“A gripping nonfiction thriller. Riveting . . . suspenseful . . . an extraordinary and quietly disturbing film.”
—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
Point and Shoot premieres Monday, August 24, 2015, at 10 PM on PBS stations.
Matt VanDyke was a recent grad with a love of video games and action movies when he decided to embark on a “crash course in manhood.” With a motorcycle and a video camera, he set off on a life-changing 35,000-mile odyssey across North Africa and the Middle East that led to his participation in the 2011 Libyan revolution against Muammar Gaddafi and six-month imprisonment in Libya.
As VanDyke worked to reshape himself, he also helped create a stunning portrait of how the ever-present cameras in our “selfie society” not only record our lives, but also craft who we become.
“My mother says that as a child I always had a deep desire for adventure,” filmmaker VanDyke says early in the film. Yet his early experiences were almost entirely virtual. “Movies shaped a lot of who I was,” he explains, adding that he would sometimes spend 12 hours a day playing video games. “I was the only child of an only child of an only child. I lived at home in the basement throughout college. I didn’t have many friends.” He developed severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, which made him intensely anxious around trashcans and sugar and left him unable to drive a car for fear of causing an accident.
Visit the POV companion site for Point and Shoot to watch the full film online for free for a limited time following the broadcast (starting August 25, 2015), find out what’s happened since the cameras stopped rolling, and download a discussion guide and other viewing resources. Share your thoughts and ask questions by using the hashtag #PointandShoot.