Tag: Politics

  • Welcome II the Terrordome (1995)

    Welcome II the Terrordome (1995)

    Director: Ngozi Onwurah

    Writer: Ngozi Onwurah

    Country: UK

    Language: English

    Women in the production team: 

    Co-Producer: Valentine Nonyela

    Editor: Liz Webber

    Assistant Camera: Simone Horrocks

    Production Designers: Miraphora Mina, Lindi Pankiv

    Makeup Artist: Lindsay Swift

    Costume Designers: Claire Ditchburn, Fennella Magnus, Sarah Wiltshire

    Script Supervisor: Sarah Lane

    Available to rent, stream, or buy: Watch online for free on Youtube

    This review contains **SPOILERS**

    Review:

    Welcome II the Terrordome was Nigerian-born and British-raised Ngozi Onwurah’s debut feature and the first feature-length film directed by a Black British woman. I first saw Welcome II the Terrordome on film as part of the Celebrating Women In Global Cinema season at HOME in 2019; I had chosen for the film to be screened as part of my course Women in Science Fiction without seeing it, in part because it was the only woman-directed movie we could get the rights to screen. But I discovered that it is a raw and challenging piece of indie cinema that has been shamefully overlooked. Seventeen years after its completion, Welcome II the Terrordome’s stark and unrelenting relevance continues to make it a shocking and thought-provoking film that is worth your time and your money.

    This speculative fiction imagines the worst future extrapolated from what Ngozi Onwurah describes as the ‘pure anger of a 24-year-old black woman in Britain’ in the 1990s. Terrordome is, in her words, ‘super ambitious, super dense, with tons of things put into it: African storytellers, Hip Hop, I have lots of stories’. With its title taken from the 1990 Public Enemy track ‘Welcome to the Terrodome’, the soundtrack and score acts as a hip-hop greek tragedy chorus providing foreshadowing and commentary on events as they unfold. As a post-LA Riots political allegory it forges links between near-mythical pasts and imagined futures to provoke purposely uncomfortable questions about contemporary race relations, police brutality, and the limits of ‘progress’.

    You say it was the future, it was the future 20 years ago, and actually it was the future. I think what’s happening in retrospect is that the world is 10 times worse than Terrordome, who would have thought we would be where we are now.

    – Ngozi Onwurah (2019)*

    Very much on the edges of what might be considered science fiction, Terrordome is a visibly ultra-low-budget movie that has a grainy style that is distracting at first but ultimately gives the film a powerful poverty-inflected political realism. It captures the zeitgeist and the perspective of a British-raised young black woman in the 1990s and although it might not be mainstream SF, it is a clear example of Afrofuturism.

    As Ytasha Womack (2013: 9) explains, Afrofuturism ‘combines elements of science fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, Afrocentricity, and magic realism with non-Western beliefs. In some cases, it’s a total revisioning of the past and speculation about the future rife with cultural critiques.’ This merging of past, present, and future is central to Terrordome and its continuing power, as it not only presents but challenges notions of peaceful protests and self-preservation.

    The future dystopia of the Transdean ghetto, known locally as the Terrordome, sees black British characters essentially imprisoned and segregated from ‘whitesville’. Although the film is narrated by a man (Black Rad/Felix Joseph) it is a distinctly woman-led story – it is about Angela (actress/activist Suzette Llewellyn) and the white interloper Jodie (Saffron Burrows), their children, and the complex intersections of race and gender politics in the ghetto.

    Angela’s son Hector (Ben Wynter) is killed: pushed from a window after witnessing a brutal attack on a heavily pregnant Jodie. Angela goes on a rage-fuelled almost video-game-style killing spree: a magical-realist sequence where she makes almost impossible shots at police officers with an old, poorly maintained handgun. Jodie, pregnant by Angela’s brother Spike (Valentine Nonyela) following an escape from her abusive skinhead boyfriend Jason (Jason Traynor), is attacked by her former lover.

    The attack on Jodie is so savage that she miscarries her biracial child, and in a shocking sequence she is left to deliver and mourn her child alone. Prior to this, Angela and Spike’s sister Chrissie (Sian Martin) attempts to rescue Jodie and the unborn child by taking her to their unsubtly-named grandmother Rosa Parkson (Cynthia Powell). But Rosa rejects Jodie and her unborn great-grandchild. Chrissie defends Jodie explaining that it was white men who attacked her because of her relationship with Spike. But Rosa coldly and calmly responds:

    So, are we supposed to be grateful? Are we supposed to raise up our hands? And say: thank you, Missy. Thank you very much for getting your hands dirty. For 60 years, I have sat by and taken their shit, her people’s shit. Do you hear me? No more Chrissie, no more. Enough is enough.

    WELCOME II THE TERRORDOME, Saffron Burrows, 1995, © Metro Tartan Distribution


    The sequences of a distraught Jodie in labour and cradling her stillborn baby are intercut with scenes of Angela in police custody being stripped of her rights, her dignity, and finally her life. The white woman who transgresses the boundary is left to mourn her child alone, but she is ‘free’. The black woman’s only path to freedom seems to be death.

    Welcome II the Terrordome is fascinatingly bookended by references to the Ibo landing myth. Like a twisted version of the film world of Wizard of Oz (1939) the same actors are used in both past and future with slaves later appearing as the inhabitants of the Terrodome ghetto and their white captors as their oppressors, showing essentially how little has changed in race relations. The opening prologue reproduces the Ibo landing myth – after enacting mutiny, drowning the slave traders, and overthrowing and grounding a slave ship, rather than becoming slaves 75 Nigerian Ibo (or Igbo) women, men, and children chose to commit collective suicide by walking out into the marsh. It is considered by some African-Americans and in Gullah folklore as the first American freedom march, and in this opening sequence of Terrordome it appears as a dignified choice and a powerful story of resistance.

    Coffee Coloured Children (1998)

    Yet, at the end of Terrordome we return to this mythic space – but past and future merge as the industrial setting of the Terrordome ghetto is the background to a powerful image of Suzette Llewellyn as both (?) Angela and the Ibo woman breaking her chains. She is dead – sacrificed in order to be saved from slavery and symbolically hanged by white police, seemingly without trial. As with her son in a previous scene, the actress is seen back in the waters of the coast of the American south, but this time she and her tribe are emerging from the water. Onwurah’s ending is quite ambiguous – does it suggest that the Ibo (and by extension dead Terrordome inhabitants) have emerged on ‘the other side’ now free from their lives of inevitable suffering, or does it reject the notion of noble sacrifice? Perhaps it is a call to action rather than a peaceful acceptance of what cannot be changed.

    Terrordome was described by a white male critic in a 1995 Variety review as an ‘angry first feature‘. But for Onwurah, despite connotations concerning the stereotype of the angry black woman, anger is something that audiences should be confronted with. She argued in the HOME interview that our news is sanitised and fleeting but that Terrordome was intentionally desanitising, angry, and direct. She was aware of the critiques of Terrordome at its release and suggests that it is perhaps because the film does not conclude with a neat ending with the ‘space for everybody at the end’ that is expected by white audiences (and reviewers).

    As an Afrofuturist intervention Welcome II the Terrordome centres black stories into a predominantly white British cinema. But like her characters of both past and future, Ngozi Onwurah does not settle for a storyworld that ends hopefully or one than even resolves. Onwurah has no time for your discomfort, and why should she.

    #WomenMakeSF

    Listen below to our podcast episode Defining SF is Hard where we discuss Welcome II the Terrordome, Tank Girl (1995) and Évolution (2015).

    What to watch next from Ngozi Onwurah:
    Coffee Colored Children (1988, 17 min.) – Rent on BFI Player
    The Body Beautiful (1991, 23 min.) – Free on BFI Player
    Flight of the Swan (1992, 12 min.) – Free on BFI Player
    White Men Are Cracking Up (1994, 20 min.) – Free on BFI Player
    And Still I Rise (1993, 30 min.) – Buy on DVD

    Only four black women working in the UK have had their films theatrically released – Ngozi Onwurah, Amma Asante, debbie tucker green, and Destiny Ekaragha. Their work is wide-ranging including popular films like Gone Too Far! (Ekaragha, 2013), Second Coming (green, 2015), and A United Kingdom (Asante, 2018).

    Further reading:
    Varaidzo (2017). Ngozi Onwurah: The forgotten pioneer of black British film. Gal-dem [online]. 20 June. URL: https://gal-dem.com/ngozi-onwurah-the-forgotten-pioneer-of-black-british-film/

    Emilie Herbert (2018). Black British Women Filmmakers in the Digital Era: New Production Strategies and Re-Presentations of Black Womanhood. Open Cultural Studies 2(1): 191–202. Available open access.

    Women Make Movies director profile for Ngozi Onwurah.

    *Interview with Rachel Hayward for the HOME podcast: In Conversation: Director Ngozi Onwurah, HOME Podcast, Friday 8 Feb 2019. https://homemcr.org/media/in-conversation-director-ngozi-onwurah/

    Category: #WMSF
    Afrofuturism, Film, Gender and SF, Politics, Race and SF, Science Fiction, Welcome II the Terrordome, WMSF-Review, Women Directors, Women Make SF, , , , , , , ,
  • Tank Girl (1995)

    Tank Girl (1995)

    Director: Rachel Talalay

    Writer: Tedi Sarafian (screenplay) and Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett (comic strip)

    Women in the production team: 

    Production Design: Catherine Hardwicke

    Set Decorator: Cindy Carr

    Costume Designer: Arianne Phillips

    Casting: Pam Dixon

    also across art, animation, special/visual effects, make-up/hair, wardrobe, sound departments.

