Interview: Astra Taylor, Director EXAMINED LIFE
Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and raised in Athens, Georgia, 29-year-old writer and filmmaker, Astra Taylor is a good case study for a life well-lived. Unschooled until she was a preteen and raised by two independent thinkers to become one herself, Taylor currently occupies herself with wrangling high intellectual pursuits and philosophical theories into wonderful pieces of cinema. Her non-traditional upbringing, or as she calls it, her "super weirdo hippy background," stood her in good stead, providing a strong sense of confidence and an affirmation in her own abilities and artistic vision.
When she was just 23, Taylor made her first nonfiction feature about Slavoj Zizek, called *Zizek! <http://www.zizekthemovie.com/>*, a post-Marxist sociologist, philosopher and cultural critic, and all around wild man. This film was the second feature-length project of the Documentary Campaign, a nonprofit organization that worked to combine progressive politics with artistic filmmaking. The film premiered in '05 at Toronto and is distributed in North America by Zeitgeist Films <http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/>.