by Arthur Jones, USA 2020, 94'
| WRITTEN BY: Giorgio Angelini, Arthur Jones, Aaron Wickende | SOUNDTRACK: Ari Balouzian, Ryan Hope | |
| PHOTOGRAPHY: Giorgio Angelini, Kurt Keppeler, Guy Mossman | PRODUCERS: Giorgio Angelini, Caryn Capotosto, Arthur Jones, Aaron Wickende | |
| EDITING: Drew Blatman, Katrina Taylor, Aaron Wickenden | LANGUAGE: vo: English; sub: Italian |
Presented at the 14th edition of Lo schermo dell'arte, 2021
In 2005, the young American cartoonist Matt Furie created Pepe the Frog, a green frog with a humanoid body which became a meme widely used on the internet. But the friendly frog was taken over by the far-right white supremacist movement, which adopted it as one of its symbols, thus becoming a messenger of hatred and racism. The film, winner of the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker at Sundance Festival 2020, reconstructs the story and follows the judicial process undertaken by Pepe the Frog’s creator to reclaim his misappropriated character. Feels Good Man is a reflection on the propagation of memes on the internet, products of our shared collective culture in which the meanings of images can change depending on the context. Often, their creators can’t control them.
Arthur Jones
Feels Good Man is Jones’ directorial debut. Over his career, he’s art directed animation and motion
graphics for audiovisual productions of companies including The New York Times, VICE, The Center for Investigative Reporting and The International Consortium of Journalists.
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