spacetime coordinates: the near future. Zone 414, a dark colony of humanoids known as “the city of robots.”
Tag: indie
1948 – Tigerland (2000)
spacetime coordinates: September 1971, Tigerland (the name of a U.S. Army training camp during the mid-1960s to early 1970s, located at Fort Polk, Louisiana as part of the U.S. Army Advanced Infantry Training Center. As often the last stop for new infantrymen on their way to Vietnam, Tigerland was established in humid and muggy Fort Polk in order to closely mimic the environmental conditions of South Vietnam.)
Tigerland is a 2000 American war drama film directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Colin Farrell as Private Roland Bozz. It takes place in a training camp for soldiers to be sent to the Vietnam War. (wiki)
1947 – EarthNight (2019 video game)
“Dragons have taken over the Earth, and humanity has fled to space. You must help Stanley and Sydney skydive back to Earth while careening across the backs of massive, snake-like dragons as they soar high above the planet, all while an original chiptune soundtrack pounds away in the background. Every moment is intense and layered with intricacy.
Explore five layers of the atmosphere all brought to life by artist Mattahan, who meticulously painted each of EarthNight’s 10,000+ frames of art and animation.
We intend to change the way you think about auto-runner games by designing on a much grander scale. EarthNight is currently available on Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Steam.” www.cleaversoft.com
1920 – Pig (2021)
spacetime coordinates: late 2010’s Oregon forests / Portland
Pig is a 2021 American drama film co-written and directed by Michael Sarnoski in his directorial debut. It stars Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, and Adam Arkin, and follows a truffle forager whose beloved truffle-finding pig goes missing. (wiki)
1907 – The Alchemist Cookbook (2016)
spacetime coordinates: woods of Michigan sometimes after 2000
The Alchemist Cookbook is a horror film directed by Joel Potrykus. The film was released on the 7th of October 2016 in New York City. Sean” is an outcast who isolates himself from society to practice alchemy, accompanied by only his cat. As his mental condition deteriorates the line of what is real and what is not becomes blurred, and as his home kitchen chemistry turns to black magic, he instead summons a demon.The cast only contains two human characters starring Ty Hickson as Sean and Amari Cheatom as Cortez. Other notable characters include the Cat Kaspar and a possum. The cast is notable as it consists of only African American actors, a conscious choice to “take the white people out of the movie” by the director Joel Potrykus. (wiki)
There is no other movie about contemporary alchemy I would recommend more than this one. In a sense this genre breaking of horror, black commedy, supernatural thriller, demonic possession – sez something about the alchemical dabbling of its director that manages to establish these lonely figures not just as figures of pity, of just misguided or heavily medicalized labour force of today.
They all that as well as 21st c eremites, forever loners and over-qualified loosers that try to achieve the impossible which nowadays is fairly everything that was deemed possible only a few generations ago such as a decent job, some sort of stability and free health care.
What they get, is what Michael Taussig identified long ago in South America Columbia coca plantations as the new demonology of capital that maltreats, transform labour into dead labour, and possess everything. This demonology is at large in the woods of Michigan as well. Oxy and other Perdue Pharma products that have been choreographing the pain epidemic in the US Midwest are the sort of additives, the transformative blackout addictive and legal (FDA approved) substances, readily available alchemy that leaves nobody untouched. Potrykus seems to never aim for re-enchantment but somehow, in the midst of disaster and wilderness keeps us close to the low residues of broken quests.
And this is not the quest of Silicon Valley, of quantum computing or of immortalist future-addicted entrepreneurs, but of somebody who is trying to make ends meet and uses the most banal, lowly substances (fast food trash) – peanut butter, Doritos, all the toxic Cola sugary drinks dirge to enact the last invocation, to achieve some sort of disturbed and horrifying immortality in front of continuous demonic attacks, paranoia and hidden commands.
Being prone to nevrosis and increasing bouts of bipolar trouble (what was previously officially labeled as obsessive compulsive) gets a different urgency by being at the center of transformative and metamorphic processes. Some antrhopologists made an important observation – that there is lots of historians, people researching history and aware of changing historical timelines, but there is few who try to understand the processual nature of things, how one things becomes another and under what circumstances. How the change keeps on changing in its turn as Whitehead would say. There are certain alchemical processes at work here that keep on deteriorating, mutating and benumbing bodies and minds. In a sense there is nothing raw, everything is already alchemically modified the instant it is in contact with the elements, with weathering, oxidative or enzymatic non-human reactions. Yet we have arrived from the processed (pickled by bacteria and yeasts, dried by the sun, salted etc) to the age of ultra-processed products.
At the same time, it is an endless delight to compare and find parallels btw early imagery of alchemy and alchemists and this contemporary disciple.
1901 – How It Ends (2021)
spacetime coordinates: 2020, LA
How It Ends is a 2021 American comedy-drama film written, directed, and produced by Zoe Lister-Jones and her husband Daryl Wein. It stars Lister-Jones, Cailee Spaeny, Olivia Wilde, Fred Armisen, Helen Hunt, Lamorne Morris and Nick Kroll. Filmed during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 (wiki)
1885 – Sound of My Voice (2011)
timespace coordinates: 2010 Los Angeles
Sound of My Voice is a 2011 American psychological thriller film directed by Zal Batmanglij in his feature directorial debut and starring Christopher Denham, Nicole Vicius and Brit Marling. The plot focuses on two documentary filmmakers who attempt to expose a cult led by a charismatic leader (Marling) who claims to be from the future. The film was written by Batmanglij and Marling.
The film was originally intended to be the first installment of a trilogy. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 