Postcard from Sun City Arizona (2004)

Joshua Oppenheimer sets images of life in a retirement community in Arizona as seen through television commercials to a talk radio interview with a female convict extolling the benefits of her time on Sherriff Joe Arpaios chain gang It is two different kinds of sale jobs working at crosspurposes Oppenheimer takes the luster off the idealistic advertising images through video distortion and electronic interference and cutsup both the video and audio tracks until the weird poetry of the chain gang prisoners lessons in life and death gives the commercial presentation a creepy disconnection from any kind of living ideal It follows A BRIEF HISTORY OF PARADISE AS TOLD BY THE COCKROACHES and MARKET UPDATE as another sharp jab at consumerism as an illusory promise