Thanks to the British Film Institute and George Eastman House for their
assistance with this series.
All films are double-featured, except for January 2 screenings.
Hello, it's January 1, 2001. Welcome to the future. Have you been here before?
Ever since the cinema's invention, it's been giving us visions of our future.
Utopias, dystopias, dirty, clogged futures and clean, efficient futures,
happy futures and nightmarish futures, crazy futures and buttoned-down
futures. And now that we're here, we thought that it might be a good idea to
reach into the cinema's history and show you a prognostication from every
decade it's been alive. From the ecstatic visions of silent cinema to the
perfect societies and pulpy serials of the 30s and 40s, from the crazy quilt
of Elio Petri's The 10th Victim in the 60s to the mangy visions of the 70s,
from the deified Blade Runner of the 80s to the misunderstood
STARSHIP TROOPERS of the 90s. Come and marvel at the mechanical wonder of the last
century in the first digital days of the new decade, the new century and the
new millennium.
A TRIP TO THE MOON
Georges Méliès, France,1902;14m
Pioneering film magician Méliès adapted this sci-fi entertainment from both
Jules Verne's From Earth to the Moon and H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon.
Its surreally comic elements include a line of cheery chorus girls who load
the moon "bullet" into the space gun; the man in the moon getting shot in the
eye; and a statue to the space travellers' greatness already being raised as
they land. (Méliès also starred in this charming film.)
with
LA JETÉE
Chris Marker, 1962; 28m
In the aftermath of the Third World War, a man with an uncanny ability to
remember, haunted throughout his life by a particular memory from his
boyhood, is recruited by scientists to slip through time and possibly alter
the course of history. Cinematic adventurer Chris Marker's astonishing 1962
extended short (remade--questionably but respectfully--by Terry Gilliam as
12 Monkeys) is a "photo-roman" on film, a story told in a series of still images
and one sudden moving image. A genuinely visionary work that deals with
nothing less than the nature of time itself, LA JETÉE is a uniquely haunting
experience, a masterpiece of science fiction and a masterpiece of poetic
cinema.
Sat Jan 1: 4 & 8; Thurs Jan 6: 1 & 5
Note: LA JETÉE will be shown with
WORLD WITHOUT END on Sun Jan 2 at 8:15
STALKER
Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR, 1979; 161m
A science-fiction tale that unwinds in the environs of the soul, STALKER
takes the form of a nightmarish quest for nothing less than Truth: a writer
and a scientist follow a shaven-headed "stalker" into verboten territory, a
dangerous wilderness called the Zone. Tarkovsky makes "reality" yield up
abstract images of startling originality, especially in his mystical vision
of landscape-places found only in humankind's spiritual Baedeker. A director
who truly grasped the aesthetic power of color, Tarkovsky bathes this
unforgettable
pilgrimage in eerie sepia hues.
Sat Jan 1: 5 & 9; Thurs Jan 6: 2
(Also shown with DARK STAR Thurs Jan 5: 3 & 8)
with
DARK STAR
John Carpenter, USA, 1971; 83m
The feature debut of America's greatest living genre filmmaker is a bare
bones, no-frills satirical adventure movie set in a tin can of a spaceship.
Four bored, juvenile space cowboys are on a mission to cruise the solar
system in search of unstable planets and blow them to smithereens. Their
commander, long dead, occasionally manages to give them orders from his
deep-freeze crypt. Carpenter's no-budget extension of his last USC student
project is a wonder of imagination and invention, and a rebuke to the
post-2001 over-art-directed space operas that were then
clogging movie screens. By turns tough, whimsical and suspenseful, Dark Star
is a true "indie," long before anyone ever heard of the word. With writer Dan
O'Bannon as Pinback.
Sun Jan 2: 6:30
Wed Jan 5: 2:50 & 6:50
Jan 5 only: with
THE IMPOSSIBLE VOYAGE
Georges Méliès, France, 1904; 24m
"A high-speed train takes off from the summit of a mountain, travels through
space and falls into the sea before returning to dry land, all achieved with
Méliès' repertoire of primitive but ingenious F/X, including stop-motion
photography, split-screen multiple exposures, giant moving cut-outs and live
action combined with full-scale mechanical backgrounds." -John Brosnan,
Future Tense.
