Trent Film Society is pleased to announce its Sci-Fi Summer Series!
We will be exploring science fiction (SF) as it has been visually represented over a total of 110 years, beginning with a film made in 1902 and proceeding in chronological order to 2012.
This is an opportunity to see how the development of cinematic techniques offers insights into human projections of the future, and how these techniques are characterized by their own place in history.
SF is characterized by many generic features. Most obvious is an awareness of futurity, as trends between the past and present are recognized and applied to the unravelling of the future.
SF also pulls on the environment of technoscience as human experience is shaped by developing technologies. Emphasis is placed on interactions with difference, otherness, and alterity. This can range from conservative interactions to open and welcoming explorations of difference (represented through reactions to robots, aliens, and mutants).
Otherness is typical in social critiques, acting as a mirror of society’s relationships to racial, class, and gender difference, among others.
The fictional worlds of SF also rest on the premises of physical laws, so the natural laws we see governing our own universe are maintained in these narratives. This is a distinct difference that separates SF from the magical realms of Fantasy.
Films include: Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon, 1902), Aelita (1924), La Jetée (1962), Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964), Solaris (1972), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Moon (2009), and Cloud Atlas (2012).
Join us at our free screenings, which are held bi-weekly on Wednesday evenings, beginning June 12. They will typically be held at ARTSPACE, located at 378 Aylmer N.
On June 26 we will be doing a screening at Silver Bean Café. Hope to see you there!