Director of Zeitgeist and Zeitgeist Addendum

Zeitgeist, meaning spirit or mood of the time,

is the film of the time.

Produced as a personal creative project,

it was made available on the Internet

and quickly became a global phenomenon.

Its comprehensive coverage of the facts behind Religion,

9/11 and the finance system

caused such an explosion in popularity

that Google's video counters reached their limits at 15 million views.

In October 2008, the second film "Zeitgeist: Addendum" was released.

Covering the banking system, its negative effects on humanity

and designs for an alternative, new and improved future.

Peter Joseph, Director of "Zeitgeist" and "Zeitgeist: Addendum"

talks with us about his reasons and inspirations

for creating both films, and his hopes for the future of Humankind.

Hi Peter, thank you so much for finding the time to talk to us today.

I know you've had a really busy schedule while you've been in England.

And, obviously we're here to talk about "Zeitgeist" - Of course.

- "Zeitgeist: Addendum" - Thank you for having me.

It's fantastic, we're so pleased about that.

First, before we kind of jump into "Zeitgeist"

If you could just tell me

a little bit about yourself, what you do, your background,

and why you started this project?

Well, as a commercial producer in New York,

it was very unfulfilling for the most part.

You walk the line, you have your job as anyone does,

and ultimately, I've always had other aspirations creatively

so I was engaged in other projects such as film making projects,

off-Broadway projects and multimedia projects.

So I had a pattern of doing this independently, on my own, in New York

even though it was never really for money or anything like that.

And as time went on I started to realize that there's a lot of

really terrible, sinister issues going on in the world

and I decided that it would be to my advantage

and to the advantage of society and actually to my own satisfaction,

to do something that would have not just

an artistic element for the sake of art, but something

that would actually be beneficial to the system,

because art without conscience, in a lot of ways

is kind of meaningless, I've come to find.

I think as time moves forward, you look back at what contributions

of art have really endured, they actually have a great presence

to them as far as how they relate to the human condition.

You go back to J.S. Bach and the Church

and just all of these elements that come forward with art

that has a relevance to it outside of just for the sake of art.

So a painting not for the sake of painting, but a painting for the sake of

actually communicating something about humanity

and the social conditions of the time perhaps.

So, "Zeitgeist" was an attempt to combine my artistic interests

with some social cause or social interest.

And I think what triggered it was 9/11

because of how catastrophic the event was, and then as time went on,

information began to come out,

about how ridiculous the government's account of the story was,

and then you began to see who actually gained from this,

as time went on, with the wars and the corporations.

So, my initial trigger for "Zeitgeist" the original movie was 9/11,

so to speak. And then as I was approaching this

to create an artistic work representing it

which by the way the original "Zeitgeist" was shown

as a multimedia work in lower Manhattan initially

with no intent to be an actual release, at all.

It was shown for six nights, for free, to an activist group

who came in, and then it was thrown up online afterwards

and then it just happened to erupt with interest. - Exploded.

Which, by the way, put me in a very precarious position,

because I didn't own the rights to a certain amount of it.

It was all friends I had made in the movement and things like this

so I had to retroactively go through this big mess.

As far as the film itself, religion was always

very interesting to me, ever since I was a child.

I was never raised in a really rigid religious environment,

but I was around it to a certain degree. My family's families

were very Catholic, my parents were not particularly religious.

- Yes, I was raised as catholic also. - Right. - And I went

to a Catholic school for a little while so I got to experience this,

and as a child, there was always something strange to me.

In one class I'd be in science, and then in one class

I'd go to this little church situation and, even at a young age,

there was a strange dichotomy to me that didn't make any sense.

And not to say that all religions don't have a value.

They actually all very much do, historically. And a lot of people

who see the film get the wrong impression about

what I'm trying to say about religion.

In the first film, I deal with the history of religion

that's sort of a history that no one really talks about

because it's not the established representation. - Pattern. - Right

I must admit that when I first watched that myself,

I was absolutely flabbergasted when you

show how the Christ religion and how many others came in

under very similar situations and that absolutely knocked my socks off

because I never knew anything like that.

- Yes, the dying and resurrecting god man. - That's right!

- Has been going on for millenia, for ages

and it's a symbolic rebirth, as early pagan ideology,

it's where you're born again, all these... - because it goes right to

the Druidism and the Solar Cross, Myth of the sun.

- It's age old, exactly.

And it has multiple symbolisms, apart from the Sun as being its core.

Astrotheology is the terminology used to describe this stellar

and solar element that has basically been transmuted

and transformed into the historical religions

that we think these attributes are actual history, when if you look

far enough back, you see that it's basically pure allegory.

And even if there were certain characters that emerged historically

say in Christianity, there probably was somebody

that fulfilled some role that this Christ character assumed.