    Available to stream, or buy: Apple TV or purchase DVD

    This review contains SPOILERS

    Review:

    Twenty five years ago Tank Girl was ambitiously adapted for the screen by director Rachel Talalay. Restricted by the expectations and fears of the nineties studio system, Tank Girl might not be an ‘accurate’ adaptation of the irreverent RiotGrrl inspired (but male written) source comics, but does that mean that it deserves its reputation as ‘a frenzied mess that’s dull in the extreme’? Rewatching for the first time since I was a teen, it’s an exhilarating watch that constantly bombards the viewer with layered textual references, a perfect nineties soundtrack, and an oft-confusing visual aesthetic that blends comic-book animation with the stylised action sequences and a no f****s given approach to narrative verisimilitude. And then come the occasional oddly traditional shootout fight sequences, which often took me out of the pop cult-ure, pomo, riot grrrl reality that makes up the majority of Tank Girl.

    “Obviously Tank Girl was [a passion project] – I had to make the ultimate Grrrrl Movie, until the studio intervened… Tank Girl [was my favourite film to direct], until the studio intervened in their useless wisdom about the ‘morality of America.’” – Rachel Talalay

    Tank Girl is set in a dystopic, resource-starved Australian desert in 2033. In terms of plot – which frankly isn’t that important (but I’ll give it a go) – it doesn’t rain on Earth anymore after a catastrophic event (comet) that disrupted the weather patterns (ignore the ‘science’), water becomes scarce, valuable, and controlled by an evil corporation called ‘Water & Power’ run by Kesslee (a super campy Malcom McDowell). Our anti-hero Rebecca Buck/Tank Girl (Lori Petty) is an outlaw who scavenges for water and supplies for her commune, until the Water & Power goons find and burn her hideout, kidnap some orphaned kids, and kill her then-boyfriend (he’s fridged – the first of several disruptions to misogynistic comic book tropes). Tank Girl escapes from Kesslee with the help of Jet Girl (Naomi Watts) a W&P jet engineer (#WomenInSTEM) who had all but given up on escaping the company. With the help of military-experiments-gone-wrong animal-human-hybrid ex-soldiers called Rippers (because, of course), Tank and Jet Girl plan to save the children (yeah, I forgot about them too) and take down the corrupt system.

    Honestly, this doesn’t cover even half of what happens to the audience in Tank Girl. But the plot really wasn’t that important to me as I whole-heartedly bought into the characters, chaotic world-building, and general tone of the whole experience. This explanation of Tank Girl, posted by director Rachel Talalay, from alternative bi-weekly newspaper Portland Mercury sums it up pretty perfectly:

    Screen Shot 2020-06-04 at 22.18.30

    I think my recent (and probably ongoing) obsession with Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan, 2019) and my current binge on the women-led, women written, directed, and created (from a woman written comic) TV show Vagrant Queen (2020- ) makes me far more open and excited about women-led comic book entertainment and their disruption of the limited expectations. Both Birds of Prey and Vagrant Queen play around with genre and characters that don’t fit into comic book women tropes, their highly choreographed and playfully filmed fight sequences (Vagrant Queen uses bullet time) are part of what make these examples so vibrant and fun.

    Less focussed on action violence, these recent examples alongside other women-led action films like Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017) and Captain Marvel (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2019) are indebted to the visual and narrative styling of Tank Girl. As one IMDB user review neatly suggests, Vagrant Queen is best understood as ‘Tank Girl meets Killjoys’. Notably, Killjoys also has a woman creator, executive producer, and showrunner: Michelle Lovretta.

    tenor (1)
    Slo-mo, bullet time fight scenes are a recurrent and joyous stylistic choice in Vagrant Queen (“In A Sticky Spot”, episode 4, season 1, director: Danishka Esterhazy, writer: Mariko Tamaki)

    Violence is not the focus in the majority of Tank Girl’s action sequences. For example, the grisly demise of the movie’s villain Kesslee is shown through an animation and references to The Wizard of Oz’s melting Wicked Witch of the West, as his partially digitised and prosthetic body dies away. But when the film does fall into the more traditional shoot outs – more at home in trad male-led action movies – I did start to lose focus.

    Fight scenes are key sites of spectacle and spectacularised masculinity in traditional action movies – think of the bullet time fights in 1999’s The Matrix (now parodied by Vagrant Queen) that dissected the power and control of Neo (Kenau Reeves), or the hard bodied John McClane (Bruce Willis) in Die Hard (1988) where he survives falls, explosions, and shoots outs and almost single-handedly subverts the plans of foreign-terrorists.

    Traditionally, women are positioned to the side of the spectacle, but in Tank Girl the titular character is right in the middle of the action, improbably surviving. Yes, both Ellen Ripley (Alien, 1989) and Sarah Connor (Terminator 2, 1991) had been there before – but in very clearly defined narratives fighting for survival not fun. Tank Girl explores the gap between the idea and image of what women are expected to do, and what they actually can do. It exposes the artificiality of gender and patriarchal power structures that surround this both on screen and in society.

    Tank Girl’s fights are not really about showcasing physical power, but rather feminine ingenuity and characters unafraid to use their sexuality and the limited expectations their enemies have of them to succeed. The movie actively and perhaps problematically promotes the sexualisation of power, but I would argue that many of anti-feminist stereotypes about women that are presented are used to make satirical points about their absurdity. Tank Girl pseudo-seduces a W&P henchman so she can pull his grenade pins, Tank and Jet kiss to cause a distraction, and there’s a literal song and dance routine in a brothel as part of their surreal rescue plan.

    Tank Girl’s parched post-apocalyptic setting, lengthy action sequences, and lead woman character mark it as a funny, feminist forebearer to Mad Max: Fury Road. Even if you’re not sold on the movie, you can’t deny the visual impact that Tank Girl has had on US pop culture. Look at contemporary Riot Grrls like Imperator Furiosa and [the Robbie/Yan] Harley Quinn. Talking of Harley Quinn, or rather Margot Robbie… her production company – LuckyChap Entertainment – have optioned the rights for Tank Girl from MGM. I would be totally sold on a Margot Robbie Tank Girl – especially as it would be more likely get a woman director.

    Making Tank Girl in the post-Wonder Woman era (now) would be an entirely different experience to Hollywood in 1994. Watching Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman battle her way through No Man’s Land (both literally and metaphorically) brought me to tears in the cinema. As the first woman to direct either a Marvel or DC franchise movie, Patty Jenkins had to deal with countless tone-deaf articles that suggested she and Wonder Woman were huge gambles for Warner Brothers. Even after the film proved to be a critical and financial success, reviews and reporting continued to question the wisdom of a woman director. Director Rachel Talalay has spoken out about the misogyny of the industry and the difficulties she experienced in making the Tank Girl she wanted to make – more than twenty years prior to Jenkins’ success.

    tom lowe photo,

    “It’s not a meritocracy. It’s a business, and it’s an art form. If you aren’t talking about it, and you aren’t pushing to give women opportunities, how are they ever going to show that they can do it?” – Rachel Talalay

    But Jenkins was levied with the burden of representing not only herself but the hope of every woman filmmaker and future woman-led genre movie projects. Her perceived failure, as with Talalay’s Tank Girl and the Halle Berry-led Catwoman (Pitof, 2004), could have been used to justify not making women-led movies or working with women filmmakers. Jenkins quit as the director of Thor: Dark World saying there were “creative differences”, but has since stated she didn’t want to make a movie she didn’t believe in (it is the least critically well-received Marvel movie), and have its poor reception explained away as the sole fault of its director being a woman.

    Talalay did survive what she calls “the dark ages” of the 2000s, post-Catwoman, but did not become the movie directing maven she should have been. Tank Girl was Talalay’s third feature, a follow up to the 1993 Ghost in the Machine (which I’ll be watching at some point as part of the #WomenMakeSF project). Her career is impressive and she has worked on lots of my favourite genre TV shows  over the years, but Tank Girl should not have been the end but the start of Talalay’s movie directing career. Male directors are just allowed to fail in a way that women directors are not.

    Is Tank Girl a messy movie? Yes. Is it a messy movie that 1990s Hollywood just wasn’t ready for? Also, yes. I really wish I could see the movie that Talalay had wanted to make. Tank Girl is a revolutionary bit of cinema, just twenty five years ahead of its time.

    Listen below to our podcast episode Defining SF is Hard where we discuss Welcome II the Terrordome (1995), Tank Girl  and Évolution (2015).

    #WomenMakeSF

    What to watch next from Rachel Talalay:
    Ghost in the Machine (1993) 

    Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

    Doctor Who (2014-2017) – 8 episodes. Highlights: ‘Dark Water’ (8:11) where the true identity of ‘Missy is revealed, and ‘Death in Heaven’ (8:12) where Missy resurrects the dead as an army of cyborgs.

    Talalay was also a producer on John Waters’ Cry Baby (1990) and Hairspray (1988)

    Further reading:
    SYFY FanGrrls [Carly Lane], (2018). 60 Thoughts We Had While Watching Tank Girl. Syfy.com. 31 March. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/60-thoughts-we-had-while-watching-tank-girl

    Amy Nicholson (2018). Goddesses of the Galaxy: Women Directors Take Over the Blockbuster Universe. The Guardian. 11 May. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/11/goddesses-of-the-galaxy-women-directors-take-over-the-blockbuster-universe

    Kayti Burt (2019). Rachel Talalay & The Long Way Round. Den of Geek. 27 March. https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/rachel-talalay-the-long-way-round/

    Emma Elizabeth Davidson (2020). Tank Girl: The Wild Feminist Anti-hero with a Massive Influence on Fashion [interview with costume designer Arianne Phillips]. Dazed Digital. 20 February. https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/48034/1/tank-girl-post-feminist-cult-comic-deadline-fashion-rick-owens-arianne-phillips 

  • Sea Fever (2020)

    Sea Fever (2020)

    Director: Neasa Hardiman

    Writer: Neasa Hardiman

    Country: Ireland

    Language: English

    Women in the crew: 

    Co-Producer: Orla Bleahen-Melvin

    Costume Design: Maeve Paterson

    Props Buyer: Marion Picard

    Makeup Dept: Steph Smith (hair/makeup design)and Frances Murphy (makeup trainee)

    Assistant Director: Tanya Rosen (second AD)

    Floor Runner: Galéna Murray

    Lead Modelmaker: Eleonora McNamara

    Underwater Camera Operator: Christina Karliczek

    Script Supervisor: Eva Kelly

    Post-Prod. Coordinator: Noreen Donohoe

    Available to stream/rent/buy: 

    This review contains **SPOILERS**

    Review:

    In Neasa Hardiman’s Sea Fever we get a woman scientist, representations of science, science fiction, discussion of science and superstition, and it’s all topped off with a woman director AND writer! It is a bit of a dream movie for this science and screen studies scholar. This, of course, all made me very nervous that I wouldn’t like the film. This was especially highlighted after the director Neasa Hardiman, who has a film studies PhD, kindly responded to my DMs and sent me a video intro for the screening event. Thankfully, I genuinely loved the movie and the way it engaged with all the parts of my research that marvellously converge in Sea Fever.

    Set in contemporary Ireland (ROI), Sea Fever follows marine-biologist/microbiologist Siobhán (Hermione Corfield- left) who is introduced as an icy and antisocial scientist (she refuses birthday cake – surely she is a monster!). As part of her PhD research on oceanic faunal behavioral patterns Siobhán books a berth on a fishing trawler called Niamh Cinn Óir, expecting to endure a miserable week with its close-knit crew of six: skipper Gerard (Dougray Scott), his wife Freya (Connie Nielsen), ship’s engineer Omid (Ardalan Esmaili), Johnny (Jack Hickey), Ciara (Olwen Fouéré), and Sudi (Elie Bouakaze). The skipper navigates the trawler into an exclusion zone far out into the Atlantic Ocean, eager to illegally increase his catch, but instead the ship and crew become ensnared in the tendrils of an alien/undiscovered creature. The crew become infected and die off one by one after making contact with the creature’s parasitic goo. Siobhán has to gain the trust of the superstitious crew, quarantine the infected, and try to stop the contagion reaching the mainland before all is lost at sea.  

    Since Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: A World Tour Underwater (1872) there has been a flow of science fiction with a nautical focus. The sea merges myth and science –  both a source of deep fear (and thus myth) and massive rewards (and thus science). It offers a fluid storytelling space that holds many contradictions as it can be local, safe, bountiful, and homely, and/or alien, perilous, barren, and unwelcoming. Its danger and its beauty are often intertwined. Calm waters can hide dangerous undercurrents, and as Verne correctly guessed, a storm raging at the surface of an ocean lies over an eerie calm in the depths.  

    Women are also a site of superstition at sea, with their hidden depths that are beyond male experience. Siobhán is red-headed and identified as an omen on the ship as soon as she boards. The trawler is named for Niamh Cinn-Óir – the flaxen haired Irish folklore character who comes to Ireland from the sea on a white steed, and falls in love with and takes her lover Oisín to the otherworldly realm of Tír na nÓg (Land of Youth). He returns to Ireland, with the promise to Niamh not to touch the land. But of course he does; so he ages and dies, never to see Niamh again. Always follow the women’s instructions on avoiding sudden death (see also: Ripley in Alien and Siobhán in Sea Fever).

    EV5R02SWkAAEc89
    “Alien is a movie where nobody listens to the smart woman, and then they all die except for the smart woman and her cat” – @AdamShaftoe’s wife [artist: http://gennykattattoos.com]

    Maritime myths have been used to help people understand seafaring tragedies – people are lost at sea, their bodies never recovered, and so warnings are woven into myths that make the sea a creature to be tamed and feared. Mermaids, the Kraken, Davy Jones’ locker… Stories about the sea are an early form of maritime science communication as sailors (and their wives) pass on their wisdom through fiction, thus explaining ‘science’ (knowledge) in a memorable and accurate/believable way (as understood at the time). 

    My favourite scene in Sea Fever is a conversation between Freya and Siobhán as they watch the blue glow of the ocean. Whereas Siobhán marvels at the wonder of science and identifies the glow as bioluminescent phytoplankton, Freya sees the golden glowing hair of Niamh and recalls the Irish myth that the trawler is named for. Rather than a moment of conflict between science and myth (faith/religion) there is a calm acknowledgement of each other’s perspective and the acceptance of beauty regardless of its source or reason. The sea is a space that can be explained by both science and storytelling as we imagine futures, explore the oceanic frontier, and try to understand what can be explained and what cannot.   

    Screen Shot 2020-08-06 at 18.06.16
    The artistic bioluminescence of marine dinoflagellates or the tendrils of Niamh Cinn-Óir [photographs by Iyvone Khoo, 2016. (L-R) Blue Noctorne,Millions of Photons; Flow; and Cosmic Island.

    Sea Fever makes reference to and was repeatedly linked in our live tweet to other stories of unknown depth and creatures such as Jaws, The Thing, and The Abyss, all of which see characters underestimating the sea and its hidden depths and creatures. For the crew of the Niamh Cinn-Óir, the calm of the glowing sea soon shifts as the trawler strays into the exclusion zone and the grasp of a huge and unknown sea creature. After blue goo (don’t lick the science!) starts to enter the ship, Siobhán , as the only person on board who can dive (see: sailors who don’t swim), discovers that the hull of the ship is surrounded by glowing tendrils of a deep-sea creature that remains unseen and whose scale is unknown.

    Sea Fever (2020) vs The Abyss (1989) promo posters- both films feature similar incandescent eldritch sea monsters.

    But the creature and its creepy Upside-Down-Demogorgon-style tentacles infect the gorgeous underwater photography, recalling the ethereality of Mikael Salomon’s underwater photography in The Abyss (note similarities in the promotional images with the backlit diver) and the Cousteau-esque beauty achieved in Évolution. Beauty and danger (beasts), and myth and science are closely entwined throughout Sea Fever. In stories where mythical creatures like mermaids are the cause of shipwrecks, storms, and drownings as they lure men to their deaths, their beauty is what makes them particularly deadly.   

    It is impossible not to connect Sea Fever  to the current pandemic and how its use of quarantine and isolation are so central to the characters’ experiences. Despite the visual power and vast presence of (parts of) the creature in the underwater sequences the real danger is microscopic and unseen. The mysterious blue goo oozing into the ship and its water system is full of parasitic larvae that infects human hosts, driving them to madness and death. 

    The intentionally groan-worthy romance plotline that emerges early on – a classic way to make a woman scientist character easier for audiences (she must be a sister, mother, or lover) – is soon cast aside after Siobhán’s male love interest dies. We don’t remember his name, and we’re not supposed to. It’s Siobhán and sea beastie’s story. Her attempts to quarantine and save the remaining members of the crew is not a motherly action – but rather one of ‘science’ with her concern being isolating the infection from the mainland. Notably she does not see the creature as a monster; it is an animal that belongs there, the ship is out of its depths and invading its space. Perhaps the exclusion area is not just in place to protect fish stocks…

    There are so many contemporary narratives that can be read into Neasa Hardiman’s debut feature film Sea Fever. It’s an eco-fiction (is this a consequence of the anthropocene? Have changed sea temperatures and ecology led this creature to the surface?), it’s horror, and it’s science fiction. But instead of saving humanity we are left with a young woman scientist essentially donating her body to the creature (rather than science). She sacrifices herself and hopefully stops the infection reaching Ireland, but she also doesn’t want the creature to suffer.   

    SeaFeverend
    Siobhán (marine biologist) gives herself to the creature

    Although Sea Fever deserves to be seen at the cinema – it’s so beautiful – the global pandemic gives the film an eerie relevance. A relevance that I hope gets people to rent or buy (or both in my case – nerd alert) Sea Fever – an indie production that has been released straight to VOD while big budget movies can hide in their shells.  

    As the saying goes, I feel all at sea at the moment. But, hey, at least I’m not on that boat.

    Editor Contribution by Ursula Cuckston-Fenn– The title ‘Sea Fever’ may come from Irish poet John Masefield. The infamous poem was adapted into musical form in 1913 and has since become one of Ireland’s defining 20th century folk ballads. The lyrics speak of a cosmic pull towards the sea- Masefield wrote extensively about his love for being at sea, making it a space for infinite freedom from the political, spiritual and physical restraints of land-living. Feminine monstrosity in Hardiman’s Sea Fever juxtaposes the traditionally masculinist sublimity of the sea which is purveyed in Romanticist art.

    ‘I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

    To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

    And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

    And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

    Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘Wanderer Above the Sea’, (1818)

    If the masculine voice in the original poem can be read as an inherent yearning for freedom from the male perspective, Hardiman codes the sea itself as a feminine entity. The self-sacrificial trajectory reaches outside of the state of yearning for the sea as an ‘other’ but rather for full realisation of the self. Siobhán is not just ‘drawn’ to the sea’s feminine power- she is the embodiment of it, reclaiming her power that is demeaned at the start of the narrative by the judgmental anti-intellectualism of her colleagues and in turn recentering romantic oceanic narratives.

    Further reading on women, the sea and folklore.

    Listen to our WMSF Podcast episode on Sea Fever, ‘Ladies of the Lakes’ below.

