Lies

"People lie about their stinky wounds," says one guy, an observation which initially sounds pretty weird until he further explains that we lie to cover up perceived inadequacies and emotional sore spots. It's one of the intriguing bits of street philosophy found on Carla Leshne's enjoyable experimental piece Lies, which combines man, woman, and child on the street interviews with TV commercial clips and some gruesome imagery from Vietnam and the Holocaust. Why do people lie? Leshne asks, and people have a plethora of ready answers for her: "most people are just mediocre chumps," so they lie to mask the mundane reality of their lives; kids invariably lie because they "don't want to get in trouble;" government and media lie because "our system is structured for lying." But there's a romantic side to lying too, and some of the interviewees from both genders are proud of their ability to snow the opposite sex. While the changes in tone (not to mention the text floating across the screen and the video special effects will bother viewers unfamiliar with the occasionally anarchic structure of experimental video, the quirky and spontaneously humorous interviews make this a worthwhile video for those who tell little white lies all the way up to those who tell amazing gargantuan whoppers. Recommended. (R. Pitman