Media That Matters Film Festival: The Meatrix: About

FOURTH ANNUAL FESTIVAL

The Meatrix

3:47 min
Flash Animation
Diane Hatz, Executive Producer, Louis Fox Director/Animator/Co-Writer, Jonah Sachs, Co-Writer, Produced by Free Range Graphics in conjunction with Sustainable Table

Winner of the Film for Thought Award
Sponsored by Heifer International

ABOUT THE FILM

More About The Meatrix from Free Range Graphics

The Meatrix is a humorous 4-minute Flash animation that spoofs The Matrix films and highlights the problems of factory farming. Instead of Keanu Reaves, The Meatrix stars a young pig, Leo, who lives on a pleasant family farm…or so he thinks. Leo is approached by a trenchcoat-clad cow, Moopheus, who shows him the ugly truth about agribusiness, complete with a send-up of the “stop-motion” camerawork immortalized by The Matrix. The mix of humor, pop culture references, and an important message clearly resonates with a wide swath of the Web-using public.

In early 2003, Free Range Graphics invited nonprofit groups around the country to submit proposals for their first-ever Free Range Flash Activism Grant. After reviewing 50 proposals, Free Range awarded the grant to the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE), an organization committed to halting factory farms and promoting sustainable agriculture.

With background material provided by GRACE, Louis Fox from Free Range Graphics created The Meatrix film. His decision to spoof The Matrix was based on the similarities between the film and today’s corporate system of agriculture. In the three months since its November 2003 release, over 4.2 million people around the world viewed The Meatrix. This is an unprecedented success for an online advocacy film. Press coverage has included USA Today, CNN Headline News, the Guardian (UK), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, NPR, MichaelMoore.com, and many other newspapers, magazines and radio shows. The film even reached the top of Blogdex.net’s “most contagious information currently spreading in the weblog community” index and has been featured on hundreds of blogs, message boards and listservs.

In 2006 GRACE, Sustainable Table and Free Range Graphics released a highly-anticipated sequel to The Meatrix called The Meatrix II: Revolting.