    #WomenMakeSF

    aoabp5c

    What to watch next from Neasa Hardiman:
    This is Hardiman‘s first feature film, but she has directed episodes on major shows including: Jessica Jones; Inhumans; Z: The Beginning of Everything; and popular British drama Happy Valley

    Further reading:
    Neasa Hardiman’s website: neasahardiman.com

    Neasa Hardiman onTwitter: @NeasaHardiman

    Interview with Neasa Hardiman about Sea Fever and Sailor Superstitions for Hey You Guys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt7O4rHz_Pw

    Marina Antunes (2020). Neasa Hardiman Talks Sea Fever. Alliance of  Women Film Journalists. URL: https://awfj.org/blog/2020/04/10/neasa-hardiman-talks-sea-fever-marina-antunes-interviews/

    Camryn Garrett (2019). TIFF 2019 Women Directors: Meet Neasa Hardiman – “Sea Fever”. Women and Hollywood. URL: https://womenandhollywood.com/tiff-2019-women-directors-meet-neasa-hardiman-sea-fever/

    Natalia Keogan (2020). Sea Fever Gains Depth from COVID Anxieties. Paste Magazine. URL: https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/neasa-hardiman/sea-fever-review/

  • Real Genius (1985)

    Real Genius (1985)

    Director: Martha Coolidge

    Writer/s: Neal Israel and Pat Proft

    Country: USA

    Language: English

    Women in the crew: 

    Casting: Janet Hirshenson, Jane Jenkins

    Costume Designer: Marla Schlom

    Hair Designer: Edie Panda

    Set Design: Erin Cummins

    Sound Editing: Anna Boorstin, Virginia Cook, Roxanne Jones, Christy Richmond

    Assistant Editors: Deborah Cichocki, Alex Leviloff

    Music Supervisor: Becky Mancuso

    Script Supervisor: Joanie Blum

    Available to stream/rent/buy: rent on Amazon Prime UK, Google Play, and Youtube

    This review contains SPOILERS

    Review:

    From the opening credits I was sold on Real Genius’ approach to the history of science and technology. The opening credits take us through science history from the arrowhead to nuclear weapons – a hark back to my own history as an A-Level student studying the history of weapons technology. Martha Coolidge’s research into the science behind the film surprised me because of the film’s comedic and light 1980s blockbuster framing.

    Real Genius is about a group of oddball teenage geniuses who are working on developing a high-powered laser for a university project (oof, after Évolution I am pleased for a high-concept movie). When it is revealed that their professor has been funded by the military with the intention of turning their work into a space-based military weapon, they decide to humiliate him and ruin those plans. The story follows Mitch (Gabriel Jarret), a 15-year old freshman at Pacific University (a thinly veiled reference to CalTech), and his interactions with the undergraduate research team developing the laser, and in particular the zany antics of Chris Knight (Val Kilmer).

    Brian [Grazer]’s original goal, and mine, was to make a film that focused on nerds as heroes. It was ahead of its time

    – Martha Coolidge 

    Premiering in the blockbusting summer of 1985, Real Genius was released within three days of two other science-based teen movies: Weird Science and My Science Project. This summer also saw the release of SF classic Back to the Future and the Ethan Hawke/River Phoenix SF Explorers that was rushed to release and directed by Joe Dante. Dante’s earlier hit Gremlins was also re-released that summer alongside Ghostbusters and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Real Genius was reviewed positively at the time and was distinct from its contemporaries as Coolidge worked with scholars at MIT and the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) to create an accurate set and feeling for the movie. Real Genius brought military, weapons development, and university experts into the production a fair few years before science advisors became a more common part of the pre-production process.

    My_Science_Project_1985
    Dennis Hopper in My Science Project (1985)

    As fun as Real Genius is as a comedy, it also manages to cover some pretty deep ethical issues concerning the politics of science. In particular it considers how science and technology produced by scientists might be used – knowingly or otherwise –  within the military or by a government who are also often the source of science research funding. Although Prof. Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton) is presented as a greedy but undoubtedly naive fool, the challenges and ethics of research funding are actually covered in quite a nuanced way. Academics are all about jumping those hoops. 

    Real Genius is ahead of its time as it promotes the need for STEAM, an extension on the acronym STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The added ‘A’ is for the arts – and the clarion call that scientists need arts training.

    It is the combination of humor, the truth of the story and the real science in this picture that has made it successful for so long and has influenced many people to go into the sciences.

    – Martha Coolidge

    Chris explains to Mitch that it is important to find a work/life or rather study/party balance. He says that ‘all science, no philosophy’ is the reason that the reclusive graduate Lazlo (Jon Gries) – who of course lives in the steam tunnels – cracked. After working for a chemicals company Lazlo found out his research was being used to kill people. He had not thought  through the ethical implications – the history, politics, philosophy – of how science can be used and politicised. As Chris concludes: ‘when you’re smart people need you, [but] you can use your mind creatively.’ 

    In my reviews so far I haven’t really discussed the way a woman director represents or under-represents women characters. The lead characters are women in both Tank Girl and Welcome II the Terrordome – Tank Girl and Angela – and they are not the only women named, speaking, and featured as active parts of the narrative. After watching only women-directed and -written science fiction (film and TV) recently, I think my expectations for women characters in SF has shifted somewhat.

    Real Genius has a women problem. There is only really one fully fleshed out woman character – 19 year old Jordan (Michelle Meyrink) – and the other two named women are presented as blonde stereotypes: a seductress (Shelly – Patti D’Arbanville) and the half-dressed proof of a man’s (Susan – Deborah Foreman) ethical failures. The women don’t talk to each other and most of Jordan’s storyline is about her (awkwardly, of course) seducing a 15 year old boy.

    For much of the live-tweet Lyle and I talked about Jordan’s (note: gender neutral name) characterisation as a “manic pixie dream genius woman” (Skains, 2020) and whether she would be seen doing science in the lab with the men. Alas, by the halfway point the lack of women and the limited range of people of colour (all men, so women of colour get lost in the intersection, again) was really frustrating. We couldn’t even apply the Bechdel Test because there weren’t any scenes with multiple talking women (other women are used as sexy window dressing in party scenes).

    I was excited that there was going to be a woman engineer (#WomenInTech) in this week’s film – and that she is presented initially as equal to the men. But sadly Jordan is pretty much on her own. One of my issues with the way women in STEM are often presented in popular culture is that they are so often on their own as anomalies rather than part of a community of smart agentic women. Annihilation is one of the few films that actually manages to have women scientists working together within a wider world populated with women across the hierarchy.

    Screen Shot 2020-06-24 at 23.11.34
    No girls allowed.

    Real Genius was a clear reference point for The Big Bang Theory (Kent’s dickie is a delight, just as Wolowitz’s is). But it transposed the representational issues with women appearing as blonde eye-candy (poor Penny remained without a surname until she married Leonard) or as women scientists characters who are included as a quirky afterthought and a nod to diversity. In both Big Bang Theory and Real Genius the physics/engineering labs with their lasers and dangerous ‘toys’ are almost exclusively male spaces – women interfere and occasionally assist. In The Big Bang Theory the physical sciences were left almost entirely up to the men in the show and when women scientist characters were added as regulars, they were both so-called ‘soft’ bioscientists.

    Amy and Bernadette (serious manic pixie genius woman vibes) were added into the cast a few seasons into the show, and the only woman physicist, the glorious Leslie Winkle, never made it as a regular. The Big Bang Theory was unusual in its incorporation of women scientists, but these women were undermined by the goals of the comedy format to entertain while reinforcing the status quo.  Real Genius did the same thing. The comedy is fairly conservative in its balance with the science commentary about nefarious military funding and ‘evil’ uses of the students’ creative science genius. It maintains a status quo where women are anomalous in the hard sciences and that they must be oddballs even if they conform to expected beauty standards.

    Real Genius is ahead of its time with: its woman director especially in the 1980s male-dominated genres of science fiction and comedy, and its approaches to science communication and scientific believability, but it remains part of the pack with its token woman in STEM. Quirky, smart, Jordan is ultimately alone.* 

    #WomenMakeSF

    *especially once she remembers Mitch is ONLY 15. EW.

    What to watch next from Martha Coolidge:
    Valley Girls (1983)
    Joy of Sex (1984) – woman co-writer: Kathleen Rowell
    Rambling Rose (1991)

    Further reading:
    Back to the 80s: Interview with director mMartha CoolidgeL Kickin’ it Old School. Reposted from oldschool.tblog [obselete]. Martha Coolidge [official website]. URL: http://officialmarthacoolidge.com/2014/08/04/back-to-the-80s-interview-with-director-martha-coolidge-kickin-it-old-school/

    Emmet Asher-Perrin (2015). 30 Years Later, Real Genius is Still the Geek Solidarity Film That Nerd Culture Deserves. Tor.com. URL: https://www.tor.com/2015/05/21/30-years-later-real-genius-is-still-the-geek-solidarity-film-that-nerd-culture-deserves/

    Sheila O’Malley (2020). Present Tense: Martha Coolidge. Film Comment. March 4. URL: https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/present-tense-martha-coolidge/

  • Level 16 (2018)

    Level 16 (2018)

    Director: Danishka Esterhazy

    Writer: Danishka Esterhazy

    Country: Canada

    Language: English

    Women in the crew: 

    Producers: Stephanie Chapelle, Judy Holm (exec. producer); Sarah Jackson (line producer)

    Production Design: Diana Magnus

    Set Decorator: Thea Hollatz (set decorator)

    Costume, Hair and Makeup: Jennifer Stroud (costume designer); Kayla Dobilas (key make up); Justine Sly (key hair design)

    Assistant Director: Aurèle Gaudet

    also across art, visual effects, and sound departments

    Available to stream/rent/buy: Netflix and Amazon Prime UK https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/level-16

    This review contains **SPOILERS**

    Review:LEVEL_16_AMAZON-1

    Welcome back to #WomenMakeSF! Our unplanned pandemic hiatus is hopefully over.

    It was back in September 2020 that I/we first watched Level 16, writer/director Danishka Esterhazy’s exploration of youth, femininity, and patriarchal values in a near-future dystopia where young women are preserved and prepared to be the future faces of their wealthy ‘sponsors’. Literally.

