To Wound the Autumnal City: AFROFUTURISM Films II @Chicago Filmmakers
by
To Wound the Autumnal City:
AFROFUTURISM Films 2 @Chicago Filmmakers
Zombies, Apocalypse and Dystopias
October 13, 2018, 7:30 pm
“It is not that I have no past. Rather, it continually fragments on the terrible and vivid ephemera of now.”
? Dhalgren
AFTERMATH: THE SEEDS OF ARMAGEDDON 2018, US, 9 minute, 30 seconds
Dir: Vagabond Beaumont
A fatally ill father and his daughter are post-apocaylptic refugees struggling to protect each other from the harsh realities of the world. As the father’s health rapidly deteriorates the daughter’s faith begins to unravel as the fear of losing everything she loves leaves her unable to trust anyone ever again.
This film was produced specifically for Ryuichi Sakamoto’s asynch short film competition. The tracks used in the film from async were ZURE and fullmoon.
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Danger Word 2013, US 19 minutes
Director: Luchina Fisher
Danger Word is a community-funded short film directed by Luchina Fisher that was shot at the end of May, 2013.
Starring Frankie Faison (The Silence of the Lambs, “The Wire,” “Banshee”) and introducing Saoirse Scott (“One Life to Live”).
Written by Steven Barnes(Lion’s Blood) and Tananarive Due (My Soul to Keep) , based on their novel Devil’s Wake.
Danger Word is the story of a 13-year-old girl and her grandfather surviving the zombie plague in his wooded cabin — and how her birthday celebration goes awry.
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NAKED REALITY
Dir. Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2016.
South Africa / Cameroon. 62 min.
In an entirely urban Africa 150 years from now, energy is scarce and power lies in the past, channelled via prayer in defense against the genetic disorders of “Bad Luck”. Weather forecaster Wanita’s DNA may contain ancestral solutions, pulling her out of her life and into a post-modern odyssey. But no synopsis can suffice to contain the open-ended and constantly shifting world of the film: genetics, technology, time-travel, doppelgangers, the body as text, and meteorology appear as ambiguous signs along the hero’s journey. Each scene offers its own insights and reconfigures what came before, as the layers of artifice peel back towards the elusive reality of the title. The future, here, is evoked with icy minimal space that suggests its own meanings: if non-urban space has ceased to exist, perhaps this world of digital overlays and empty sound stages is an indication that all non-virtual existence will also be a thing of the past.