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Science Fiction
Meets High Art
Popular science fiction and critically acclaimed
“art” cinema are generally considered to be at opposite ends of
the film spectrum. But the two often overlap in ways not always
recognized by their respective fans.
“They Came From Beyond,” an international science-fiction film
series put on this semester by Screen/Society and the Center for
International Studies, aims to highlight the best of both worlds.
By showing the work of high-profile directors who are known best
for their non-science fiction films, Hank Okazaki, exhibitions
programmer for Duke’s Film/Video/Digital Program, who helped organize
the series, says he hopes to “get fans of high-art cinema to understand
that science fiction is more than just a cousin to cheap horror
films.
“On the other hand, science-fiction fans may not understand the
way in which the genre has been pushed into new philosophical dimensions
by directors like [Andrei] Tarkovsky, [Jean-Luc] Godard, and [Werner]
Herzog,” he adds.
Okazaki co-organized the series with Rob Sikorski, executive director
for the Center for International Studies. Both are film buffs.
The series kicked off in January with a showing of Tarkovsky’s
1972 classic, Solaris. That was followed by a double feature of
1960s French New Wave films, Chris Marker’s La Jetée and Jean-Luc
Godard’s Alphaville.
On Valentine’s Day, the feature was Sex Mission, a Polish science-fiction/comedy
farce from 1984, which tells the story of two men who volunteer
for an experiment in which they are frozen to be awakened three
years later. Instead, they wake up fifty years later after a disaster
has wiped out all men, leaving only women.
The series continued in March with Aleksey Fedorchenko’s First
on the Moon and Werner Herzog’s Wild Blue Yonder, two 2005 films
that focus on the Cold War “space race” between the U.S. and the
U.S.S.R. It wraps up on April 25, the last day of classes for the
spring semester, with the Japanese film Godzilla. The film will
be shown in its original form, without the voice-overs and re-shot
scenes that were originally added for American audiences.
Godzilla in some ways straddles the intersection of the science-fiction
and art genres. Since its re-release, with original footage restored
and “cheesy” voice-overs replaced by English subtitles, some critics
have begun to embrace the film as “a serious, great film about
the worries of the nuclear age, a thought-provoking reflection
on the possibility of mutually assured destruction,” Okazaki says.
Screen/Society, which cosponsors several campus film series throughout
the year, first gained a foothold at Duke in the early 1990s, founded
by a group of graduate students who wanted to show and see films
that weren’t available elsewhere. The group languished in the late
1990s, but was brought back as an official arm of Film/Video/Digital
in 2001 to provide the logistical support necessary to put on film
series. All films are free to the public.
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