Filming for freedom.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Soundbite - Interview

The Moving Picture Institute is the AV department for the vast libertarian conspiracy. It funds films celebrating liberty, it trains young filmmakers, and it helps them make connections in the mainstream. Its projects range from Zabbaleen, a documentary about an entrepreneurial minority in modern Egypt, to Hammer & Tickle, about subversive humor in the old Soviet Union"a language of truth under communism."

Rob Pfaltzgraff, the institute's executive director, spoke with reason in July about several of the group's pictures.

Q: Is Michael Moore your nemesis?

A: We like to diversify--if you'll pardon that overused word--the debate, to bring other points of view and messages to counter the very loud voices of certain people. Michael Moore is able to generate a lot of attention for his issues in films and for his side of those issues. Sicko just makes a single-payer system look like the answer to all of the problems in the U.S. We like to present a counter to those opinions in general, but we are also responding directly to Sicko in a series of short films at FreeMarketCure.com. They show the other side of the issue and what it's like to have health care rationed in Canada.

Q: Freedom's Fury is about water polo. What does water polo have to do with freedom?

A: That was one that we found at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006. It was a finished film at that point but needed help with the finishing funding as well as promotional work. The filmmakers had set out to make a film about water polo, to tell the story about an epic water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union, known as the "Blood in the Water Match." But they ended up with what they described as "a love letter to Hungary and the Hungarian Revolution" and an excellent juxtaposition of the struggle between Hungary and the Soviet Union with the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. It turned into a lot more than what they initially had intended.

Q: Mining companies funded your latest film, Mine Your Own Business, a documentary about the impact of environmentalism on Third...