‘Barbershop Punk’ is next Southern Circuit film

Bar­ber­shop Punk to be shown at GSC on Feb. 9

The next film in the South­ern Cir­cuit Tour of Inde­pen­dent Film­mak­ers couldn’t be more rel­e­vant in these days of SOPA, PIPA and other con­cerns about Inter­net freedom.

“Bar­ber­shop Punk” is an advo­cacy jour­nal­ism doc­u­men­tary about one man’s strug­gles to deal with his Inter­net ser­vice provider when they began block­ing his bar­ber­shop quar­tet site.

The film will be shown on Thurs­day, Feb. 9, at 7:30 in Room 3110 of Aca­d­e­mic 4, fol­lowed by a ques­tion and answer period with one of the film­mak­ers, Geor­gia Sug­imura Archer. Tick­ets are $7 for adults, $5 for stu­dents and seniors.

The film has received many awards, includ­ing Best Doc­u­men­tary at the Big Apple Film Fes­ti­val and ION Film Fes­ti­val. It was also a New York Times’ Crit­ics’ Pick.

From the film’s web site:

“Is ‘The Man’ con­trol­ling the ver­ti­cal, the hor­i­zon­tal, and the chan­nel you’ll be on?

“In a pri­va­tized Amer­i­can Inter­net, is big busi­ness ‘Big Brother’ or does the free mar­ket pro­tect and serve the needs of the aver­age cit­i­zen with its invis­i­ble hand? With the sim­ple act of swap­ping files, bar­ber­shop quar­tet bari­tone Robb Topol­ski finds him­self at ground zero of a land­mark case whose out­come will affect the rights of every Amer­i­can citizen.

“Fol­low­ing one man’s per­sonal quest to defend what he believes to be his inalien­able rights, BARBERSHOP PUNK exam­ines the crit­i­cal issues sur­round­ing the future of the Amer­i­can Inter­net and what it takes to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo.”

For more infor­ma­tion, visit the film’s web site at http://barbershoppunk.com/.