But by the time the Bible came to fruition,

the Christ character was transformed into a totally mythological figure.

So there really isn't a historical element, there is no documentation of

a historical Christ. In that, it's very challenged, of course...

- So where do we stand with the Bible,

because, there are so many books in there talking about the Christ

so, I guess you must have miffed off a lot of Christians

when you put this out there. - And they misinterpret, I believe,

because even if he didn't exist it doesn't matter,

it's the message - It is the message, yes!

Religion has a propensity toward materialism, they don't call it

materialism, but they hold onto something

and they really can't break away from it

and that's the definition of materialism in my mind.

So to think that, just because this character didn't exist

this demeans the whole thing, is not necessarily the case,

if you want to drive for pure superstition, then yes

it is the case, which of course I don't advocate.

I think philosophy is much more important than

philosophy, superstition is a derogatory sort of term.

But when it comes to these notions of

the man dying for your sins. I think these are misconstrued.

I think there's no real relevance to it. And it's based on this sort of

control mechanism that you are guilty the moment you are born,

and he died for your sins - Original sin

- Yes. It's distorted on one side and then there's also kernels of truth

that speak to the human condition like "love thy neighbor".

- So everything gets mixed up together, doesn't it?

- It does, and, to speak a little more about that,

the Christ character is very much composite, because,

there is a lot of dichotomy in his rhetoric.

In one passage he says : "I don't bring peace, I bring a sword",

"I want to have your neighbor against neighbor" and then

in another passage it's "Love thy neighbor and love your enemies".

- So it's a bit of a mixed message, isn't it really?

- Well, because it's a composite text, and that makes sense

you find these dichotomies, these ying and yangs

happening through lots of different God men that have existed,

so that's why it's even more proof that it's-

- On the research that you've done on all these different

characters in history who come in as religious leaders, icons.

Which ones would you say, actually really, do you believe, did exist?

- As far as the major religions? - Any religion

- I think it's obvious that the later religions, there's some of them.

Muhammad existed, that's well documented by historians.

But the farther you go back, the more the characters

become more elusive in their definition.

Buddha, I'd question if Buddha existed.

His symbology is extremely solar, just like Krishna.

And these, of course, are thousands of years before Christ.

It's just, almost, I don't really focus on it frankly,

I don't really think if they exist or not it matters, but if you go back

far enough there really is no historical documentation, secular.

So, if you can't find that, then all you're looking at

is the faith based texts,

which are inherently biased because of what they actually are.

So, I really couldn't tell you. I think, obviously,

that Allah didn't exist per se.

It's the god that was a redefined element

from the old testament and the new testament.

And then, Muhammad, I guess,

definitely did exist because it was

not that far along, it was 800, 900 years after Christ and there are,

actual historical documentations. I think he's been interpolated,

just as all... all of them have,

they take the prior faiths, and they just build upon it.

They are emerging culminations, but the characters are in the stories.

You tend to find this throughout all religious texts,

even I think, to modern religions,

and you find all sorts of strange things, like Scientology,

things like this, that continue these types of patterns.

So, I think the sadness to me is that most religions are arrogant,

and they don't realize that they are interconnected.

And I think if they realized it, there wouldn't be so much dispute.

I mean, the problem with religious texts in general

is that they are semantically interpreted.

Christianity alone has about 34,000 different subgroups,

and they all are slightly at odds with each other.

The Seventh Day Adventists, you know. They all have these tiny

little variations of interpretation. I believe that's very dichotomous

and, in the end, my major argument

towards religion is that it's completely divisive of humanity.

So, It's not progressive. It has crumbs of truth,

but I think it's time most move beyond these dogmas,

and these faiths that really tend to separate humanity because

nothing is going to come positive from that type of awareness

- Well, I was talking to someone the other day about this

we all want to work together as one humanity, but,

it's like, there's groups, and then there's groups within groups.

As I was saying to someone the other day, "You're pink and I'm blue",

we're still trying to aim for the same things, but it just dissects people

all the time. And in this culture where the world is becoming

a smaller place, it's so sad that we're not coming together

and we seem to be spreading further apart.

- Somewhat - Yeah, and it's really sad that, you know,

everybody is in their own camp and they don't want to come together

- Right - Because there's one slight difference

- Sure, everyone sees the differences between each other,

they tend not to see the similarities.

In the new film, I have a quote by Carl Sagan which is very nice,

which is like :"If an extraterrestrial visitor came to the planet,

they would probably recognize all the similarities

between the species, and tend to see differences as trivial"

because we all function in the same environment,

we all have the same needs fundamentally.

So I think it's a flaw of consciousness that's happened.

And I would say, to give it a rhetorical kind of notion,

we're barely out of the jungle on this planet as far as consciousness.

- Exactly! - So you know, I think, through time, and that's why

I've made the films that I do, I talk about the topics that I do,