1905

Kingdom (TV Series 2019– )

spacetime coordinates: Set during Korea’s Joseon Dynasty, three years after the Imjin War. (the Japanese invasions of Korea 1592–1598 – three years after the famous “Battle of Unpo Wetland”)

Kingdom (Korean: 킹덤; RR: Kingdeom) is a 2019 South Korean political period horror thriller streaming television series, created and written by Kim Eun-hee and directed by Kim Seong-hun and Park In-je. The series is adapted from the webcomic series The Kingdom of the Gods, which was authored by Kim Eun-hee and drawn by Yang Kyung-il.

Set on a fictional, medieval-inspired Joseon, Kingdom explores the story of a Crown Prince, as he sets to investigate the source of a mysterious plague that begins to ravage his country. It stars Ju Ji-hoon, Ryu Seung-ryong, Bae Doo-na, Kim Sang-ho, Kim Sung-kyu and Kim Hye-jun. // wiki // imdb)

A special feature-length episode of the series, titled

Kingdom: Ashin of the North (TV Episode 2021)

was released on July 23, 2021 and focused on the supporting character Ashin played by Jun Ji-hyun.

The episode acts as a sidequel to the second season of Kingdom and explores the backstory of Ashin, the mysterious heir of the Northern Seongjeoyain tribe village, and the origin of the resurrection plant that triggered an unprecedented cascade of tragic events that swept through the Kingdom of Joseon. // wiki // imdb

1886 – Gaia (2021)

timespace coordinates: 2020’s Tsitsikamma forest in South Africa

Gaia is an 2021 South African eco horror thriller film directed and produced by Jaco Bouwer, from a screenplay by Tertius Kapp. It stars Monique Rockman, Carel Nel, Alex van Dyk, and Anthony Oseyemi. (wiki)

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

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“The South African covid lock-down was announced one week into the shoot, and the crew had to pack up the whole show. Some went back to Cape Town, some stayed behind in the forest. Everyone drifted in uncertainty for a long time. The content of the film had such an uncanny resonance to what was happening in the world.” (trivia)

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1883 – Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

timespace coordinates: 1920’s (filmed over a period of about 3 years) – urban life in the Soviet cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odessa.

The film Man with a Movie Camera represents
AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC COMMUNICATION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a film without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCENARIO
(a film without a scenario)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF THEATRE
(a film without actors, without sets, etc.)
This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature.

Man with a Movie Camera (Russian: Человек с кино-аппаратом, romanized: Chelovek s kino-apparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet Ukrainian silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov and edited by his wife Yelizaveta Svilova.

Man with a Movie Camera was largely dismissed upon its initial release; the work’s fast cutting, self-reflexivity, and emphasis on form over content were all subjects of criticism. In the British Film Institute’s 2012 Sight & Sound poll, however, film critics voted it the 8th greatest film ever made, and it was later named the best documentary of all time in the same magazine. (wiki)

imdb   /   the kinoks

1864 – Shopping (1994)

spacetime coordinates: (near future) 1990’s  London

SHOPPING, Jude Law, Danny Newman, Fraser James, Sadie Frost, 1994, cruising in London

Shopping is a 1994 British action crime drama film written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson about a group of British teenagers who indulge in joyriding and ramraiding. It was notably the first major leading role for actor Jude Law, who first met his co-star and future wife Sadie Frost on the set of the film. (wiki)

imdb

1846 – Æon Flux

timespace coordinates: Æon Flux (imdb) is set in a surreal German Expressionist style futuristic universe of the year 7698 AD. Æon Flux is comprised of a bizarre post-apocalyptic dystopian world of a barren wasteland, mutant creatures, clones, and robots within the last two border wall cities of Monica and Bregna (similar to the Berlin wall) somewhere in former Eastern Europe after an environmental catastrophe occured that wiped out 99 percent of the global population. The title character is a tall, sexy, dominatrix scantily-clad secret agent from the city of Monica, skilled in espionage, assassination and acrobatics. Her mission is to infiltrate the strongholds of the city of Bregna, which is led by her sworn enemy, and sometimes lover, Trevor Goodchild, the technocratic dictator of Bregna. The two sister cities engage in a futile never ending war for ideological supremacy; while Monica represents a dynamic nihilistic anarchist society where rules don’t exist, Bregna embodies a centralized scientific planned Orwellian police state. The names of their respective characters reflect this: Flux as the self-directed agent from Monica and Goodchild as the self-appointed leader of Bregna.

The term Æon comes from the Gnostic notion of Æons as emanations of the God, who come in male/female pairs (here Flux and Goodchild).

Æon Flux /ˌiːɒn ˈflʌks/ is an American avant-garde science fiction animated television series that aired on MTV from November 30, 1991 until October 10, 1995, with film, comic book, and video game adaptations following thereafter. It premiered on MTV’s Liquid Television experimental animation show, as a six-part serial of short films, followed in 1992 by five individual short episodes. In 1995, a season of ten half-hour episodes aired as a stand-alone series.  Æon Flux was created by American animator Peter Chung. Each Episode plots have elements of social science fiction, biopunk, allegory, dystopian fiction, spy fiction, psychological drama, postmodern visual, psychedelic imagery and Gnostic symbolism.

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timespace coordinates: In 2011, a deadly pathogenic virus has killed 99% of the Earth’s population, forcing the survivors to regroup and scatter across the Earth. 404 years later, in late 2415, all of the survivors inhabit Bregna, a dystopian walled futuristic city-state, which is ruled by a congress of scientists.

The live-action movie Æon Flux (imdb), loosely based upon the series and starring Charlize Theron, was released in theaters on December 2, 2005, preceded in November of that year by a tie-in video game of the same name (Gameplay) based mostly on the movie but containing some elements of the original TV series. (wiki)

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 Diet Pepsi commercial  “Something Wrong?”

1842 – Amundsen (2019)

timespace coordinates: Amundsen’s South Pole expedition 1910 – 1911, North Polar Expeditions and The Northeast Passage 1918 – 1926

Amundsen is a Norwegian film, released on 15 February 2019, that details the life of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (1872 – 1928). It was directed by Espen Sandberg and was distributed in Norway by SF Studios. (wiki)

no-nb_02780 010

imdb

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF PEOPLE LOSING THEIR MINDS IN ANTARCTICA

1820 – Brave New World (2020 TV series)

timespace coordinates: (post-apocalyptic) New London / The Savage Lands (amusement park) The series “imagines an utopian society that has achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself.” In an update of the original novel, an artificial intelligence system named Indra also connects citizens via a wireless network.

Brave New World is an American social science fiction drama series. It is loosely based on the classic novel of the same name by Aldous Huxley. It premiered on the NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock on July 15, 2020, In October 2020, the series was canceled after one season. (wiki)

imdb   /  The Jewel Net of Indra