Designing The Future

Why hasn’t the movie about Jacques Fresco, The Man of Tomorrow, by Nathanael Dinwiddie come out?

Dmitriy Molodozhonov

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?

Nathanael Dinwiddie

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.

This begins as a two man team. Production on a budget entails using Canon Mark III DSLR cameras. Dylan Snyder assists.

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 proposal for Man of Tomorrow was enthusiastically approved. The Center for Undergraduate Research, the School of the Arts, and the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of Kansas have provided grants and resources to begin production.

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.

Our 21st interview features futurist-transhumanist, Zoltan Istvan. Zoltan spoke about Jacque Fresco’s relation to transhumanism. Zoltan is also running for governor of California under the Libertarian Party.
Our 23rd interview features George Newman. George knew Jacque Fresco during the 1960s. George became a psychologist and journalist. He wrote a book called, “Things I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known Then.” George dedicated the book to Fresco and a section to one of Fresco’s ideas.
Our 23rd interview features George Newman. George knew Jacque Fresco during the 1960s. George became a psychologist and journalist. He wrote a book called, “Things I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known Then.” George dedicated the book to Fresco and a section to one of Fresco’s ideas.
Our 23rd interview features George Newman. George knew Jacque Fresco during the 1960s. George became a psychologist and journalist. He wrote a book called, “Things I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known Then.” George dedicated the book to Fresco and a section to one of Fresco’s ideas.
Our 24th interview again features Karl Geissler as a followup to his previous. Karl began attending Jacque Fresco’s lectures in 1971, at the founding of Sociocyberneering. Karl was an avid reader of Fresco’s booklist and beyond. If you have heard audio of Fresco’s Classic Lectures, Karl is best recognized by his warm German accent. He has proven himself especially well versed in Fresco’s proposals. To this day, Karl remains a close friend to Fresco.
Our 23rd interview features George Newman. George knew Jacque Fresco during the 1960s. George became a psychologist and journalist. He wrote a book called, “Things I Know Now That I Wish I’d Known Then.” George dedicated the book to Fresco and a section to one of Fresco’s ideas.

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.

Our 22nd interview features Pat McCord. Pat authored the book “Rings of Venus,” set in a Fresconian universe.
Our 20th interview features Lionel Rolfe. As a child, Lionel attended drafting lessons at Jacque Fresco‘s Scientific Research Laboratories in Los Angeles during the 1950s. Lionel is a member of the Menuhin family and became a journalist. By coincidence, Lionel later met Fresco’s lifelong friend, Jack Catran, and publicized their mutual relation to Fresco and Catran’s book “Is There Intelligent Life On Earth?” The article was entitled, “Unpopular Science,” published in the Los Angeles Reader. Lionel later republished this article in his book called, “Fat Man on the Left.”
Our eighteenth interview features Eli Catran. Eli is younger brother to Jacque Fresco‘s lifelong friend, Jack Catran. Eli assisted Fresco in the development of the Trend Home in 1947. Eli remains the last friend from Fresco’s Brooklyn origins.

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!

The prisons that Fresco suffered in childhood.
КоOnce a thriving airport, the Floyd Bennett Field was where Fresco, 12 years old, marveled at the impossible feat of human flight.

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.

Update: To all those interested in seeing Man of Tomorrow, sorry for the delay of progress. The director of this film was recruited by TVP for editing a section of The Choice Is Ours, and has since been recruited for another large project by TVP. Therefore, progress on Man of Tomorrow will be delayed some months more. However, it was always expected that Man of Tomorrow would take a few years due to financing and the long process of assembling materials from archives to use in the film.

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.

MISSING PUBLIC AND PRIVATE FUNDS, MISSED DEADLINES, AND DEAD PROJECTS: NATHANAEL DINWIDDIE’S “MAN OF TOMORROW” MOVIE SCAM

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.

Jacque Fresco was born March 13, 1916, 108 years ago. In memory of Fresco’s work, a 7 hour biographical interview that explores his life and work will premier in 7 separate parts on the Jacque Fresco Youtube channel on March 31st. Each additional part will be posted each subsequent day until April 6th. Be sure to subscribe to the Jacque Fresco Youtube channel. To access all videos, see the following playlist.

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.

,