All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Dir. Adam Curtis. 2011, 180 mins. U.K. DCP. The great British cine-essayist and 21st-century social philosopher Adam Curtis (The Power of Nightmares) is our preeminent contemporary voice on technology, a conspiracy theorist without parallel whose films give alarming structure to our structureless world. In his three-part documentary epic on the growing power imbalance between humans and the technologies we have created, Curtis constructs a narrative about the threat of artificial intelligence. A wide-ranging, discursive look at the way we live now—and how we may live in the future—that touches upon both dystopic and utopian possibilities of cybernetics, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is an at-times nightmarish but compelling testament to human artistry in the face of unprecedented change and voluntary self-colonization, using an avalanche of reconstituted archival footage. Part One: Love and Power (60 mins), 12:30 p.m. Part Two: The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts (60 mins), 1:30 p.m. Part Three: The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey (60 mins), 3:30 p.m. Free admission. RSVP here. Tickets will be distributed first-come, first-served on the day of the event.