Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa (2007)

Synopsis
In the arid waste of the New Mexico desert, 25 miles from the nearest down and deep into a territory no one is likely to find by accident, there is a makeshift community populated by societal dropouts who for a variety of reasons have chosen to live outside the influence of mainstream America. The folks who live on this New Mexico mesa include self-reliant retirees, embittered war veterans, gun enthusiasts, drug addicts, and dozens of others who would be described as rugged individualists by some or kooks by others. Filmmakers Jeremy Stulberg and Randy Stulberg were granted rare access to a community that has willfully cut itself off from the world, and Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa is a documentary about the people who have chosen to live in the middle of nowhere. The residents of the mesa prefer not to involve the police in their affairs -- not surprising for people who are often heavily armed and destroy old cars for fun -- and they live by a few simple rules, most important being "Don't steal from your neighbor" and "Don't shoot your neighbor." However, some new arrivals on the mesa begin testing the patience of their neighbors as a handful of anarchist teenage runaways foolishly steal food from others when their own pantry runs dry. Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa was screened in competition at the 2007 Silverdocs Film Festival, a festival for documentary cinema sponsored in part by the American Film Institute. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide