1201 – Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

timespace coordinates: equatorial South America – Iron City – 2563, 300 years after Earth is devastated by a catastrophic interplanetary war known as “The Fall”

Alita: Battle Angel is a 2019 American cyberpunk science fiction action film based on the 1990s Japanese manga series Gunnm (known as Battle Angel Alita in the English translation) by Yukito Kishiro. Directed by Robert Rodriguez, the film is co-produced by James Cameron and written by Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis. Rosa Salazar stars as the titular heroine Alita, an amnesiac cyborg girl who sets out to learn about her destiny after she awakens in a new body with no past memory of who she is. Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley and Keean Johnson also star in supporting roles. \scored by Junkie XL\ (wiki)

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The post-apocalyptic architecture in sci-fi blockbuster Alita: Battle Angel is a diverse fusion of Panama’s vibrant ruins and Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City, say its creators. (dezeen)

City of Imagination: Kowloon Walled City 20 Years Later

1197 – The 5th Wave (2016)

timespace coordinates: 2010’s Dayton, Ohio / Earth

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child. When I became an adult, I put away childish things”. Colonel Vosch

The 5th Wave is a 2016 American science fiction action film directed by J Blakeson, with a screenplay by Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner, based on Rick Yancey’s 2013 novel of the same name. The film stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, Alex Roe, Maria Bello, Maika Monroe, and Liev Schreiber. (wiki)

The 5th Wave novel  is the first in The 5th Wave trilogy, followed by The Infinite Sea (narration shifts to Ringer’s point of view) and The Last Star.

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1188

pandora’s-promise

www.lightpollutionmap.info/

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Today, man has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an ego. When the ego works upon the astral body, ennobling it intellectually, morally, and spiritually, then the astral body becomes the spirit self or manas. That has as of now hardly begun, but when in the future it will have been completed, when man will have transformed his whole astral body, then will his astral body become physically luminous. Just as the seed holds the whole plant within it, so does your astral body hold within it the seed of light. This will stream out into the world of space, its development and continuing formation effected by man as he ever more purifies and ennobles his astral body. Our earth will transform itself into other planets. Today it is dark. Were one to observe it from space, then one would see that it appears bright only through the reflected light of the sun. Someday, however, it will be luminous, luminous through the fact that human beings will then have transformed their whole astral bodies. The totality of astral bodies will stream out as light into world space, as it was also at the time of the old Sun. It had higher beings at their human stage, and these beings had luminous astral bodies. The Bible, quite correctly, calls these beings, Spirits of Light or Elohim.

https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA101/English/AP1972/19070913p01.html

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1185 – Serenity (2005)

timespace coordinates: In the 26th century, humanity has left an overpopulated Earth to colonize a new solar system. The central planets formed the Alliance and won a war against the outer planet Independents—those who resisted joining the Alliance.

Serenity is a 2005 American science fiction action film written and directed by Joss Whedon and stars Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

It is a continuation of Whedon’s short-lived 2002 Fox television series Firefly and stars the same cast, taking place after the events of the final episode. Set in 2517, Serenity is the story of the captain and crew of Serenity, a “Firefly-class” spaceship. The captain and first mate are veterans of the Unification War, having fought on the losing Independent side against the Alliance. Their lives of smuggling and cargo-running are interrupted by a psychic passenger who harbors a dangerous secret. (wiki)

Session 416   /  Cultural impact   /  Themes and cultural allusions   /  Cancelled sequel

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Fruity Oaty Bar! Commercial

1179 – The Atomic Cafe (1982)

timespace coordinates: 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s United States, the Marshall Islands

The Atomic Cafe is a 1982 American documentary film produced and directed by Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty and Pierce Rafferty. In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States’ National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

The film covers the beginnings of the era of nuclear warfare, created from a broad range of archival material from the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s including newsreel clips, television news footage, U.S. government-produced films (including military training films), advertisements, television and radio programs. News footage reflected the prevailing understanding of the media and public.

Though the topic of atomic holocaust is a grave matter, The Atomic Cafe approaches it with black humor. Much of the humor derives from the modern audience’s reaction to the old training films, such as the Duck and Cover film shown in schools.

The Atomic Cafe was released at the height of nostalgia and cynicism in America. By 1982, Americans lost much of their faith in their government following the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and the seemingly never-ending arms race with the Soviet Union. The Atomic Cafe reflects and reinforces this idea as it exposes how the atomic bomb’s dangers were downplayed and how the government used films to shape public opinion.

Bob Mielke, in “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Nuclear Test Documentary” (Film Quarterly) discusses the release of The Atomic Cafe: “This satire feature was released at the height of the nuclear freeze movement (which was in turn responding to the Reagan administration’s surreal handling of the arms race.)”

Patricia Aufderheide, in Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction touches on the significance of The Atomic Cafe as a window into the past of government propaganda and disinformation during the years following the advent of the Atomic Bomb. “Propaganda, also known as disinformation, public diplomacy, and strategic communication, continues to be an important tool for governments. But stand-alone documentary is no longer an important part of public relations campaigns aimed at the general public.” (wiki)

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Bikini Atoll

Because the site bears direct tangible evidence of the nuclear tests conducted there amid the paradoxical tropical location, UNESCO determined that the atoll symbolizes the dawn of the nuclear age and named it a World Heritage Site on 3 August 2010.

Bikini Atoll has conserved direct tangible evidence … conveying the power of … nuclear tests, i.e. the sunken ships sent to the bottom of the lagoon by the tests in 1946 and the gigantic Bravo crater. Equivalent to 7,000 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb, the tests had major consequences on the geology and natural environment of Bikini Atoll and on the health of those who were exposed to radiation. Through its history, the atoll symbolises the dawn of the nuclear age, despite its paradoxical image of peace and of earthly paradise.

1177 – Fukushima: A Nuclear Story (2015 Documentary, News)

“A four-year long journey in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and twofold tragedy that befell Japan in the March 2011, directed by Matteo Gagliardi, written by Christine Reinhold, Matteo Gagliardi e Pio d’Emilia.  (…) “Fukushima: A Nuclear Story” offers a completely original point of view on the tragedy, narrated by the actor Willem Dafoe in the English version.

Christine Reinhold and Matteo Gagliardi combine different elements in the film: The story of a journalist, Pio d’Emilia, who refused to abandon his job even when the nuclear danger was at its greatest; the doubts and fears of man in the days following the threefold tragedy; the search for the truth regarding what really happened inside the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The former prime minister Naoto Kan, in a previously unreleased interview, will reveal how Tokyo, and probably the whole of Japan, avoided a much bigger tragedy thanks to sheer luck.

The director describes the tragic events using Manga Drawings, to make them more comprehensible to our perception (…)” – vimeo

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see also https://timespacewarps.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/868-william-t-vollmann/

1175 – Chernobyl (miniseries 2019)

timespace coordinates: 1986 – 1987 Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic / Soviet Union

(DISTURBING CONTENT)

Chernobyl is a historical drama television miniseries created and written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck (Stakka Bo). The series a co-production of HBO and Sky UK depicting the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of April 1986 and the unprecedented cleanup efforts that followed. It features an ensemble cast led by Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson, and Paul Ritter. The miniseries is based in large part on the recollections of Pripyat locals, as told by Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich in her book Voices from Chernobyl. (wiki)

historical accuracy

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