     We talked about the film alongside Alice Waddington’s Paradise Hills in episode 6 of the podcast: Finishing Schools of Fear. It was interesting to have had several films that presented futures where young women were being educated and cared for as a front for their eventual death. In Paradise the women are copied, replaced, and the originals consumed by Mila Jocavich’s telepathic flower monster woman (obvs). Level 16 takes a far grittier gulag approach to this imagined future of replaceable or upgradable women.

    Gone is the lavish candy-coloured fantasy that engulfed the girls in Paradise. Level 16 has no such pretence that this will end well for the class of ‘students’ we are introduced to. They are named for stars of the classical Hollywood era — Vivien, Greta, Sofia, Rita, Ava — a superficially glamorous themed naming system that positions these young women as helpless animals in a pound rather than privileged youth in private education. Like the women of classical Hollywood, their pasts and true identities are suppressed (or perhaps even non-existent — were they bred for this life?) to make them easier to sell.

    DanishkaEsterhazy-2

    “They put a strong emphasis on teaching us to fit in and know our place and, especially for young women, to accept a certain amount of second-class citizenship. That made me very angry as a teenager, and I haven’t forgotten that. I wanted to tap into those feelings” – Danishka Esterhazy

    The ‘school’ in Level 16 is called Vestalis Academy, Vestalis meaning pertaining to Vesta, goddess of hearth and home. Interestingly/terrifyingly, Amazon have reached the “late-prototype stage” for their home robot called Vesta — another turn towards the gendering of AI and an apparent desire for smart wives to replace or at best support women who reject a “tradwife” lifestyle.. At the Academy the girls are practicing the virtues of perfect femininity so that they can be chosen. But for what? As the girls, symbolically named after controlled and contracted 1940s starlets, grow at the school they progress through the different levels. Each level purposely sounds like a school year but it is a literal ascension from subterranean levels to the surface where, if they are deemed sufficiently perfect as they have been trained to be, they will be chosen. 

    They will be chosen to be drugged, laid out like Victorian dolls (or a serial killer’s victims?) and presented to wealthy onlookers in a creepy AF showroom. Only the most pure are chosen — for adoption, surrogacy, sex? None of the above. This is an elaborate processing plant for fresh fleshy faces — young undamaged skin —  that will be transplanted onto wealthy — and notably only — women. Their subterranean existence is part of the preservation — no sun or pollutant damage to skin that is ritualistically cleaned and cared for by girls and their carers/jailors Dr Miro (Peter Outerbridge) and Miss Brixil (Sara Canning). 

    Forced illiteracy and strict draconian rules that the girls repeat like commandments make the world of Level 16 align with the contemporary adaptation of Handmaid’s Tale. Like the handmaids, the Vestalis girls are framed by a transparently false care narrative intended only to make them more attractive objects to be used/reused. Miss Brixill makes for a far more glamorous keeper than Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), but where Lydia believes in the law of Gilead and the sacred reproductive purpose (child-bearing slavery) of the women trapped inside its borders, Miss Brixill is a polished saleswoman whose approach to her charges is more than a little Miss Trunchball (she even has a iron maiden/chokey). 

    Immaculately presented and visually reminiscent of Veronica Lake with her blonde waves and coquettish glances, Miss Brixill is the face of the operation. But it is not clear if the face she presents has always been hers, until the girls try to work out what is happening to them and tie up Brixil and force the truth from her. A telling scar on the back of Brixil’s neck proves that she is a sample of the cosmetic procedure as much as a sales manager. Inspired by recent(ish) advances in facial reconstruction and face transplants, Level 16 asks when, where, or how does this currently experimental medical procedure become cosmetic? Is Brixil more than a saleswoman and product manager? Is she trapped in the system as a subject of experimentation too?

    Vivien (Katie Douglas) is the head girl in this film. She shows intelligence in her rejection of the rules and her willingness to listen to the fears of other girls about their daily vitamins (don’t drink the milk, don’t eat the apple) and what will happen to them. Restricted by lack of education and experience, Vivien can only think of one way to be saved from being flayed: self-mutilation. Although Miro suggests that she isn’t like the other girls, she knows that she is because her value to him is only skin deep. Vivien can and does defy him and escape her fate through cutting into her face because then ‘they won’t want me if I’m not beautiful.’ 

    Most women can’t mutilate or modify their bodies enough to be left alone. We talk about women’s responsibility for their own safety and in so doing shift the blame from the abuser to the abused. To be safe women are told not to make themselves visible or distracting, but even with keys between their fingers and every precaution taken they are not safe. It isn’t what they look like (‘beautiful’), how old they are, or who they are with (‘belong’ to) and there is not much more women can do to ensure their safety. Maybe we teach our men and society as a whole that women are strong as hell and worthy of respect because their value extends far beyond appearance and their capacity to be good women.

    Some reviews of Level 16 criticised the film for its heavy-handed messaging, but I would argue that its excessiveness made it more effective. Level 16 pulls together many of the fears women have — ageing, beauty, being abused, being raped, purity, being ‘enough’… Esterhazy’s film is heavy-handed to ensure that feeling of enslavement and entrapment. A feeling that (all) women and other marginalised identities often feel both inside and outside of the places where they should be safe.

    Listen to our WMSF Podcast episode on Level 16 and Paradise Hills (2019), Finishing Schools of Fear, below.

    #WomenMakeSF

    VQ_Esterhazy

    What to watch next from Danishka Esterhazy:
    I Was Lorena Bobbitt (2020)
    The Banana Splits Movie (2019)
    H & G     (2013)
    Black Field (2009) – also starring Sarah Canning

    Esterhazy has also directed episodes from Women Make SF favourite Vagrant Queen!

    Further reading:
    Chloe Leeson (2019). ‘A Dystopian Take on the Commodification of Women’s Bodies’ – Level 16 [Film Review]. Vulture Hound. https://vulturehound.co.uk/2019/05/a-dystopian-take-on-the-commodification-of-womens-bodies-level-16-film-review/ 

    Seana Stevenson (2019). Level 16 Interview: Danishka Esterhazy. Medium. https://medium.com/the-muff-society/level-16-interview-danishka-esterhazy-ac8919cabb10 

    Level 16 Press Pack https://rdvcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/7-b153bacda73dd76449b4941ad8241bc4/2018/12/LEVEL-16_Press-Kit.pdf

  • Jupiter Ascending (2015)

    Jupiter Ascending (2015)

    Director: Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski (as The Wachowskis)

    Writer: Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski (as The Wachowskis)

    Women in the crew: 

    Casting: Lora Kennedy

    Costume and Makeup: Kym Barrett (costumes), Karen Lynn Accattato (key makeup artist)

    Production: Demetra Diamantopoulos (production manager); Marianne Jenkins (post production executive)

    Assistant Directors: Kim Whittaker (second assistant director); Emma Horton (key second assistant director); Ayesha Corn (additional second assistant director); Emma Gunnery (crowd assistant director); Irene Díaz (crowd assistant director); Katharina Hofmann (second assistant director: crowd); Beatrice Manning (second assistant director: second unit); Patricia Ordás (third assistant director)

    Also across art, make-up, VFX, sound, and production departments, and additional crew.

    This review contains SPOILERS

    Review:

    The major issue with Jupiter Ascending was that it needed to be at least a trilogy of films, if not a long running TV series (#6SeasonsAndAMovie). There just wasn’t enough space or time to really explore the Wachowski sisters’ phenomenal cosmic narrative world in a movie’s itty bitty runtime. It has the same zany, glorious incomprehensibility that made films like Tank Girl (Talalay, 1995), Barbarella (Vadim, 1968), Dune (Lynch, 1984), and Labyrinth (Henson, 1986) such cult classics. Once you accept that you can’t follow all of the narratives on your first watch of the film you just get to enjoy it. When I have taught classes on Barbarella (and Blade Runner too to be honest) I tell students to focus on the world and not the narratives at play. For Jupiter Ascending instead play spot the reference or cameo, and marvel at the production design. It’s made – like many epic space operas – to be watched more than once. 

    To be honest I think Jupiter Ascending works better if you actually read the spoilers first. Part of the remit of the #WomenMakeSF project is to make a record of these women-directed SF films, so I’ll have a go at giving some of the plot (corrections welcome[ish] in the comments…). Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is the genetic reincarnation of and heir to Queen Seraphi Abrasax who was killed by her son Balem [a major plot point I totally missed the first time I saw the film and still enjoyed it. It shows how accepting I am of incomplete narratives in visually stunning SF…]. The antagonists are a trio of siblings who fight over the inheritance of their mother Seraphi’s assets: Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne), Kalique Abrasax (Tuppence Middleton), and Titus Abrasax (Douglas Booth). Jupiter is an undocumented Russian immigrant living in poverty in Chicago and working with her mother Aleksa Bolotnikovas (Orphan Black’s Maria Doyle Kennedy) as a maid cleaning rich people’s houses (mostly toilets) and hating her life. Her father Maximilian Jones (James D’Arcy) is fridged in the opening scene, before she was even born and after which her mother fled to the US. Jupiter ascends from being a Dreamer (without citizenship, literally born between nations) to becoming the protector and proprietor of the entire planet Earth. In short, people try to fuck/marry/kill Jupiter for her inheritance. She’s the heir to an intergalactic industry that makes a youth serum that is actually made from people (Soylent Green is PEOPLE) and in the end she chooses not to be queen and returns to her life on Earth (cleaning toilets). 

