"A hack is essentially an elegant solution to a tricky problem." This is only the first in a rapid series of wildly varying definitions that opens Christine Bader's 73-minute meditative documentary Hacks. For four-plus years, Bader crisscrossed the European continent documenting disparate nodes of a loose network of hackers who are, as Rop Gonggrijp of Amsterdam's activist service provider XS4ALL puts it, "challenging the powerful by using technology creatively."
A resident of Hamburg, Bader starts out with the scene she knows best - the legendary Chaos Computer Club - but she doesn't focus on the usual suspects. While CCC cofounder Wau Holland is on hand to provide a few sharp quotes, Bader devotes more careful attention to hackers like Sven Gohdes, who has done some quiet yet profound thinking on the philosophy behind his hacks.
While it's clear Bader's subjects are responding to her questions, she is neither seen nor heard. She has also worked tiny hacks into the film. Animated figures - some abstract, some humorous - sneak up alongside a speaker's head, then quickly slip out of the frame again. Such playfulness is actually far closer to the spirit of hacking than the dark Hollywood thrillers portraying hackers as skateboarding punks or overcaffeinated criminals.
Not that laws aren't broken. In one particularly surprising episode, Paul Watson explains why he attacks whaling vessels around the world. Not even Greenpeace, which Watson cofounded and then left because the organization didn't go far enough, is as daring as Watson's volunteer crew. But is environmental activism hacking?
And what about the Germans who set up an elaborate stand each year at the CeBit trade show in Hannover as a work of art? Or the physically challenged group at Kommhelp that uses computers to communicate in ways it couldn't otherwise? These questions have inspired enthusiastic debates wherever Hacks has been shown, which is precisely the hack at the heart of the film.
Hacks: on tour. Choi Productions: www.scara.com/hacks.
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