Science Fictions/Speculative Futures: Utopian/Dystopian Visions in Film & Media

Catalog description

Focusing on contemporary screen media, this class will investigate how film, television, and digital media envision speculative futures. The course weaves together two forms of critical/creative practice: 1) Curating film festivals - For this component of the class, we will focus on topics such as film festivals and public culture, the geopolitics of programming, the significance of location, the work of curation, various types of festivals (e.g., activist, identity-based, industry-adjacent), as well as practical matters of PR, community partnerships, fundraising, and scheduling. Guest speakers will include programmers from the Pittsburgh area, as well as from national and international festivals like Sundance. How are film festivals rooted in older ritual forms of gathering? What is the sociocultural purpose of a festival? What kinds of events can they be? What does it mean to collaborate on a program of films that resonate with one another, and to gather people together to watch them? How do festivals both serve pre-existing audiences and create them? 2) Analysis of speculative fiction in film - For this part of the class, students will consider what it means to imagine possible futures within a dystopian present. How do conventional SF tropes draw from histories of colonial conquest, migration, and racialization? How have artists pushed the boundaries of sound and moving image to capture speculative visions of environmental collapse, multiple timelines, labor, and artificial intelligence? Assignments may include weekly responses to screenings and readings, a mood reel/pitch deck for a speculative fiction film (or other screen media), and a critical analysis that can take written or audiovisual form (i.e., a video essay). The course will culminate in a collaboratively created concept for a Pittsburgh-based, speculative film and media festival (i.e., proposal,…