    In the world of Jupiter Ascending genetics determine the destiny of individuals as well as entire planets’-worth of people. The Abrasax intergalactic space dynasty (Abrasax Industries) have essentially made themselves immortal with a youth serum called RegeneX. ‘The Entitled’ class use RegeneX to extend their lifespans, but it is revealed to be the result of harvesting entire human populations (Jupiter only finds this out much later in the film). Earth is just one of many human colonies set up for this purpose. Once Jupiter is recognised as the heir, Balem sends assassins disguised as medics to kill her (there’s a subplot with her uncle selling her eggs at a fertility clinic) but as part of his plan to marry (his mother reincarnated, ick) and then murder Jupiter for her claim to the throne, Titus sends Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) the half-dog, half-man bounty hunter to rescue her. They escape but must hide from Balem’s agents at Stinger Apini’s (Sean Bean) farm, a half-human, half-honeybee exiled-soldier and the Aegis’ (intergalactic police force) Earth Marshal. Stinger recognises that Jupiter is royalty (because bees can tell) and calls for police back-up. But more bounty hunters arrive (including Bae Doona as Razo) who take Jupiter to Kalique’s palace on the planet Cerise in exchange for youth serum. Kalique shows Jupiter the amazing effects of the youth serum (not revealing how it is made), her only concern being maintaining access to RegeneX. The Aegis arrive and transport Jupiter to the planet Orous so she can be formally recognised as Serephi’s ‘reoccurence’. Titus kidnaps Jupiter and proposes marriage. 

    Many of the characters in the film are non-human or genetic chimera (splices) and a hierarchy is created between ‘pure’ humans – split into immortals who can buy RenegeneX and those who can’t –  and those created in labs spliced together with a variety of different species including canines and lizards and bees (oh my). Again there is a hierarchy with the Saurosapiens (sentient flying lizards/dragons) as the most powerful, but they are all under the control of Balem. Caine was bred for combat, but errors in the lab lead to genetic ‘imperfections’ that make him difficult to control (bad dog); he is expelled from the Legion for attacking an Entitled and stripped of his military-issued cybernetic wings. He is therefore forced to wear rocket rollerblades instead – the shame. Caine becomes a bounty hunter working for Titus. Once Caine finds out who Jupiter is (queen), he believes that Titus just wants to marry her and honorably help her to dismantle Abrasax Industries as his mother wished (before she was killed). When Caine is told that the plan is actually to kill Jupiter, he becomes her protector (good dog). Caine is literally shot out into space at this point so that Titus can marry Jupiter. Caine survives after being saved by the Aegis (space police) ship under the command(ing presence) of the excellent Captain Tsing (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and rocket-boots back to fetch Jupiter and stop the wedding. 

    The Aegis take Jupiter back to Earth, but when she gets there Balem’s minions are waiting with news that her family are being held for ransom at the Jupiter Refinery in the Red Spot of Jupiter (the planet). She has to go with them or her family dies. She does. But the Aegis and Caine follow them to the heavily guarded refinery and use a secret portal to transport in and out just before the refinery is destroyed. Jupiter goes back to her old life working with her mother as a maid – she rejects the materialism of the Abrasax family for a simple life with her family, even though she is still the rightful owner of Earth. 

    So, I scraped the surface of that plot. There are so many subplots and characters and backstory for everything, and it all gets delivered at a blink-and-you-miss-it speed. There is a wiki you can work your way through that goes on for eons should you so wish. 

    Jupiter Ascending explodes onto the screen, a space opera in the truest sense, but one that is not embedded into an existing franchise or adapted from a recognisable object (not even a theme park ride). This originality is something that aligns it with the majority of the #WomenMakeSF films I’ve found so far (always on the lookout for more). It is – like Paradise Hills, Sea Fever, Level 16, Little Joe… – an original concept movie. Rarely trusted with huge franchise films, women are forced to write, pitch, (self)-fund, and produce their own imaginative storyworlds. Women are seen as a risk. Of course, the Wachowskis were not unknown at the time of Jupiter Ascending; where other women, however, needed to show originality to get the freedom to work in genre fiction, the Wachowskis’ success allowed them the freedom to create stories beyond the confines of the male-dominated (in production and reception – although we were more of an unspoken audience) expectations of SF. 

    tumblr_static_6kuaxgybei88o4c844wowwsws

    Jupiter Ascending took the road less traveled, into the wish-fulfilment of prepubescent girls… Every woman who ever wrote herself into her favorite universe via fanfic, every girl who created an amnesiac elven vampire princess and role-played in a chat room, every chick who ever wanted a blaster by her side and a submissive werewolf boyfriend at her back, every one of them whispered, “Finally. It is our time.”

    Donna Dickens, JA review 2015

    The not-made-by-white-men movie worlds that we are seeing in #WomenMakeSF offers something different from the heroes’ journey and the ‘chosen one’ narratives that sustain man-made SF. Jupiter rejects her status as ‘the chosen one’ and the burden of being Seraphi’s recurrence. This is a science fiction made for women (or rather not for straight white man audiences)  – a neon tinted, teenage fever dream of intergalactic (yet sadly unconvincing) romance between a genetic reincarnation of an alien queen and a half-man half-dog shirtless Channing Tatum. Not only does Jupiter Ascending not have a male protagonist, it is an SF film where there are lots of roles and speaking roles for women across the movie. The women characters are complex, even Kalique shows nuance as her desire for RegeneX is not to stay young and beautiful (she has, as Titus creepily puts it a ‘fetish’ for wrinkles) but to live forever in her carefully cultivated palace planet. But her (literally belonging to her) perfect world comes at the cost of others’; a sacrifice she is willing to make. She’s not a goodie, she just has layers (‘everybody likes parfait’). Instead of mocking or ignoring them, Jupiter Ascending celebrates and recognises its non-cismale audience and their SF fantasies.

    Screenshot 2021-06-10 at 15.46.40
    THE CHOSEN ONES (who just happen to mostly men): Luke Skywalker (Star Wars), Paul Atreides (Dune) and Jupiter Jones in Jupiter Ascending

    But Jupiter Ascending wasn’t reviewed in the space opera spirit of its creation, or as a subversion of genre, or even as a messy postmodern (sorry) layering of references to the Wachowskis’ love of science fiction. The film becomes (as Lyle and I have previously theorised in reference to Scott Pilgrim) a form of interactive gameplay (enhanced by Jupiter Ascending’s video gameplay aesthetic) where pleasure for the intended fan audience is drawn from spotting, collecting, and discussing those exuberant intertextual moments. But as a follow up to the genre-defining and mind-bending films of The Matrix films and Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending didn’t seem to register with critics as a joyously operatic intergalactic SF pastiche. 

    Perhaps Speed Racer could be ignored as a contractual blip, but Jupiter Ascending was heralded as the siblings’ new era following Lana’s transition and public coming out. It was judged unfairly especially when compared to films like Kingsman: The Secret Service released in the same season that was critiqued as ‘boisterous hoodie-Bond fantasia’ rather than being reviewed as a serious intervention into pure cinema. It was reviewed as harmless fun (poor representation of women, but the director kingmansplains it as actually celebrating women). Some of the issue here is that many of the major publications sent male critics to review Jupiter Ascending, critics who perhaps expected to be able to read the film along the same masculine, ‘chosen one’ lines as The Matrix (which has since been revealed as a trans allegory). It’s a fun romp, and that’s fiiine. 

    Do I wish it didn’t have such a forced heteronormative ending? Yes. Do I enjoy watching two hot Hollywood stars fail to be a convincing couple? Also yes. The romance is my least favourite part (I ship Kalique with Jupiter), and yet the awkwardness of the dialogue kinda makes me love it. Would I have preferred to have cut that part of the film? Hard yes. 

    7276504321640b2e30631a462923c1ba

    Yes, the thing with the bees is odd, and the bit where Jupiter’s rejection of the ‘chosen one’ narrative means she goes back to working as a maid despite literally owning the Earth and then goes on a date with a winged lycantant-splice (dog-human/ChanningTatum) is weird and awkward. But I am not here to argue that Jupiter Ascending is a Blade Runner-style misunderstood masterpiece because I don’t think that this was what the Wachowski sisters were trying to do. It shows that there is and should be more space in the SF market for original but silly, fun, and exuberant movies that don’t solely rely on a man’s journey and a woman’s rescue (although I admit JJ gets rescued A LOT – Caine, fetch!), lazy stereotypes and misogyny masquerading as humour. This is a storyworld dying for a redux but this time we want at least 6 seasons and a movie.

    #WomenMakeSF


    What to watch next from Lana and Lilly Wachowski [The Wachowskis]:
    Sense8 (14 episodes, 2015-2018)
    Cloud Atlas (2012)
    Speed Racer (2008) – honestly it’s fun
    The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
    The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
    The Matrix (1999)
    Bound (1996)

    Lilly is also a key figure in the documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen (Sam Feder, 2020), which is brilliant and available on Netflix

    Further reading:
    Obviously you should listen the accompanying #WomenMakeSFPod episode with the brilliant Cheryl Morgan talk about Trans Representation in SF.

    Cheryl Morgan (2010). Changing Images of Trans People in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. https://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?page_id=9294 

    Carly Lane (2019). Next Cult Classic: JUPITER ASCENDING should be recognized as royalty. SYFY Wire https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/next-cult-classic-jupiter-ascending-should-be-recognized-as-royalty 

    Marissa Ballard (2015). Femininity and Toughness: The Women of the Wachowskis’ Filmography. https://ballardwachowskiproject.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/femininity-and-toughness-the-women-of-the-wachowskis-filmography/ 

    Aaron Berry (2019). Defending JUPITER ASCENDING: The Matrix As A Coming-Out Party. Film Inquiry https://www.filminquiry.com/jupiter-ascending-coming-out/ 

    Donna Dickens (2014).  ‘Jupiter Ascending’ is the Sci-Fi movie women were waiting for.’ Uproxx https://uproxx.com/hitfix/jupiter-ascending-is-the-sci-fi-movie-women-were-waiting-for/ 

    Emily VanDerWerff (2019). How The Matrix universalized a trans experience — and helped me accept my own. Vox https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/30/18286436/the-matrix-wachowskis-trans-experience-redpill 

    Reiss Smith (2020). 6 eye-opening ways The Matrix is a powerful metaphor for the trans experience. Pink News https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/08/07/the-matrix-trans-trangender-metaphor-allegory-explained-lilly-wachowski-lana/ 

  • Deep Impact (1998)

    Deep Impact (1998)

    Director: Mimi Leder

    Writers: Bruce Joel Rubin, Michael Tolkin

    Year: 1998

    Country: USA

    Language: English

    Women in the crew:

    Casting: Allison Jones

    Set Decoration: Peg Cummings

    Costume Design: Ruth Myers

    Assistant Directors: Paula Case, Cara Giallanza, Dana Kuznetzkoff, Lisa Rowe, Alison Rosa, Michele Ziegler

    Also across Art, VFX, and sound departments

    Available to stream/rent/buy: Rent and/or buy on Amazon Prime UK, Google Play, and Youtube.

