One of the key Board of Directors for The Venus Project organization is now Nathanael Dinwiddie, who got his seat back in 2018. Were you aware of this? He had been researching Jacques Fresco’s biography and had the opportunity to work in depth with The Venus Project’s archives, going through and structuring them over the years.
His work was supposed to be culminating in a documentary, Man of Tomorrow, about Jacque Fresco’s life – however, for some reason we never got to see the movie. Why would that be?
I was surfing the internet a while back, and I came across a mention of this movie. I was extremely fascinated by the concept. After all, I had only heard about Jacque from himself, and it would be much more interesting to look at his life through the perspective of other people. I started researching: – When was this movie planned? – and when approximately it will be released? The head of the organization “Designing The Future”, Yevhen Sliuzko, helped me to find the necessary links.
When I checked out the Facebook page for the movie Man of Tomorrow, I discovered that production started back in 2013.
In one of the first pictures I immediately recognize Nate (he’s on the right). You can see his enthusiasm before an exciting endeavor – I wish I were in his shoes. Nathanael managed to get a grant and the necessary resources from the University of Kansas, the Center for Undergraduate Research, the School of the Arts, and the Department of Film where he was studying at the time to make the film. This was written on one of the Facebook Page’s posts.
The resources have been found, production has begun! Here are the photos from the page below. The number of invited interviewees is more than 24 people: those who were in any way related to Jacque Fresco.
A website was created for the movie, frescofuture.com, which is now available only through the Web Archive.
You can see Nate in the shots: he is acting as cameraman and possibly interviewer.
What’s more, the page is filled with photos of trips to key places from Jacque Fresco’s life. Oh, I would love to see this movie!
Everything seems to be working out more than marvelously. Based on the screenshots and presumably filmed footage, the movie is already shaping up to be the movie that was promised. However, in 2015, there’s this post that says the director of the movie, Nathanael Dinwiddie, has been brought on to another project, and the work on the movie will be delayed for a few more months.
After that, there will be some more posts referring to the movie before 2019. Some ads for The Venus Project itself… and then silence, until one interesting moment…..
That moment was the day I found out about this whole situation. I asked an friend of mine who runs a blog called JacqueFrescoEducation on The Venus Project to write about it all, providing material and links. Undeterred by the information he received, he made a post on his website on February 26, 2024, describing the whole situation to an English-speaking audience. Immediately someone created a thread with a link to this article, posted on the public Discord server where all The Venus Project board members are on, thus starting a public discussion.
A lot of people who support The Venus Project have begun to discuss the situation. I have also tagged Nathanael Dinwiddie without waiting for him to find the discussion himself. According to my observations, Nate is often online and has chatted a number of times on other topics.
Except, we never got an answer. Why hasn’t the movie that was started back in 2013 still haven’t been made? It’s already 2024 – 11 years have passed. Wasn’t it possible during this long time to find other filmmakers, video editors or a bit of money, something to finish the movie, based on the resources, footage and other things that have already been done. At the very least, he could publicly voice the problems he was facing and ask for help. The material has been filmed and there is a whole archive. An excerpt from the brochure:
“The film will contain much of the recently organized archival materials, consisting of more than 2,000 audio and video recordings, 2,500 photographic images, 3,500 design renderings, 300 physical models, and hundreds of documents.”
After 5 years of silence on the Facebook Page, suddenly a series of posts appear saying that there will be a 7-part autobiographical interview on Jacques’ biography.
Indeed, a series of interviews was released on the Jacque Fresco channel in occasion of his birthday on March 13th. But it can’t be called an autobiographical movie: it’s just a 7-part interview with Jacque where he solely talks about his life. How strange why haven’t they published it earlier, instead of a few months after a hot discussion on Discord. – What a Coincidence!
To summarize, we see that Nathanael, taking the resources of a number of institutions, including the grant, began work on a film that he couldn’t finish in 11 years, with more than enough footage already shot.
And that’s where the questions come in. Why is Nathaniel Dinwiddie keeping silent? What will happen to this undoubtedly valuable, already filmed material? And most importantly, where is the actual Movie?!
I see a simple and straightforward solution: talk about the problem, tell us what’s missing. In such a time I would have learned video editing myself and edited everything into one movie, or, a series of interviews could have been made accessible, and enthusiasts would have found a use for it. This should have been done a long time ago – interest in Jacque Fresco and his ideas is declining, and The Venus Project organization, and its director, Nathaniel Dinwiddie, have clearly not been working in this direction since at least the day he was appointed, in 2018.
PS: I’ve been trying hard to find an excuse for this. Things happen to everyone, well something doesn’t get finished, and it wasn’t just Nate who was working on the project, maybe he had lost the interest. But when I started digging further, I realized that this was not the only project he had taken on and never finished. The budgets for the following projects were way bigger than the University grant.
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Back in 2021, I was involved in creating videos with the English-speaking YouTube channel The Venus Project team. However, due to the management’s refusal to publish Jacques’ lectures for free, I switched to creating videos with the team at the Extensional channel. I spent approximately 2 years there as a producer, scriptwriter, and video editor, releasing a whole playlist on General Semantics and other topics. Now, I’ve dedicated myself to writing scripts for the Designing The Future organization and assisting in investigations.