How do we build community when everyone is pitted against each other?

By Sarah Grishpul

“… It has always seemed much easier to murder than to change.”

During an online screening at the 2024 Toronto Queer Film Festival, Canadian filmmaker Mike Hoolboom quotes James Baldwin, along with many other activists, artists and historical figures, in his film Freedom From Everything.

Such a line repeats twice to underscore its importance and connection to the story: The sacrifice of our more vulnerable population in favour of the privileged.

Freedom From Everything is an adaptation of German filmmaker Hito Steyerl’s essay by the same name. By pulling from her passages, splicing together footage from other movies, TV shows, historical recordings and images, computer-generated animations and personal memories, Hoolboom created an essay film jam-packed with philosophical ponderings and critical analyses.

A fair warning, this film is not the type of movie you can put on in the background while folding the laundry or completing other various chores. It’s not so much a typical narrative story but rather a string of musings against a backsplash of idyllic scenes and objects. Instead, Hoolboom invites you to meditate on his musings as his soft, resounding voice guides you through the film. 

Hoolboom compares the many similarities between the public’s behaviour towards the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, of which we are only a few years shy. He points to the striking commonality in the translation of fear to anger. Those who did not understand the virus and the people affected by it turned to hate and accusation as a coping mechanism.

Yet, as he points out in the post-screening Q&A, what made COVID-19 different was the lack of solidarity and community.

The film raises the question: How do you build community when everyone is pitted against each other?

From that point forward, we are taken back in time to the late 1970s and early 1990s when the polarizing Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of Britain. Her stance on society was that there was no such as society. But instead, human beings were responsible for their personal lives and outcomes.

To put it straight: If you’re poor or marginalized—it’s your own fault.

This so-called “freedom” removes blame from the dominant white society over issues of inequality. Because, according to Thatcher, society just doesn’t exist. 

Hoolboom shows how the “virus of neoliberalism” manifested in the so-called “freedom fighters” who staged large protests against COVID-19 vaccine mandates in Canada. The stance of “this disease doesn’t exist because it isn’t directly affecting me,” is a luxury in itself. 

Such individualistic mentalities were as prominent during COVID-19 as they were during the 

AIDS epidemic. As Hoolboom further points out in the Q&A:

“If I get sick, that’s my responsibility. But if you get sick, that’s not just your responsibility, but it’s your fault somehow.”

He cites the urge to ignore the problem as a result of a digital, neoliberal form of capitalism. Communication during isolation became a profit for big tech companies. Remember ever using Zoom before the pandemic? Yeah, me neither.

Freelancers, side hustles and the gig economy are all products of capitalism. The “freedom” to not be represented by traditional institutions offers a negative freedom, which pulls people away from any semblance of community. 

Later on, the film dives into the history behind the word “freelancer,” which originates from the medieval ages. They were mercenaries who were not attached to any soldier or government but instead loyal to whoever paid them the most. Remove the horse, armour, and sword, and you’ll see that nothing much has changed since then.

Hoolboom references the role of the “homeless freelancer” in Japanese cinema, known as the “ronin.” One film he calls attention to is Yojimbo, a 1961 western, where a lone samurai ultimately initiates a gang war between two rival capitalist warlords in a small Japanese village.

The role of the freelancer is, at its core, one built on the foundation of independence. Yet, not all freelancers strive to serve the good of the people. Hoolboom interweaves clips of private soldiers in the Iraq occupation and the difficulties the United States military experienced in controlling these freelance mercenaries. Another example of this “negative freedom” is referenced several times throughout the film.

In the end, Freedom From Everything doesn’t serve as a beacon of hope, nor does it provide the answer to these systemic problems, but instead is a bleak reflection of a weakened society encased in selfish desires and governed by greed. I certainly emerged from this screening forced to reckon with my own pursuit of freedom from everything. If anything, the film opens up conversations on how we choose to determine our own future.