The Meatrix
3:47 min
Flash Animation
Louis Fox Director/Animator/Co-Writer, Jonah Sachs, Co-Writer, Produced by Free Range Graphics in conjunction with the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment
Winner of the Film for Thought Award Sponsored by Heifer International
Will Leo the pig take the blue pill and remain in a fantasyland where quaint family farms produce food for our tables?
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.
Find more films on Agriculture and Food Politics from MediaRights.
Jonah Sachs and Louis Fox of Free Range Graphics, Co-Producers
Jonah and Louis are founding partners of Free Range Graphics. Their pioneering work in Flash technology has been seen by many millions of Web users, and has been featured in dozens of top newspapers and TV news networks across the nation and the world including CNN's Crossfire, The Washington Post, Fox News and The New York Times. In 2001, Jonah and Louis were named two of "The Thirty People Saving the Earth" by Shift magazine. They are widely considered a leader in the powerful new movement to progressive political and social messages to the general public through use of the Web, info@freerangegraphics.com.
Free Range Graphics, Producer
Free Range Graphics is Creativity with a Conscience. We know we could be using our talents to sell cheeseburgers or sneakers, but we feel that an inherent part of creativity is the creation of something positive and meaningful. That's why we concentrate on offering top-quality design and publicity services to companies and organizations whose vision goes beyond turning the world into a strip mall. And while our clients range from world — wide activists like Amnesty International to independent stores trying to survive in an age of franchises, they all share our belief that a life's work should create, not corrupt. Based in Washington DC, our services include graphic design for print and Web, campaign concepting and strategy. We also provide back-end Web services like database management and custom-built Web applications. http://www.freerangegraphics.com.
The Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE), Winner of Free Range Flash Activism Grant
GRACE is a nonprofit organization that works with research, policy and grassroots communities to provide information and promote solutions to preserve the planet for future generations. One of the GRACE's main programs — the GRACE Factory Farm Project - works to eliminate factory farming in favor of a sustainable food production system that is healthful and humane, economically viable and ecologically sound. Initiatives within the Project include: Sustainable Table — A broad-based consumer campaign created to educate the public about sustainable food and increase consumer demand through awareness campaigns, promotional events and education about viable solutions to the factory farm problem; the Factory Farm Campaign — A unique team of expert consultants who help rural communities, family ranchers, and small farmers oppose the spread of new factory farms and close down existing ones that affect health and well-being. The team provides economic analysis and organizational support to threatened communities; The Henry Spira/GRACE Project on Industrial Animal Production — A partnership between GRACE and the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health to foster interdisciplinary research on industrial animal production and address impacts on diet, the environment, and on human and animal health; Food Irradiation Campaign — In partnership with Public Citizen, GRACE supports an international effort to inform the public of the risks of food irradiation used merely to mask the unhealthy practices of agribusiness and to prolong "shelf-life" for international trade in meat. GRACE also works to eliminate nuclear weapons and nuclear power, and to clean up the toxic legacy of the nuclear age through its Nuclear Abolition Project. http://www.gracelinks.org.
Contact MediaRights to host a screening.
- Join the fight against factory farms through the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment.
- Help victims of the factory farm industry through Farm Sanctuary.
- Find local organic alternatives through Local Harvest.