The debate about the future has a long tradition in film and will be the main subject in Wenzel Mehnerts seminar "Forgotten Futures" which is part of this years Studium Generale.
The moving image allows the visionary worlds to be seen. However, many of these past visions of the future are now difficult to access and thus considered to be forgotten futures.
The reasons for this are obvious: our viewing habits adapt through the further development of the medium. The fast cuts and highly polished images of contemporary directors such as Abrams or Kurtzman seem strangely alien to the slow shots of Tarkowski or Fleischer.
Nevertheless, these lost futures are time-diagnostic artefacts: Science fiction as a contemporary medium does not describe the future but rather than contemporary assumptions about the future. The author’s ‘zero world’ is reflected in his works – which means today’s recipient has to empathize with two new worlds at once: The future depicted and the implicit present.
In this seminar science fiction films from the last century (specifically 1960 – 1980) had been watched and the diegese of the films analysed. In the discussion that followed, they had been reflected on production methods, content, aesthetics, relevance and much more.
Lecturer: Wenzel Mehnert
Date: October 21, 2019, Montags, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Venue: Grunewaldstr. 2-5, 10823 Berlin, Raum 10
ECTS: Seminar, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Requirements: Active participation in the seminar, oral introduction to a film, description and analysis of the shown Diegese of a film
Aktive Teilnahme am Seminar, mündliche Einführung in einen der Filme, Beschreibung und Analyse der gezeigten Diegese eines Filmes