Knock Off

Knock Off. Revenge On the Logo reflects upon branding and globalization by examining the counterfeit traffic on a typi- cal day along the world’s longest shopping strip: Broadway in New York.

The forty-five minute documentary begins in Chinatown, as Canal Street wakes up, then moves through Soho, and stops for an interlude in Times Square, before rolling uptown for a night in Harlem.

Along the way, we meet corporate lawyers and anti-sweatshop activists, gurly shoppers searching for the perfect handbag, and immigrants selling knocked off merchandise to make a living wage by while staying one step ahead of the police. In the logo-malls and designer zones, cultural critics sift through the baffling effects of underwear models who loom seven stories tall, while anti-shopping preachers testify to their street congregations about resisting the lure of the brand. In Harlem, we watch as people create and crush selective branding strategies, and their knock-offs become an attempt to take back the means of cultural production which have evaporated from their neighborhood. With provocative interviews and a quick, witty combination of editing and cinematography, the film illuminates what logos really mean out on the street.

Knock Off documents an underground economy of people who resist the demands of our globalized culture of signs by using the science of branding against itself.