WE ARE ALL ANGELS is an unconventional documentary about humans. The setting is New York City and the story is 99 strangers talking about the most important thing to think about today.
What is the most important thing to think about today? This question is the guiding principle behind the unconventional documentary WE ARE ALL ANGELS. The film navigates through this profoundly strange moment in human existence, discovering the answer to this query through the combined hopes, dreams, and fears of 99 New York strangers. The stage is New York City and the actors are the humans of today.
There is a momentum, a growl, and a presence that lives here. There is something alive and visceral about this place. The city is a purple beast, a blood red dream and a greasy yellow light. Within the walls of this great citadel, we find that humanity desires something. We are living in the future. We are trying to uncover something. There is something extraordinary happening even if it cannot yet be defined.
In the beginning, there is a muse in a red dress. She charms her disciples with song, and then vanishes. We hover one thousand feet above the Statue of Liberty, fall to the rooftops, through the city streets, into the secret tunnels. A prophetic vagabond holds a bottle of gin tightly under a streetlamp, and rubs it like a genie’s lamp. He cries out. “Three wishes please! Please give me three more wishes.” A bubble man languidly watches us as we watch him, his plastic toy fish bubble gun blasting a steady stream of the iridescent orbs into the summer sky. A child laughs. A woman screams. Our vagabond returns to state with unnerving clarity, “We are all angels, man. And I want my wings back.”
Our subjects yearn for the ability to speak out and have a voice today, and so we listen. To the bar owners, hair stylists, jazz legends, drunks, patrons, models, teenagers, grandpas, happy people, mad people, content people, war re-enactors, protesters, police, the ice cream man, new parents, we listen. These talks impart a bewildering sense of chaos and clarity. In uncovering what our subjects hold as most important, unmistakable threads of our collective conscious are revealed.
We meet strangers at parties, galleries, streets, living rooms and bedrooms. We listen in on their deepest thoughts about the importance of things. They fear bringing a baby into the world. They fear the end of the world. They fear we may be past the point of no return and the planet will just go on without us. They fear profit at any cost, and limited, nonrenewable resources. They fear being forgotten. They hope for unity and community. They hope for peace and purpose. They hope for compassion and communication and positive change. They hope for love. They look for blame. There’s talk of Darth Vader. There’s talk of heroes and villains, love and making love. Things are moving so fast.
A cannon fires and a Civil War re-enactor assures us that we’re going to be okay as a society. A body builder pulls up on his bike and explains that no one wants to love because they’re so busy fearing everybody. A Buddhist explains tells us about hope. A 16 year old declares his generation will die from climate change if things don’t change. The protesters are screaming at the police who are barricading them from advancing with walls and guns and scowls. An author releases three black balloons over Brooklyn and tells us that we are all going to have to become weirdo activists. The fireworks explode at New Years and someone loses their hat off the balcony.
The conversational tapestry is weaved and reveals something true: we are all weaving the same one. Our cab driver is a lawyer. Our veterinarian speaks on empathy. A retiree explains that people need to change; the law needs to change. A chess master adores education. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. We return to a street sock vendor where everything must go for a dollar. The folk singer explains that everything we buy is a vote. Greed is the problem and we have to stop consuming. There are options. Our street drunk gets his wings back.
'The present is a good place to be.'
Director's Statement:
We currently exist at a unique time in human history. Defining ourselves, culture, and intention has become increasing difficult. What do we want? What do we need? Why should we be remembered?
We began this story because society seems unclear of its direction. Life is out of balance and we felt a pull to draw the conversation out of the people. Many joke that the end of the world is near. We store all our demands, demons, love and memories online. Community is being lost. The old speak of rebellion. Humanity’s current course is unsustainable. Hope is not dead. Unprecedented rates of change have forced us to rapidly adapt, and we do not have any examples to follow. People are not clear what’s wrong with the world, but everyone craves change. So while chaos has seemingly taken hold, we thought an interesting question would be, “What do you think is the most important thing to think about today?”
This film is about discovering the collective conscious of society today; the zeitgeist; answers to the big picture questions; the thoughts connecting us all of which we don’t speak. We entered each interview with the assumption that these strangers held the answers to humanity’s current purpose. Under this premise, we speak to New York, the beast, the melting pot, the vast dreaming city, and ask them a series of questions, seeing in the subjects a reflection of ourselves.