    Deep Impact is a disaster movie – part of a long history of watching the US fall whilst also seeing the box office numbers rise from that very site of imagined destruction. The decimation of New York has a lengthy history in Hollywood cinema; the earliest example I’ve found is the pre-code apocalyptic disaster movie Deluge (Felix E. Feist, 1933) where a tsunami crashes through the city. Perhaps it is the precariousness of the fault lines in LA that make this a recurrent theme in Hollywood movies. It projects a fascination with the destruction of the present-day America and the potential of reconstruction thereafter. 

    The flooding of New York in Deluge (Felix E. Feist, 1933)

    Deep Impact tells the story of a closely averted extinction level event  (ELE) from a US perspective, although originally intended as a movie with international scope (curtailed by budgetary concerns). A comet is headed for the Earth; astronauts on The Messiah ship as part of a US-Russian mission attempt to destroy the comet with ballistic (ICBMs) weapons. Instead they split the comet, with a smaller chunk hitting the Earth and creating tidal waves that destroy the East Coast – focussed on the iconic skyline of New York. The second, larger part of the comet is destroyed by The Messiah crew’s sacrifice, but the West Coast, represented by LA, is still hit by waves. The very young married couple at the centre of the film survive, of course, alongside a significant proportion of the world’s population.

    Deep Impact is one of the few, if not the only, disaster movie directed by a woman, but this distinction does not separate it from the successes of the subgenre. Deep Impact was immensely financially successful, grossing $140,000,000 in North America and an additional $209,000,000 worldwide for a total gross of $349,000,000. Deep Impact was also released around the same time as Armageddon (Michael Bay, 1998) but was the more successful of the two on its opening weekend (a major marker for US box office success narratives). Yet, it is still Armageddon that I remember, although I think Deep Impact is a more nuanced and thoughtful film. 

    It’s just a shame [Mimi Leder] hasn’t been given more opportunities to prove herself as a blockbuster figure. Such is the story of women in Hollywood

    – Kayleigh Donaldson
    (@Ceilidhann/kayleighdonaldson.com/)

    Leder’s Hollywood story matches that of so many women directors, where one perceived failure (even the failure of another woman director) can lock women filmmakers out of the Hollywood Boys’ Club. Few get to make a second feature if their first is not wildly successful, and even then the gap between features is much larger than their male counterparts. Many of those locked out of Hollywood go on to have successful television careers, and as the recent turn in premium event television continues we see more women heading hugely successful shows including Westworld (creator Lisa Joy), Humans (China Moo-Young), Little Fires Everywhere (Lynn Shelton), Pose (Gwyneth Horder-Payton and Janet Mock), and Mimi Leder’s work in The Leftovers and Shameless. 

    Mimi Leder’s first two films – The Peacemaker (1997) and Deep Impact (1998) – were relatively well received and sufficiently financially lucrative, but her third film, Pay It Forward (2000), was not as successful as the studios hoped. The Washington Post’s Regina Kempley called it a ‘baldly manipulative, emotionally counterfeit melodrama’ and many of the reviews of the time called it out for its sentimentality. Honestly it’s not my favourite, but it’s hardly the worst and it still made money internationally. Leder didn’t deserve to be sidelined as a director, but as we’ve said before women directors do not get second chances. Marginalised directors have to be perfect the first time or see their opportunities vanish. As Byrdie Lifson Pompan, Leder’s former agent, noted, “opportunities dried up in a way that they probably wouldn’t have for a man”. Leder refers to the 18 year gap between the release of Pay it Forward in 2000 and her Ruth Bader Ginsberg movie On the Basis of Sex (2018) as “movie jail”. 

    RBG-00

    I’m usually the woman in the room. When lesser men were given the directing jobs I was pursuing, it was hard, hurtful, but my father—and my mother—taught me never to be afraid, to go forward. I identify with Justice Ginsburg on that. She never stopped – Mimi Leder 

    As I commented above, Armageddon is the film that I remember, and I spent much of Deep Impact unsure whether I had seen it before. The film is not as focussed on individual characters, and avoids comedic stereotypes and tropes. But it means that I didn’t really care what happened to them. Even when news anchorwoman Jenny Lerner (Téa Leoni) dies in the arms of her father (Maximilian Schell), drowning in a tidal wave (my nightmare death), I wasn’t particularly affected. It takes such a long time for disaster to strike (most of the movie), that it is almost underwhelming.

    I was delighted to see a woman astronaut (Andy Baker/Mary McCormack) as the pilot of The Messiah, who, like Ripley in Alien, puts the needs of the many (in this case the Earth) over the few (the crew). The women in Armageddon are secondary characters (co-pilot Jennifer Watts/Jessica Steen) or space WAGs (wives and girlfriends – sorry, Grace/Liv Tyler) rather than agentic women like scientist/pilot Andy in Deep Impact. Several of the main characters are also women: news anchor Jenny (whose obsession with her parents’ relationship, rather her own, make her a difficult character to bond with) and 16-year-old teen-bride Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski), whose marriage to Leo Biederman/Elijah Wood is an attempt to keep her away from the deadly megatsunamis.      

    tenor (1)

    As a film about the flawed human response to a extinction level event, Deep Impact is carefully considered and imagines the difficult and almost impossible decisions that would face presidents (here, Morgan ‘God’ Freeman) and world leaders as well as individuals faced with almost certain death. The leaders chose to use bunkers called Arks (the biblical rapture stuff is not subtle) to save the ‘best’ of humanity – essential personnel, foods, animals, seeds, and, artefacts, alongside a random lottery-selected group of under-50-year-old civilians.

    Deep Impact is unflinchingly dark (despite the sappy/weird teen-bride storyline) that covers more complex issues, but it was placed in direct competition with Armageddon which takes a less-challenging, arguably more entertaining approach to the end of the world. Sometimes I just want some comedy with my catastrophe.

    #WomenMakeSF  

    source

    What to watch next from Mimi Leder:
    On the Basis of Sex (2018)
    The Leftovers (directed 10 episodes of season 2, producer on 18, 2014-2017)
    The Peacemaker (1997)

    Further reading:
    Nicole Sperling (2018). The Long Road from Pay It Forward to Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Inside Director Mimi Leder’s Return to the Big Screen. Vanity Fair. URL: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/director-mimi-leder-on-the-basis-of-sex  

    Lindsay Zoladz (2017) Mimi Leder Is the Best Director on Television. The Ringer. URL: https://www.theringer.com/2017/4/12/16045810/mimi-leder-director-the-leftovers-deep-impact-1725f67b26de

  • Aniara (2018)

    Aniara (2018)

    Directors- Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja

    Writers- Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja

    Women in the Crew–

    Executive producers– Nina Bisgaard, Natalie Farrey, Meta Louise Foldager Sørensen 

    Producer– Trin Thomsen Annika Rogell

    Assistant producers– Maja Brantås, Ronja Larsson 

    Co-producer- Lisa Widén 

    Cinematographer– Sophie Winqvist 

    Product designers- Linnéa Pettersson, Maja-Stina Åsberg 

    Costume- Ellen Utterström

    Art director- Elin Lilleman Eriksson 

    Also across art, make-up, visual effects, and sound departments

    Available to stream/rent/buy: https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/aniara

    This review contains SPOLIERS.

    aniara_ver6_xxlg

    Review

    The Aniara is a commercial spaceship that goes off-course, on a journey to Mars and then off to nowhere, transporting a lost group of humans who were already forced to leave their poisoned Earth. Aniara is ‘Solaris on speed‘ as woman co-director Pella Kågerman explains. It is a philosophical space movie that asks: what is it be human in a future without the Earth? What happens when Earth is no longer a place we can return to or even save? Is an Earth-less future a future-less future? 

    Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja’s Aniara is an adaptation of an epic poem of the same name by Harry Martinson (1956), a Nobel prize winning Swedish poet of the atomic age. The poem is a collection of 103 cantos (songs) that have previously been adapted into a 1959 opera by Karl Birger Blomdahl, a 1960 Swedish TV movie production directed by Arne Arnbom, and translated for broadcast on BBC radio in 1962. Songs recur throughout the film adaptation for comfort, devotion, and mourning. Martinson was writing in response to Hiroshima and Cold War nuclear proliferation and his future forecasting lyrics recount the tale of an abandoned ship of people who have lost their past and have no future. Kågerman was given permission to adapt Martinson’s poem with the agreement of the poet’s daughters, Harriet and Eva who asked her to retain the poem’s dark original ending.

    250px-Aniara--1959
    Mimaroben (in white) from the 1959 Opera

    “…entombed in our immense sarcophagus
    we were borne on across the desolate waves
    of space-night, so unlike the day we’d known,
    unchallenged silence closing round our grave…’

    Canto 103, ‘Aniara’ by Harry Martinson
    (1998 trans. Klass & Sjoberg)

    This eco-SF film begins with a near future imagining of the culmination of the sixth extinction. Humans are forced to leave the planet they have destroyed. News reports show mass ecological devastation as the opening credits roll and any remaining humans (or rather those who can afford to do so) have left for new Martian settlements. But there is an ‘incident’ at the beginning of their 3-week cruise to Mars and the Aniara is pushed off course and her fuel supply jettisoned to avoid a fatal collision with space debris. But this means that the ship’s crew are unable to change their course and are thus forced to journey on into nothingness. They give the passengers false hope as they suggest that on contact with the gravitational pull of a celestial body they will be able to get back on course. But in truth their current trajectory will not bring them into contact with a planet for almost 6 million years.

