Comments on: Towards an Uncivilised filmography

By: Milton

Milton — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:16:52 +0000

I’d like to add ‘La Belle Verte’ to the list. So much of the list above seems to be about the end of civilization. ‘La Belle Verte’ gives a glimpse of what might rise next.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:31:35 +0000

A good list unfolding here – belatedly; I’d nominate ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ and ‘Soylent Green’. The former, by far the strongest of the Qatsi films, remains an potent evocation of mass technological society looking great but spiralling out of control, and I’m often struck by the number of people whose thinking about ecology had been shaped by it.

By: phil

phil — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:12:56 +0000

paul – glad you agree on ‘blade runner’. although suspect in many places, it’s very evocative and visually stunning. funny how two of the greatest dying speeches in traditional narrative films are made by “robots”! the other being hal’s final moments in ‘2001′.

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:49:22 +0000

Antonio – thanks for that. A very interesting point. Phil – yes, Bladerunner would be another similar effort. I remember that being a world inhabited entirely by humans and machines; yet the android’s dreams and memories of the world beyond Earth are very much like our dreams and memories of arcadias and wild places. And the replicants’ rebellion against their slavery has an Animal Farm-like resonance; it speaks of the next phase of the human empire. And what a great dying speech, too.

‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time… like tears in rain… Time to die. ‘

By: phil

phil — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:36:51 +0000

a really interesting filmography. tarkovsky’s ’stalker’ and haneke’s ‘time of the wolf’ being excellent choices. ‘terminator 2′ is an interesting candidate: its vision of a technological horror close to extinguishing the human race (and, and paul says, its depiction of a “post-nature world”) is really quite scary. on that note, could ‘blade runner’ and ‘total recall’ be included? despite the hollywood production values, they share interesting visions of a future worlds.

i’m not sure if the following suggestions would fit the description of an Uncivilised Filmography but here are some titles for consideration:

// ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’ – Béla Tarr

// ‘Chain’ – Jem Cohen

// ‘La Jetée’ – Chris Marker

cheers

By: Antonio Dias

Antonio Dias — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:35:33 +0000

I’d like to add an unlikely candidate, the original Poseidon Adventure. It captures, better than any other film I know, the dynamics of a world “turned upside down.” The way Gene Hackman’s character leads his intrepid band of misfits, out by going up/down, while others attempt to deny there is a problem or follow narrowly focused, linear, ideological or “faith based” strategies. It comes to mind often and it has gained utility as an exemplar, it has gained in resonance as time has passed. That the “world” they escape is a high tech “dream” run by technocratic experts so its inhabitants can focus on desire and chase after superficial pleasures in perennial, infantile dependence only adds to its relevance and appeal.

By: Paul Kingsnorth

Paul Kingsnorth — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:50:52 +0000

I spent two hours of my life watching ‘Terminator Salvation’ the other night, and while it wasn’t a good film by any stretch of the imagination, it offered a familiar dystopia: a post-nuclear world, in which a war is raging between humans and machines. Tellingly, there is little or nothing in this world that lives, apart from people. It is a post-nature world. Grim in the extreme. And the war against the machines must surely tap into both an archetypal fear and a very real possibility in terms of the direction civilisation may take us. I might therefore add Terminator 2, which is a classic of its kind, to my Uncivilised filmography.

By: Gerhard

Gerhard — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:33:38 +0000

I´d suggest the list to be extended by Mike Hoolboom’s “Imitations of life (in ten parts)”