REALITY UNDER COVER
Based on the multiple limitations of what one can sense or accept as evident truth relying on the actions of the other person, the films selected in “Reality Under Cover” present four of the most incredible contemporary stories, all of them pushing the limits of our imagination, about the way people shrewdly succeeded at misleading others around them in the long run, with a high risk of bearing serious consequences.
The question is what were the blunders in each case that led to these situations?
My friend Rockefeller shows us how wherever Gerhartsreiter constructs one of his con man identities, the loose fabric of the local community network could well allow him to develop and maintain his very detailed, concocted story, and the locals would not realize he was putting on an act. Nevertheless, the film does not elucidate how he could maintain his fabricated identity as to his own wife, with whom he had a child.
The film The confessions of Thomas Quick reveals how a man’s stating to have committed more than 30 murders could be enough as single and utmost judicial evidence for him to be convicted. The weak link seems to have appeared during therapy, as therapists got carried away with discovering the perfect validation of their initial hypothesis in his confessions.
The iconic figure of false prophets auguring the Apocalypse is very well known in Christian culture as far back as the Middle Ages. Right between your ears allows us to figure out what are the means through which Camping backs up his prophecies before crowds with convincing evidence. The precise date of the end of the world is given out through the power of the Family Radio trust’s PR work: tens of radio stations across the US, meeting with the radio audience, an interactive radio program maintained for decades, as well as the distribution of thousands of multi-lingual promotional materials both online and in print.
Somehow differently, in The Applause man we discover a strange personality. Unlike the protagonists from the other films in this section, this character was not consciously constructing a fake identity. At first sight, he seems to be nothing but a rogue or a simple “thief” of fame and success. The mere fact that he is getting past thorough security systems at huge concerts or television shows in order to get to the place of applauses, brings him huge publicity, and popularity. His story allows us to find out that at the core of his actions lies a strange, almost manic dependency, an unexplainable urge to become part of the energy that bursts out when people applause.(Csilla Kato)