WORLD WITHOUT END
Edward Bernds, USA, 1956; 80m
Heading back from Mars, a pioneering spaceship accelerates to such a
phenomenal rate the crew blacks out-and naturally, they wake up on a strange
plane which turns out to be Earth, far in the future. Centuries after nuclear
war, the world is now populated by hideously deformed "Mutates," from whom
the remnants of humanity hide underground. Love among the ruins and war
against the mutants ensue-resulting in not-unexpected sturm und drang. The
first American feature film to deal with time travel, World Without End will
remind you a bit of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (hunk Rod Taylor shows up in
both movies).
Sun Jan 2: 8:15; Mon Jan 3: 1, 5:10 & 9:20
STARSHIP TROOPERS
Paul Verhoeven, USA, 1997; 129m
In the guise of a thrill-packed kiddie action movie, the ever-mischievous
Paul Verhoeven gave us this-a thrill-packed satire of globalization, based on
a Robert Heinlein novel. It is the future, and the entire world is an
American fascist Utopia. In a surge of jingoistic/hormonal fervor, blonde,
blue-eyed Johnny Rico (Caspar Van Dien) and his friends (hometown: Buenos
Aires) decide to join the Starship Troopers. When an alien bug invasion
reduces half the earth to cinders, they are forced to go into battle. From
the film's cartoon physics and clean-cut non-actors to its pitch-black humor
("Medic!" screams drill instructor Clancy Brown-he's just pinned a recruit's
hand to the wall with a hunting knife) to the genuine, blood-curdling terror
of its combat scenes, STARSHIP TROOPERS is a film that tries to have it every
which way and pulls it off: funny, horrifying, outrageous and, in a
politically pointed way, visionary.
Sun Jan 2: 4pm;
Mon Jan 3: 2:40 & 6:50
THE ? MOTORIST
Walter R. Booth, UK, 1906; 10m
In this British attempt to out-Méliès Méliès, director Booth conjures up a
magical glowing-white motorcar that dismembers policemen, drives up
buildings, flies through outer space and occasionally shape-shifts into a
horse and carriage!
with
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
William Cameron Menzies, UK, 1936; 92m
H.G. Wells adapted this epic film from his own essay "The Shape of Things to
Come" (1933) and William Cameron Menzies (superb art designer turned
director) created a London-like Everytown in future peacetime and then war.
(Shot four years before WWII and the London blitz, SHAPE shows Everytown
under shockingly realistic air assault.) After 30 years' of devastating
hostilities, civilization collapses, the survivors enslaved by a barbarian
Boss (Ralph Richardson). A messiah arrives in the form of Raymond Massey, who
promises a brave new world powered by Science-automation, artificial
sunlight, and high-tech telecommunications. Half a century later, the only
fly in the ointment of progress is a pesky artist (Cedric Hardwick), a
Luddite who denounces science as dehumanizing. An authentically futuristic
vision-in appearance and philosophy.
Tues Jan 4: 1, 5 & 9:05
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH
Ubaldo Ragona & Sidney Salkow, USA /Italy, 1964; 86m
Vincent Price shows considerable acting chops in this disturbing evocation of
loneliness, alienation and oddly religious imagery-adapted from Richard
Matheson's terrific novel I Am Legend. A nasty plague wipes out everyone in
the world ...except scientist Price who's somehow immune. Worse yet, the dead
won't stay dead: they've turned into vampires whom Price spends day after day
systematically staking and burning. Just when it looks he might have found an
uninfected Eve, something like transubstantiation and crucifixion changes
Price's anti-Eden forever. Low-budget black-and-white art that influenced
George Romero's Night of the Living Dead; remade in 1971 as The Omega Man
with Charlton Heston playing the inadvertent Christ-figure.
Tues Jan 4: 3 & 7:10
Wed Jan 5: 1, 5 & 9
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