Speed of Life, originally named “Superheroes,” takes place in present-day New York City and revolves around Sammy, a pensive, 13-year-old redheaded kid from Brooklyn who goes by the name of Sammer. Sammer frequently rides the subway into Manhattan with friends in order to steal video cameras, cameras and other media equipment from naïve tourists. He lives with his partially blind foster mother and his father, with whom he is estranged, has reputedly moved to Alaska. Sammer poses a plan to leave the city as soon as he is able. His idea is to save money, get out of probation, help his foster mother regain her sight, and then travel to exotic destinations, inspired by the content of the stolen videotapes, which he watches religiously. Sammer, who’s a quirky teenager and prone to fantasy in the first place, is extremely influenced by the people and the places he watches on video and the footage found on other people’s home videos. He becomes a consummate outsider, with the stolen films only aiding in his daydreams of getting out of the working class neighborhood he’s in. Ultimately, he uses these images he’s stolen to assemble his own collection of narratives. Director Radtke employs various camera techniques, plus he incorporates totally different types of cameras (16mm, super-8, etc.) to create a unique film aesthetic. The filmmaker either inadvertently or purposefully self-references, since the film’s characters are watching life through lenses and viewfinders in much of the film’s time (exactly like a director does). Ultimately, Speed of Life is the story of ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations. The “play within a play” concept, or in this case, “the movie within the movie within the movie” [the stolen tapes are the first layer, Sammer’s viewing of them a second, and then audiences watching Sammer watch them the third] adds a very philosophical dimension to the average film watching experience. Watching life through someone else’s vision (what audiences do each and every time they go see a film) somewhat blurs the line between being real and being film-real, the latter category however, being the only one in which you can rewind, fast-forward or replay. Or is it? This movie questions these very philosophical distinctions.