Headfirst Editor's Pick
"A well-timed documentary deep-dive into artificial intelligence and virtual futures, as portrayed across a wide-ranging patchwork of 80s–00s cinema. Narrated by a mesmerizingly robofied Debbie Harry, this is a big rec for fans of montage-driven video essays like Woodlands Dark And Days Bewitched, Los Angeles Plays Itself et al."
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A event held at The Cube on Wednesday 21st January. The event starts at 20:00.
Debbie Harry narrates this trance-inducing audiovisual romp through artificial intelligence, cyberspace and virtual reality in the cinema of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. A documentary-meditation on film as a way and an instrument to cope with humanity’s euphoria, anxiety, fear and obsession with technology.
Amanda Kramer's So Unreal is a cinephile's visual essay examining a canon of films that dared dream beyond the threshold of the real. Across a 20-year span, depictions of 'future shock' technologies grew in both frequency and complexity. Cinema in these years provided an outlet for humanity's intertwined anxieties, fears, and fantasies about the brave new frontiers looming ahead.
Narrated by Blondie icon Debbie Harry, So Unreal mines the substance and subtext of cyber-minded landmarks like Tron, Videodrome, Brainstorm, Terminator 2, Tetsuo, Lawnmower Man, Hackers, The Matrix, and dozens more. Soundtracked with deep cuts from the electronic underground, and styled with CGI-glitch FX, So Unreal maps the subcurrents of euphoria and dystopia simmering in the cinematic subconscious of the end of the 20th century.
"A cyberpunk nostalgia trip told in six parts, Kramer’s historical cultural break down is a film analysis portal akin to Morpheus’s red pill." – Sight and Sound
Entry requirements: 18+
Amanda Kramer's So Unreal is a cinephile's visual essay examining a canon of films that dared dream beyond the threshold of the real. Across a 20-year span, depictions of 'future shock' technologies grew in both frequency and complexity. Cinema in these years provided an outlet for humanity's intertwined anxieties, fears, and fantasies about the brave new frontiers looming ahead.
Narrated by Blondie icon Debbie Harry, So Unreal mines the substance and subtext of cyber-minded landmarks like Tron, Videodrome, Brainstorm, Terminator 2, Tetsuo, Lawnmower Man, Hackers, The Matrix, and dozens more. Soundtracked with deep cuts from the electronic underground, and styled with CGI-glitch FX, So Unreal maps the subcurrents of euphoria and dystopia simmering in the cinematic subconscious of the end of the 20th century.
"A cyberpunk nostalgia trip told in six parts, Kramer’s historical cultural break down is a film analysis portal akin to Morpheus’s red pill." – Sight and Sound
Entry requirements: 18+