I'll admit, upon first viewing I thought "In Bright Axiom" was a mockumentary -- a fake documentary about an invented secret society. But I see it was in fact a real, briefly lived endeavor in the San Francisco area a few years ago.
Like most clubs, it started with a purpose and soon the purpose became having a club.
A bunch of well-to-do free-thinkers invented The Latitude Society, supposedly the recreation of a long-dormant ancient order devoted to exploration, storytelling, lived experiences and purposefully blurring the line between truth and faction -- or just pretending such a line doesn't exist.
So you can see how I'd think director Spencer McCall, who wrote the script with Geordie Aitken, Farouz Gipson and Wylie Herman, might just be making the whole thing up. My friend Ben Rock did something similar for "The Blair Witch Project," conjuring a backstory to promote the film that ended up becoming part of the cultural experience itself.
Personally I'm suspicious of the screenwriter credit when it comes to documentaries. I still struggle to see how you can "write" a journalistic collection of facts and interviews, other than maybe the narration. And you needed four of them? True documentaries have directors and editors as their primary authors, not scribblers.
But a little Googling later I learn Latitude was a real thing, or at least as real as a society devoted to mythology can be.
You'd think inductees would be suspicious. Someone would hand them a mysterious card and they would be invited to go to a certain place at a certain time. This would lead to a strange journey into a building labyrinth, including slides and crawlspaces, where they would place their hands upon a pair of energy pods and receive wisdom from an odd figure that looks like man's head with no eyes or top of his head but a U-like shape where his forehead should be.
This is Quas, who is the society's figurehead, or mascot, or something. He speaks in strange riddles and talks about the rules of the club, the foremost of which is "Absolute Discretion." The double meaning here is that members should be free to think and dream as they wish, but also that they should never, ever tell anyone about Latitude.
(It goes without saying, since there is this documentary and articles you can find about the Latitude, that no one took the 'First rule of Fight club' part too seriously.)
The film interviews various former members, who speak about how they were enraptured by the experience of being invited to join an exclusive group, while being completely mindful of the possibility of it being a cult. Events involved things like weekend trips to a remote estate where people can imbibe substances, wear funny costumes, tell stories and make of the experience whatever they will.
"A ritual without religion," is how Jeff Hull, one of the key founders, describes it. Jeff does all his interviews dressed like the kid from "Where the Wild Things Are," in animal PJs and a tall crown. Just so you know how he rolls.
Of course, Jeff and a handful of others who first started the Latitude exalt themselves as the Elders who control everything, which starts to include requests for funding to help pay for all these giddy events and experiences. Not long after its founding, the Society suffered an insurrection from within, lost money and abruptly folded.
McCall intersperses interviews and gauzy recreations of Latitude events with a backstory how the Professor, the knight-errant/historian of the group, leaves his family and goes on a quest for... something. There's also talk of a shadowy nemesis group, the Claricy, and guardians called Kith who resemble Quas if he had a whole, furry body.
I don't really know what to make of "In Bright Axiom," though I can't say I was ever less than engaged by it. I still think it's entirely likely the whole thing is bullshit, but I'm also open to the possibility it's not.
I can see how somebody could watch this movie and think the Latitude Society and all its denizens and invented folklore is a bunch of silly nonsense. It looks like a gaggle of youngish hipsters with a lot of time and money on their hands who like to get together, dress up, get stoned and share tall tales.
Hull is an artist who previously worked with McCall on the show "Dispatches from Nowhere," and I wouldn't doubt it if someone revealed they invented the Latitude expressly so they could document its rise and file -- with this film existing as essentially the long tail of a multi-year performance art project.
"A lie that reveals a bigger truth" is sort of what filmmaking is all about, after all.