The Providence Center for Media Culture & the Cable Car Cinema in collaboration with the Providence Public Library are proud to present:
PORTALS: THE HISTORY of the FUTURE FILM SERIES
Wednesdays 6 – 8 pm May 11th – June 8th 2016
Downtown Library Auditorium. (3rd floor) 150 Empire Street, Providence, RI 02903 (401) 455-8000
All films free and open to the public!
May films are here : http://portals.provlib.org/category/may/
June films are here: http://portals.provlib.org/category/june/
Come travel through time, explore space, investigate alternate worlds and discover the design and imagination of the future as we consider the the way filmmakers from the past and present depict utopian and dystopian futures.
May 11th – Dreams Rewired / 2015 / Documentary
Discussion with design historian Matthew Bird.
Directed by Maru Luksch, Martin Reinsert, Thomas Tode
Written by Manu Luksch, Mukul Pate, Martin Reinhart, Thomas Tode
Narrated by Tilda Swinton
88 minutes
The social anxiety we see in our hyper-mediated world of today was well on its way during the electric revolution of the late 19th century. Dreams Rewired presents a collection of films from the 1880s to the 1930s, many rare and previously unscreened, that trace contemporary obsessions and anxieties back to the birth of the telephone, television and cinema. The earliest electronic inventions were as revolutionary, inspiring and alarming to the public as the internet and artificial intelligence are today.
May 18th – H.G Wells Things to Come / 1936 Drama
Discussion with Gloria Jean Masciarotte
Directed by William Cameron Menzies
Written by H.G. Wells
Starring Raymond Massey, Edward Chapman, Ralph Richardson
100 minutes
A global war begins in 1940 and lasts for decades, destroying cities, inducing plagues and fascist regimes, leaving the few survivors to live in underground cities. The first space travel is imminent as Wings Over the World, a group of pacifist, scientists and thinkers plan to build a utopian society on the ruins of the old. In order to do this however, they must overthrow the latest ruling despot played by Ralph Richardson.
May 25th – Dr. Who & the Daleks / 1965 Drama
Discussion TBA
Directed by Gordon Flemyng
Written by Terry Nation and Milton Subotsky
Starring Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Jennie Linden
82 minutes
Tardis, a time machine disguised as a police telephone box is accidentally activated by its inventor, Scientist Dr. Who. Inadvertently, he and his companions are transported through time and space to the planet Skaro, which is inhabited by a peaceful race called the Thals. Upon their arrival, The Thals are under threat of nuclear attack from the evil robotic mutant Daleks. Based on a story from the BBC TV serial “Doctor Who”.
June 1st – Sleeper / 1973 / Comedy
Discussion with design historian Matthew Bird
Directed by Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
Starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton
89 minutes
In 2173, scientists discover the 200 year old cryogenically frozen body of Miles, a quiet, awkward clarinet player and health food store owner from Greenwich Village. Miles is enlisted to help anti-government radicals overthrow the totalitarian police state that has destroyed any evidence of recorded history. Off on his own, Miles begins to explore this brave new world, which has Orgasmatron booths and confessional robots to replace sex and religion.
June 8th – Login 2 Life / 2011 / Documentary
Discussion TBA
Directed by Daniel Moshel
Written by Daniel Moshel
87 minutes
An engrossing exploration of the lives of seven people, who experience deep connections in cyberspace. Travel with them as they find love, hate, loneliness and intimacy within the digital universe. Can we imagine a future when we will all have an avatar, a reimagined, new improved version of ourselves? Login 2 Life invites us to ponder what our world will look like if and when these digital selves become a natural extension of our physical selves?
Matthew Bird has a varied range of skills and experiences. In his rear view mirror can be seen ten years running his own giftware design and manufacturing company, thirteen years developing and running retail venues, eleven years of teaching industrial design at Rhode Island School of Design, hundreds of hours lecturing about various aspects of design history, countless wholesale and retail trade shows and craft shows, numerous juries, myriad visits as guest critic, multiple projects curating shows for galleries and museums, a truck load of freelance design projects, occasional business and design consulting, and more than twenty years of treating old house restoration as an aerobic sport.
Gloria-Jean Masciarotte is a Senior Lecturer of Liberal Arts at RISD where she teaches courses on film at the intersection of race and gender and popular political culture and a Special Lecturer in Women’s Studies at Providence College. In addition to her academic work, she is a free-lance writer of popular culture analyses & public lecturer having wrote and edited award-winning screenplays for experimental and independent documentaries and worked as a Senior Strategist for alternative production and distribution for Women Make Movies. She is working on a book Imagined Communities: Feminism & Choice in Popular Culture and a research-to-theater project about Rhode Island’s own art collector and RISD patroness Lucy Truman Aldrich and the debates about Deaf citizenship and disability during her life “Getting Away With It”—My Weekend with Chinese Bandits.”
