Over several days in 2001, swaths of would-be revolutionaries swarmed a borrowed estate in Utica, New York, to hold their first “World Summit” of KAOS (Killing the Apathy Of Society). Though originally swayed by the charisma of their leader, Mac Laslow (Mahershala Ali), the swift shift from optimistic activism to combative antagonism occurs as the promised necessary resources to sustain them—drugs, alcohol, food, and momentum for the cause—dwindle.

Such is the premise of Taste the Revolution, a mockumentary directed by Daniel Klein, which finally made its debut at the 2024 New Orleans Film Festival on October 19, nearly 25 years after it was filmed.

The halt in production came with the film’s timing; shortly after more than 100 extras joined together to film the primary event—a gathering on the estate, where Mac gives speeches and his co-leaders struggle to wrangle the increasingly aimless crowd—the September 11 attacks to place. 

In an interview with The Rolling Tape, Klein said that he shelved the project because it felt “insensitive” to release the film to a wider audience at that time. Not only does the “World Summit” take place in the first two weeks of September 2001—in the version that premiered on the 19th, time stamps guide us through those days until September 11—but a bomb features prominently in the later half of the feature.

A previous version of Taste the Revolution (as Making Revolution) screened at a 2003 film festival in Wisconsin to honor the hundreds of people who worked on the film, Klein said, he ultimately felt “lost” in the attempt to create a film that felt incongruous with the tragedy of the time.

“Everything that felt important, you know, within this movie prior to 9/11 suddenly felt like maybe that’s not really important in this moment,” adding that the event rendered the film a “period piece before it was off the ground.”

However, that “period piece” effect is what makes viewing Taste the Revolution memorable in 2024. With echos of watching a pseudo-Woodstock gathering unfold, the mockumentary-style filming welcomes moments of hilarity, such as in the harried host, Alistair McCormick (Jeremy Belier), whose parents own the house at which the World Summit takes place. Belier’s frazzled performance adds a necessary comedic arc outside the activist circle that emphasizes the ridiculousness of the fictional event and the people who attended it.

The meta-filmmaking, including occasional interludes with the scrappy “documentary” directors who receive funding for their project from a relative’s local soda company, also creates a natural counterpoint to Mac’s serious demeanor. His initially impenetrable aura shatters as the film concludes — and as the directors’ camera continues to point a critical eye in his direction. 

While the scenes of the come-down from the summit aren’t as exciting as the build-up to and disarray within, what grounds the film is Ali’s performance. While in 2016’s Moonlight Ali excelled in his caring role as Juan, father/mentor to the film’s young black protagonist, he leans into the earnest and sinister undertones of Mac’s persona in Taste the Revolution. He’s an archetype of both self-interest and selflessness, of control and chaos. It’s equally jarring and stirring to see a younger and familiar face look back at us through the camera over two decades later. Indeed, all the talent that Ali became known for in the work that made him famous—and award-winning—certainly exists in a distilled form here.

Starting in 2020, Klein said he gathered and digitized the complete 130 hours of footage — in which he allowed the massive cast to create their own characters and freewheel through their interviews at the “Summit” — across New York, Chicago, and Madison, Wisconsin. He boiled down the film to create the roughly 90-minute version that premiered in New Orleans. 

“I’m going to go so far as to say a majority of this film feels still relevant, contemporaneous,” he said in our conversation. “I will say the only thing that feels very different to me from that specific time to this specific time is the absence of cell phones. … I feel like I’m holding a mirror up.”

Article Courtesy of Arleigh Rodgers

Image Courtesy of Cinema Collet