For anyone looking to teach a master class in brainwashing techniques, “The Source Family” might be an excellent place to start. Documenting the hippy-dippy lifestyle and hedonistic principles of Hollywood’s favorite 1970s cult — led by the self-professed guru and suspected bank robber Jim Baker, a k a Father Yod — Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille’s disturbing film is an object lesson in psychological manipulation.
Working a powerful combo of personal magnetism and easy-to-digest philosophies — what young person doesn’t want to hear that marijuana-enhanced sex is the purest route to enlightenment? — Mr. Baker became the superrich father to a band of gorgeous devotees (not a few of them underage girls). Baker, a 6-foot-4 former Marine used his popular health food restaurant (featured most famously in “Annie Hall”) as recruitment bait. The commune grew, as did Mr. Baker’s self-delusion and harem of sister wives, until its morning meditations and bizarrely out-there music became too freaky even for people with adoptive names like Om-Ne and Electricity.
Unearthing a decent sample of these former members, as well as a wealth of archival film and photographs, the directors elicit testimony that’s diversely sharp, spacey, nostalgic and heartbreaking. Clutching a picture of Mr. Baker — who died in a hang-gliding incident in Hawaii in 1975 — his first cult wife (two previous real-world wives were abandoned) seems tragically marked by his psychoses, and the film’s final scenes confirm that some of his flock have emerged more whole than others.
Directed by Maria Demopoulos, Jodi Wille;
producer: Holly Becker and Amaryllis Knight;
Screenplay: Maria Demopoulos, Jodi Wille,
director of photography, John Tanzer
music: The Source Family
edited by Jen Harrington and Claire Didier
Distributor: Drag City Film Distribution
98 perc/mins.
Maria Demopoulos
Maria Demopoulos is a commercial director and produced the documentary, 'GLAMAZON,' a film about a sixty year-old Appalachian transsexual.
Jodi Wille
Jodi Wille was a music video director and rock band photographer in the 90s, then co-founded two book publishing companies, Dilettante Press and Process. Many of their books are like documentaries in print, and once Isis Aquarian showed her her massive film and photo archive when they were creating THE SOURCE book, it seemed like a natural thing to make a movie.
Titanic Film Festival presents some of the latest and most interesting quality music films at the exhibition hall of the A38 Ship. The films are screened in the...