Jessica Solce's "Death Athletic – A Dissident Architecture": A Review

"The very desire to be free. Do not ask me to analyze that sublime desire; you must feel it. It finds its way into great hearts that God has prepared to receive it. It fills them; it inflames them. To mediocre souls that have never felt it, one cannot hope to make it comprehensible."
— Alexis de Tocqueville

When Cody Wilson's company Defense Distributed designed the first 3D-printed gun and published the blueprints in May 2013 the response was immediate: the State Department demanded that Wilson remove the files from his website under threat of prosecution for violations of international arms trafficking laws. Wilson refused, and counter-sued on First Amendment grounds, kicking off a legal saga and one big mistake that nearly cost Wilson the company he founded.

Filmmaker Jessica Solce tells this story with more than 8 years of footage tightly focused on Wilson himself. Delivered over a hypnotic score that puts the viewer right beside Wilson as he fights lawsuit after lawsuit while weathering relentless attacks in the media and confidently defending his efforts, the result is an extraordinarily intimate psychological portrait of a flawed but charismatic and fundamentally courageous man.

Death Athletic takes its title from Peter Sloterdijk's book You Must Change Your Life: for Sloterdijk, a death athlete is someone who lives their life in service to a mission and a goal, liberated from any fear of death. Wilson's politics and affinity with the cypherpunk movement makes it all too easy to compare him to his contemporaries Julian Assange, Ross Ulbricht and Aaron Swartz, all of whom have sacrificed their lives for their mission. 

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Other info and videos...

https://www.deathathletic.com/

Watch the Trailer for the documentary Death Athletic - A Dissident Architecture 2nd Feature Documentary by Director Jessica Solce

Featuring Cody Wilson, Benjamin Denio, John Sullivan, Defense Distributed, JStark, Deterrence Dispensed, AG Leaks, Alan Gura, Josh Blackman & Matthew A. Goldstein

PRE-SALE of Film + Bonus Material at https://encode.vhx.tv

FILM RELEASES on Oct 21st on iTunes, Google & Amazon

MERCH available at www.deathathletic.com/category/all-products