“Manifest Destiny” is the latest short film from director and motion designer Mike Winkelmann, known professionally, as Beeple. The film is available on YouTube and Vimeo, and features the soundtrack ”Legend Has It” by Run the Jewels (RTJ).
Beeple’s boundary-pushing body of award-winning short films dynamically challenge viewers on social issues ranging from the apocalyptic takeover of robots, cyberwarfare, computer transparency and privacy to the subprime crisis, and have screened at Miami Art Basel, onedotzero, Prix Ars Electronica, the Sydney Biennale, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and many others.
Revered for elevating the craft of 3D storytelling, Beeple began work on “Manifest Destiny” four years ago (the title loosely inspired by the 19th-century doctrine of the same name). The film’s over-arching theme centers on an explosive, dramatized vision of the future that explores income inequality and the U.S. national debt.
According to the filmmaker, America is a land of contradictions and extremes. We are one of the richest nations on earth, yet also over 20 trillion dollars in debt. We worship at the altar of the almighty dollar, praying for prosperity, yet at the same time convinced that money is the root of all evil. We both idolize and vilify the richest people in the world, putting them on pedestals and then tearing them down.
“Money and the rise in income inequality are pervasive aspects in our culture that drive the decisions on how things get made in the world,” Beeple says. “People in the U.S. don’t realize how much money they have and think they’re getting ripped off by other countries that are in fact much poorer.”
Using visual symbolism created almost exclusively in Maxon Cinema 4D, the film is set amidst a fiery, bleak dystopian landscape where naked, oversized and distorted armed infants, children and adults are at war with one another – greed gone wild, infrastructure in flames, false idols, and money at the heart of it.
