Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa

2007 FESTIVAL
70 min.
Continuing the ACFF tradition of showing people and their landscapes, no matter how odd, off-beat or strange, this film depicts a closed society with a distinctive relationship to the barren New Mexican desert. In a remote patch of scrub, without access to water or the electric grid, a band of Gulf War vets, teenage runaways, mentally ill and socially disillusioned recluses live in shacks and recombinant trailers under self-made civil conduct: Don’t shoot your neighbor; don’t steal from your neighbor. When a group of vegan Marxists invades their space, they make new laws – and enforce them. And yet, to them, it’s all about the allure of the American landscape and their connection to the wild, free West. Viewer discretion: adult language and subject matter.