion piece in the Arizona Daily Wildcat refers to the film as "internet bullshit", saying that "witty sayings, fear tactics and a cool, assertive air all enable them to convince the unwitting public of their points" while another in the Irish Times called it "unhinged" and accused it of offering nothing but "surreal perversions of genuine issues and debates." In the The Gauntlet, Jordyn Marcellus wrote it was ironic that the film's viewers "have blindly followed the documentary without doing their own research." He states that, though the film is "well-edited and is truly compelling", it "glosses over inconvenient facts," uses "deceptive filmmaking" and that "for a film that rails against deception, there's a lot of deception implicit in its creation." Web site conspiracyscience offers a point by point examination of most of the films' claims, and concludes "(...) the film is 100% a complete lie, complete farce, made up garbage.".  Is this true??? What you belive??

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