Borderland
While making a cliché film aesthetisizing decaying rural areas and abandoned buildings, two film students stumble
across a group of people living in the woods behind an old run down house.
Initially, fear and precaution causes the filmmakers to flee the situation in the woods, but interest overwhelms them,
as the prospect of a much more interesting film presents itself.
The filmmakers return to the secluded group to observe them- filming from afar and taking photographs of their
ritualistic, tribal behavior.
Eventually they decide to make outright contact with the tribe members and initiate this contact with what appears
to be the youngest member- who is also the least troubled by their presence.
The filmmakers return to the group repeatedly- first by exploiting the curiosity and inhibition of the youngest
member, but eventually making contact with the group as a whole.
The members of the group are hostile and confrontational at first, but slowly they become complacent with the
presence of the filmmakers and allow conversation to take place.
In doing so, it becomes readily apparent to the filmmakers that this groups alienation from civilization is a chosen
and purposeful act of resistance.
The group members cite an inclination towards a radical political agenda, and in doing so, they sought a secluded,
removed existance in order to live by the rules and politics they feel should govern all of society-rules that now
govern their little society.
Through the filmmaker’s interaction with the group, it becomes very apparent that they are by no means primitive or
uncivilized- little things are revealed to the filmmakers that make them (and the audience) completely question their
conception of the idea of “otherness”.
(Possibly something like; one of them went to college, they have their own library of books, etc.)
At this point, the filmmakers are implicated as naïve and exploitative- representing the exact things this tribe of
people wished to alienate themselves from.
In their naïve misunderstanding of everything this group is directly opposing by purposefully diverging from
traditional civilized life, the filmmakers misguidedly convince the youngest member to come back into regular
society with them.
But, after one ride in a car and lunch at a bar where he was the object and focus of judgment and speculation, he
realizes his complete and total alienation from this culture, and wants to go back.
The filmmakers reluctantly oblige to take him back (they were stupidly hoping to get some neato ‘tarzan meets the
big city’ kind of shots) but as soon as he returns, it is made adamantly clear that he no longer belongs with his tribe
now either because he is tainted- a double alienation.
Without warning or explanation, the tribe attacks and kills him.
The film ends suddenly as the filmmakers briefly witness this event while fleeing for their lives.
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