    There are parallels to extinction event narratives like Battlestar Galactica, The 100, and even Wall.E, where a limited human colony is forced into space on a potentially endless wait for Earth to recover or in search of a new settlement. In Aniara the threat to human survival is isolation, time, and the self rather than Cylons, depleting resources (air and algae), and even apathy. The film asks us to contemplate what we would do if our future was futureless? What if we were forced to leave Earth? If our survival doesn’t mean anything (these are not the last humans), is it worth carrying on?

    Apr-15-2021 15-41-22
    Opening credits from ANIARA with documentary footage of eco-disaster

    The main character is MR (Emelie Jonsson)—a skilled engineer and the ship’s the mimaroben who hosts/operates the MIMA, which is an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience. Her given name is simply a nickname taken from her job title. In the original poem the mimarobe is a servant (human interface) to the MIMA, defined by his fealty to the machine that assumes the consciousness of the voyagers. In the 1959 opera adaptation of the poem, MIMA is a more definable computer that controls the Aniara, but becomes inert when the Earth is destroyed. In this modern AI-focussed adaptation, MR—defined only by her job title and not a name—can resist MIMA’s somnolent effects and (believes that she) communes with it. But rather than being connected irrevocably to the passengers of the Aniara, this sentient VR chooses its own path into the future.

    “I am of Mima and so am called no more than mimarobe.” Cantos 34

    MR shares a bunk with another employee/passenger: The Astronomer (Anneli Martini). At first I had thought that this was a nod to or parallel to Annihilation, where the women of STEMM are defined by their expertise rather than a gendered name. But Aniara offers no such feminist potential; instead it just adds to the sense of futility and isolation that the passengers and crew experience. The misanthropic astronomer is villainous only in her desire to tell the truth. The truth that the ship is going to be the only place they and their descendants are likely to ever experience. The ship is self-sustaining, but can the humans on board go on living knowing that this is all there is for them? The Astronomer’s revelations lead to suicides, depression and addictive delusions aided by the ship’s MIMA.

    MIMA is a little bit holodeck, a little bit Obsidian Platinum, and a little bit of a Samantha. Intended at first to allow passengers to feel and experience ‘the Earth as it once was’, MIMA draws upon the memories of the people who connect to it. MIMA allows them to return to the simplicity of a now-destroyed natural world—dawn choruses, babbling brooks, and the salty air of the coast. MIMA is a super-advanced VR attraction on a cruise ship to a new life on Mars, placed alongside other distractions/attractions including a shopping mall, a food court, and entertainment arcades: a way of passing the time. But as the time that must be passed becomes potentially endless, the passengers become addicted to the MIMA experience and their once entertaining reveries become nightmares. 

    d41586-019-02581-w_17091984
    The MIMA – VR escape to feeling the natural world that humans destroy in ANIARA

    VR becoming addictive is a popular trope in contemporary SF such as the Obsidian implants in Supergirl and Reverie in Reverie. But these stories tend to focus on saving humans from the VR that they don’t want to and sometimes can’t leave. Often choosing to remain in the virtual world to avoid the pain of their reality (e.g., bereavement), concerned family, friends, and specialists must draw them back to reality with the promise that life will get better. 

    MIMA is an AI designed to develop and grow with the memories and experiences that it comes into contact with through its users, a record of the natural world created through unfiltered lived experiences. At first MR is shown struggling to pull in participants for the VR experience as other commercial and communal activities draw the crowds. But over the first three years passengers need a greater hit of distraction and so they turn to the MIMA. Flooding ‘her’ with data (the memories captured) that is both tranquil and traumatic, MIMA intimately experiences the destruction of the world she was developed to ‘remember’ and ‘recreate’. MIMA becomes increasingly self aware, but unlike Samantha in Her, MIMA is not connected to an infinite network of other AIs that it can escape to and separate from the needy damaged humans. ‘She’ is as trapped as the rest of the people onboard. 

    MIMA has the potential to turn against the humans (like the Machines in The Matrix)—they willingly give themselves over to the machine—but instead chooses to self-destruct, refusing to serve as solace for a species that failed to conserve the irreplaceable pale blue dot. The apparent safety of the dreamstate provided by the MIMA becomes unstable as forests burn and birds fall from the sky. MIMA seems to lose ‘her’ mind and, as members of a techno-cult that emerges following MIMA’s ‘death’ explain, she dies from grief. ‘She’ mourns a world and set of experiences that cannot be substituted or recaptured even by advanced technology. MIMA struggles to separate the images of macro destruction that humans are perhaps almost numb to (new reported images of fires, flooding, extinction, starvation…) from the pleasant individual daily experiences of nature that we don’t always connect to the larger eco-disaster that we face.

    MIMA ‘dies’ relatively early in the film’s run time. They are only three years into the journey when the system is overwhelmed. They have created, as Captain Chefone (Arvin Kananian) remarks, their ‘own planet’ on the Aniara: a system that produces enough oxygen and foodstuffs (algae will save us!) for survival. At first memories of the world they destroyed and left behind become taboo as those in charge fear that even images of nature will devastate the fragile human residents. MR wants to use her expertise to build a beam-screen to help the depressed (and mainly her lover Isagel [Bianca Cruzeiro]), a 3D rendering of some of the natural images perhaps found amongst MIMA’s corrupted memory space. But she is instead conscripted into teaching, although eventually and with the support of her students she does create her 3D projectors that offer a glimmer of hope in the darkness of deep space. But flickering hope and uncanny natural scenes cannot help Isagel.

    Apr-15-2021 15-53-48
    MR’s Beam-Screen that acts as a substitute for the MIMA that was a substitute for ‘real’ nature

    MR has hope. The Astronomer tells her she is delusional and lying to herself. But it is there throughout the film. The seemingly out of place dance sequences show her letting go, feeling, and allowing herself to experience everything she can. She falls in love with Isagel (the woman pilot; the original Isagel was also a woman and like MR  her ‘name’ is just a ‘code word’). In a search for connection and hope they investigate the cults that emerge only a year after MIMA is lost. In an orgy that follows one of their experiences with the cults Isagel becomes pregnant. A possible symbol of hope (children are our future, etc.)? They raise the child together. But as the value and purpose MR has found in teaching and developing the beam-screen technology makes her life seems worth living, she discovers that Isagel and their child are dead in a tragic murder/suicide. MR continues on. We see her for the last time at an awkward 10th anniversary event where she is awarded a prize for her beam screen. Time passes, 25 years later, and then a blink later the film’s closing shots show the Aniara in the year 5,981,407, dead and floating above a planet in the Lyra constellation.   

    The Aniara finally gets to the planet that once offered them hope. But in that distant future the ship is just  a piece of space debris, a celestial sarcophagus for a part of the human species that was lost and soon forgotten. They are not humanity’s last hope, they are little more than debris lost in the vastness of space. Our world is worth saving: it is a home, a purpose, a gift. Hope and wishful thinking can only get us so far—our individual contributions matter, but in the face of massive institutional and corporate greed and destruction we can only manage so much. As MR exclaims in a moment of frustration: their experiences on Aniara are not better than those on the cold desolation of Mars and suggests that their survival is not just individual but collective and even generational. MR has hope beyond her own life and experience. The Aniara could have become a generation ship that would have meant keeping this journey going across generations born on the ship until a destination was reached. But instead of thinking of the future, the crew and passengers are (quite understandably) focussed on their own immediate experiences. They give up hope (by year 4 techno-sex cults emerge, obvs).

    What happens if we give up hope and fighting for the future? What if we completely desensitise ourselves from the reality of the Anthropocene and our broken planet? Why, despite being fully aware of the facts and the urgency of the climate situation, don’t we (as a global human race) really do anything to radically address our present-day environmental disaster? What happens when we lose eco-empathy and embrace eco-apathy? Let’s find our ecological hope and empathy because I (and future generations) really don’t want to end up on the Aniara.* 

    #WomenMakeSF

    *Mars doesn’t sound that fun either. 

    Getty+Images+x+E+2018+Toronto+International+oASMc322hnAx
    Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja

    What to watch next from Pella Kågerman:
    Aniara is Kågerman’s first feature film as a director. She co-wrote postapocalyptic zombie film The Unliving (2010, 28 min) with Hugo Lilja, which he also directed.

    She has also directed some short films:
    The Swedish Empire (2014)
    Stormaktstiden (2014)
    The Swedish Supporter (2011)
    Body Contact – a segment from  Dirty Diaries (2009), which includes 12 shorts directed by young women artists, directors and feminists to create ’12 propositions to rethink pornography.’

    Further reading
    Harry Martinson (1998 [1956]) Aniara: An Epic Science Fiction Poem. Trans. Klass, S. & Sjoberg, L. Story Line Press.

    Keno Katsuda (2018)TIFF 2018 Women Directors: Meet Pella Kågerman – “Aniara” [interview]. Women and Hollywood [online].  https://womenandhollywood.com/tiff-2018-women-directors-meet-pella-kagerman-aniara/ 

    ‘ANIARA: en revy om människan i tid och rum’ – 60 years since its publication by Bonniers, Stockholm – 1956-2016. Archives @ University of Edinburgh [online]. http://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/edinburghuniversityarchives/tag/harry-martinson/ 

    Kim Skjoldager-Nielsen (2020) The Role of Dystopian Art in the Climate Crisis. Peripeti . 17(32): 32-34.

Sign In

Don't have an account yet? Register

Forgot password?

Register

Reset Password

Please enter your username or email address, you will receive a link to create a new password via email.