Tag: utopia
604 – Black Panther (2018)
505 – Downsizing (2017)
spacetime coordinates: near future Norway / Nebraska
Downsizing is a 2017 american science fiction / high-concept social satire / comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne, written by Payne and Jim Taylor and starring Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, and Kristen Wiig. It tells the story of a couple who decide to undertake a newly-invented procedure to shrink their bodies so they can start a new life in an experimental community.
Starting with Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, there exists a rich literature as well as many films dealing with mini-humans usually called dwarfs. The idea of shrinking human bodies in order to reduce the consumption of raw materials available on earth necessary for the life of mankind was presented for the first time in the novel Das Miniatom-Projekt (2006) by Richard M. Weiner. In the novel the miniaturization takes place at CERN by decreasing the sizes of atoms with the help of the world’s biggest particle accelerator, while in the Downsizing film the shrinkage is performed by bio-medical methods, by decreasing the sizes of cells.
0479 – Human Flow (2017)
Human Flow is a 2017 German documentary film co-produced and directed by Ai Weiwei about the current global refugee crisis. Ai Weiwei also comes from a past of displacement; his entire family was exiled to an isolate village of Xinjiang in the Gobi desert due to his parents being writers in the midst of the Cultural Revolution in China.
Like Human Flow, Ai has created similar art installations such as the “Law of the Journey” that features a 200 foot inflatable boat carrying 258 refugee figures, “Laundromat” where he filled a New York City gallery with discarded clothing and personal notes left by refugees in a camp in Idomeni Greece, and the recreation of the captured image of Aylan Kurdi, the young Syrian who drowned off the coast of Turkey.
0408 – Tomorrowland (2015)
spacetime coordinates: 1964 – 2015 Florida / Houston / New York / Paris
Tomorrowland (subtitled A World Beyond in some regions) is a 2015 American science-fiction mystery adventure film directed and co-written by Brad Bird. Bird co-wrote the film’s screenplay with Damon Lindelof, from an original story treatment by Bird, Lindelof and Jeff Jensen. The film stars George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson and Raffey Cassidy. In the film, a disillusioned genius inventor (Clooney) and a teenage science enthusiast (Robertson) embark to an ambiguous alternate dimension known as “Tomorrowland”, where their actions directly affect their own world.
Walt Disney Pictures originally announced the film in June 2011 under the working title 1952, and later retitled it to Tomorrowland, after the futuristic themed land found at Disney theme parks. In drafting their story, Bird and Lindelof took inspiration from the progressive cultural movements of the Space Age, as well as Walt Disney‘s optimistic philosophy of the future, notably his conceptual vision for the planned community known as EPCOT.
0406 – Travellers and Magicians (2003)
spacetime coordinates: 2000’s Bhutan
Travellers and Magicians (Dzongkha: ཆང་ཧུབ་ཐེངས་གཅིག་གི་འཁྲུལ་སྣང) is a 2003 Bhutanese Dzongkha language film written and directed by Khyentse Norbu, a reincarnate lama of Tibetan Buddhism, who is also known as Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. The movie is the first feature film shot entirely in the Kingdom of Bhutan. The majority of the cast are not professional actors; Dendup, a well-known Bhutanese radio actor and producer, is the exception. This movie is among the first to take a Himalayan Buddhist perspective. (New aspects)
TimeSpace Warps 