Body to Live In (A)

It's been nearly 40 years since the release of Dances Sacred and Profane - the first and only documentary about Roland Loomis aka Fakir Musafar - a most extraordinary man.

So...a re-visit was long overdue and much anticipated. Expectations ran high...only to be dashed by this work of vandalism. Rule number 1...DO NOT tamper with the original material. Madsen has defaced images with overlays and colour splodges, altered and contorted archival footage with film-school-reject editing skills...and, unforgivably, instilled their own agenda into Musafar's story.

The great debate involving cultural appropriation, preservation, conservation, dissemination and exclusion did not rage - as it does now - when a young Roland Loomis started experimenting with his body, the older [spiritual] Fakir Musafar fell victim to these debates, he acquired the label of performance artist...but, was he? More of an investigative, practical, demonstrative anthropologist. Whatever...if these debates continue on the course that they are going...anthropology [itself and et al.] will be consigned to history. Quite ridiculous considering nearly every human being on this plant has culturally appropriated something in their lives. Think about the clothes you were, the food you eat, the words you read. Get the idea?

Madsen includes a snippet of this barking debate and reduces it to a mere whimper. Dances Sacred and Profane changed Musafar's life, the film does his legacy a disservice.

No brain cells were utilised in the assemblage of this high-school media project. D-

Trailer...