Before They Were Beatles (2004)

The film reflects on the increasing cultural ambivalence toward the 21st century's war-and-peace philosophy; it is a way in which this work envisions the 20th century's disillusionment with the idea of patriotic wars and super sized American idols. This generation of boys and girls discover that instead of empowering their mind, politics and pop stereotypes provoke destructive misinterpretations. Reminiscence of wars and of biblical murder illustrates themes of guilt and responsibility in White's video almost on a Shakespearean scale. The boys' physical appearance in different epochs, in different roles (but adamantly on the verge of death) emphasizes the themes of appearance and equivocation explored throughout the film. The artist chose the Beatles in their Renaissance and 1960s incarnations. Their figures, songs and images of youth remain relevant to Tim White's main aesthetic principles in various cultural/historical contexts. Civilization appears as camaraderie of teenagers whose lives would be defined by war; as a Renaissance of boys and girls who refused to be buried in the graveyard of lost hope. In its own right, it is Apocalypse Now. In the filmmaker's translation, it is the world fed up with old men making up wars for young men to die in.