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spacetime coordinates: New York’s upstate wilderness, one year after an airborne infection decimates the world’s population
Here Alone is a post-apocalyptic film directed by Rod Blackhurst. The film stars Lucy Walters, Gina Piersanti, Adam David Thompson and Shane West.
O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization (Polish: O-bi, o-ba: Koniec cywilizacji) is a 1985 Polish drama science fiction film written and directed by Piotr Szulkin.
Starring Jerzy Stuhr and Krystyna Janda, the film takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where humans live in an isolated vault which is falling apart. Their only grain of hope lies in a vessel known as The Ark which is said to be on its way to rescue them…
Fantastic Planet (French: La Planète sauvage, Czech: Divoká planeta, lit. The Wild Planet) is a 1973 animated science fiction film directed by René Laloux and written by Laloux and Roland Topor. Topor also completed the film’s production design and it was animated at Jiří Trnka Studio in Prague. The entire animation team was composed of women.
The film was an international co-production between companies from France and Czechoslovakia (The animation was started in Prague but had to be moved to Paris to avoid interference by the Communist authorities who were in power at the time).
The allegorical story, about humans living on a strange planet dominated by giant humanoid aliens (blue Draags) who consider them animals, is based on the 1957 novel Oms en série by French writer Stefan Wul. (wiki) imdb Interpretations
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28 Days Later is a 2002 British post-apocalyptic horror film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland, and starring Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, and Christopher Eccleston. The plot depicts the breakdown of society following the accidental release of a highly contagious virus and focuses upon the struggle of four survivors to cope with the destruction of the life they once knew. (wiki)
28 Weeks Later is a 2007 science fiction horror film co-written and directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. A sequel to Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), it stars Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, Catherine McCormack, Imogen Poots, and Idris Elba. The plot depicts the efforts of NATO military forces to salvage a safe zone in London following the events in 28 Days Later, the consequence of two young siblings breaking protocol to find their infected mother, and the resulting reintroduction of the highly contagious virus to the safe zone. (wiki) imdb
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spacetime coordinates: 2046 – 1960s Hong Kong – Singapore
Paragraph 201 in the Passengers’ Guide warns that Area 1224- 1225 is especially cold. The train heating won’t be strong enough. Passengers are advised to hug each other to keep warm.
2046 is a 2004 Hong Kong romantic drama film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. It is a loose sequel to Wong’s films Days of Being Wild (1990) and In the Mood for Love (2000). It follows the aftermath of Chow Mo-wan’s unconsummated affair with Su Li-zhen in 1960s Hong Kong but also includes some science fiction elements and makes frequent references to the date of December 24 or Christmas Eve, on which many significant events in the film occur.
The main character (Tony Leung) writes science fiction stories, in which 2046 is a popular year and place to which people travel through time. The stories are titled 2046 and later 2047 (a collaboration with Faye Wong’s character). The year 2046 has its own significance for Hong Kong. It is 49 years after the handover of Hong Kong by the British on 1 July 1997. At the time of handover, the Mainland government promised fifty years of self-regulation for the former British colony. The year 2046 references the moment before Hong Kong’s special, self-regulated status ends.
The title may also be a reference to the Twilight Zone episode “The Lonely“, about a man sentenced to solitary confinement on a distant asteroid beginning in the year 2046. The isolated inmate falls in love with a gynoid that was delivered to keep him company. This plot structure parallels some of the science fiction motifs in Wong’s 2046. (wiki)
Gattaca is a 1997 American science fiction film written and directed by Andrew Niccol. It stars Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, with Jude Law, Loren Dean, Ernest Borgnine, Gore Vidal, and Alan Arkin appearing in supporting roles. The film presents a biopunk vision of a future society driven by eugenics where potential children are conceived through genetic selection to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. The film centers on Vincent Freeman, played by Hawke, who was conceived outside the eugenics program and struggles to overcome genetic discrimination to realize his dream of traveling into space.
The movie draws on concerns over reproductive technologies which facilitate eugenics, and the possible consequences of such technological developments for society. It also explores the idea of destiny and the ways in which it can and does govern lives. Characters in Gattaca continually battle both with society and with themselves to find their place in the world and who they are destined to be according to their genes.
The film’s title is based on the letters G, A, T, and C, which stand for guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine, the four nucleobases of DNA. The movie uses a swimming treadmill in the opening minutes to punctuate the swimming and futuristic themes. The futuristic turbine cars are based on 1960s car models like Rover P6, Citroën DS19 and Studebaker Avanti, and futuristic buildings represent modern architecture of the 1950s. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 2017 – 2019 Los Angeles
The Running Man is a 1987 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, María Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, and Richard Dawson. It is very loosely based on the 1982 novel of the same name written by Stephen King and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The film’s story, set in a dystopian United States between 2017 and 2019, is about a television show called The Running Man, where convicted criminal “runners” must escape death at the hands of professional killers.
Original director Andrew Davis was fired one week into filming and replaced by Glaser. Schwarzenegger has stated this was a “terrible decision”, as Glaser “shot the movie like it was a television show, losing all the deeper themes”. (wiki)
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