Our story was never meant to have an end, and it will forever be open-ended. What is most important to us? A simple question, unearthing the spirit of our time. These were the answers that cut through the chaos, that for a moment, balanced the unbalanced, and provided clarity to what it means to live a human life. It was this dialogue, this seemingly simple conversation, that compelled us to create this film--in order to define ourselves and grant ourselves the permission to seek what it means to move forward expansively together.
Director
Kris Kaczor
Kris Kaczor began his filmmaking career documenting his alma mater’s 1995 - 1996 MSU Campus Riots. His collected stories were broadcasted on national and international television. He was given 50 dollars for his footage. Graduating with a degree in education, Kaczor later attended film school while teaching Spanish. He first directed “Giant Sized” and “Hands on Fire”, which received national and international acclaim. Kaczor moved to Brooklyn in 2005 to make documentaries that would help the world. For the last decade+, he has been shooting and directing commercial and independent productions, receiving television and theatrical success. Being selected as part of Best of Hot Docs and championed by Michael Moore, "Divide In Concord" marked Kaczor's feature documentary directorial debut. "We Are All Angels" contends that by talking to enough people, you can uncover what people are really thinking about today. And that maybe, we are all dreaming the same dream.
Director
Sarah Tamar
Sarah Tamar is a first-time director based in New York City. After graduating from Brooklyn College and working as a photographer and art director in NYC, she began to gravitate towards filmmaking. She has been compelled by storytelling in all its forms for as long as she can remember. She was talented in the camera department, shooting and working on multiple productions, shorts, and commercials. Her first big project involved her shooting a road trip film across America, following a famous painting dog artist in a gutted 1958 Mobile Scout camper transformed into a mobile art gallery. She went on to shoot and co-direct another documentary, currently in production in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation about a young Lakota basketball hero named SuAnne Big Crow. Sarah also worked on the production end of the award winning 2014 documentary "Divide in Concord." Sarah, an aviation nerd, received her pilot's certificate last year and has developed massive enthusiasm for shooting and filming from the air in a 1968 Cessna Skyhawk, from which she filmed all the aerial shots for We Are All Angels. Sarah felt compelled to make this movie in order to expose and examine the unifying aspects of the human condition today.
Producer
Walter Matteson III
After graduating from the University of California Berkeley with a degree in Rhetoric, Film, Folklore, and Legal Philosophy, Walter Matteson began producing short documentaries about the alternative education system in the San Francisco Bay Area. After completing FIGURES AND LOOPS, a feature length documentary exploring his childhood in juxtaposition with the obscure world of competitive artistic roller-skating, Walter fell in love with the themes inherent to sub- cultures and decided to move to New York City to pursue documentary filmmaking. There, Walter began working at the Tribeca Film Festival as a production coordinator and after two seasons with the festival he went freelance and began working at Radical Media in NYC, where he gained in-depth and worldwide documentary and film production experience while working with award-winning documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. At Radical, Walter helped to produce five seasons of ICONOCLASTS, an award-winning documentary series. He produced episodes with Dr. Jane Goodall + Charlize Theron, Cate Blanchett + Tim Flannery, Chuck Close + David Blaine, and Ron Howard + Steve Nash — to name a few. In 2014, Walter Directed and Produced PRETTY OLD, an award-winning feature length documentary about an obscure Senior Citizen Beauty Pageant, Executive Produced by Sarah Jessica Parker and Joe Berlinger. Since then Walter has developed and produced a wide range of film and television projects while traveling the world constantly searching for characters, universal symbols, and stories to be shared with the rest of humanity.
Chloe Cashmore
Chloe Cashmore is focussed on creating art with unbounded energy. Her mediums include film and fine oil painting. A wanderer by nature, the human spirit is Cashmore’s guide. Passion led to her producing a feature documentary on the Native American basketball hero, SuAnne Big Crow on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Guided by the inherent process of vérité documentary filmmaking, her goal is to capture spontaneous interaction with humans and their environment. We Are All Angels provides a stage where Cashmore uses her sensibilities for sauntering, allowing access to the hidden thoughts and ventures of the modern human in NYC. Chloe moved to Brooklyn a decade ago from her original home, Sydney, Australia. She has a BA in Economics and studied design at Parsons. Her background is in branding, with an emphasis on visual storytelling.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK