Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping (2002)

Genres - Theater, Culture & Society  |   Sub-Genres - Biography, Performance Art, Social Issues  |   Run Time - 60 min.  |   Countries - Germany, Spain, United States  |   MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Tracie Cooper

Directed by Dietmar Post, this documentary follows New York City-based performance artist Bill Talen -- whose alter ego, "Reverend Billy," is a regular personality within the anti-globalization movement -- as he stages "Stop Shopping" sermons at a Manhattan Starbucks and a Disney store in Times Square. He also organizes a protest at a sufficiently anti-consumerist coffeehouse where Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Raven, and which had been slated for demolition. The film also documents Talen's dissatisfaction with what he refers to as the "mallification" of New York, particularly in regards to his old neighborhood, Hell's Kitchen, and includes interview footage from Talen when he isn't working the streets.

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Keywords

activism, actor, civil-disobedience, civil-liberties, counter-culture, globalization, intervention, media, passive-resistance, performance-art, social-change, theater