Coming to theatres today, Wednesday, December 16: DREAMS REWIRED
Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart, and Thomas Tode’s exploration of 21st century hyper-connectivity through the history of 20th century technological innovations had its world premiere at Rotterdam at the beginning of the year. Its fest circuit has also included Seattle, Jerusalem, Milan, Message to Man, Hamburg, Jihlava, CPH:DOX, Kansas, and Tehran’s Cinema Verite.
Working from the premise that the roots of our modern technological- and information-focused age may easily be found in the advances made in the early part of the previous century, Luksch, Reinhart, and Tode’s essay film offers a whimsical look at the impact of the telephone, radio, and especially cinema on our imagination, interactions, and aspirations. Assembling a selection of clips from both classic early cinema – Vertov, Marey, Edison, Melies, Keaton, and Eisenstein, among them – and much more obscure industrial and experimental material, the film underscores how this technology and other 20th century innovations offered us a new way to view the world, each other, and, recursively, the technology itself. In a welcome instance of a celebrity narrator lending something more than substantial than simple name recognition to a work of nonfiction, Tilda Swinton here offers intriguing commentary and often funny, cheeky dialogue imaginings that underscore the modernity of the decades-old clips employed, suggesting connections between on-screen utilizations of then-new telephony and radio to today’s online sphere and our immersion within it.
what (not) to doc 