3/11/2023 0 Comments Raid alert for elysium![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Pumzi stages this “return to the source” narrative through a fragile seedling, in stark contrast to global melodramas where Africa is saved by Euro-American do-gooders.Īlex Rivera’s Spanish-language film Sleep Dealer (2008) also imagines an impending global water crisis. In so doing, it simultaneously invokes the ways in which Africa has continually served as a “reservoir” of primary resources for the Global North (and, increasingly, China) and how Africa is an origin point for the anthropocene - the beginning of human life. The film follows one woman’s attempt to explore the possibility of once again growing life on the outside. In an East African subterranean community ruled by a totalitarian regime, survivors live in closely monitored sealed compounds, recycle their own urine, and collect sweat from their own bodies. Pumzi, the 2009 Kenyan science fiction short film directed by Wanuri Kahiu, takes place in a dystopian future thirty-five years after World War III, known as the “Water War.” The global fight for water has resulted in its shortage, making the land uninhabitable and forcing the world’s inhabitants to retreat underground. Indeed, perhaps more than any other genre, SF is deeply intertwined with globalization and its discontents, but also for the possibility of utopias, in particular small-scale or fragile ones. These films imagine life evacuated of these resources in the near future - producing built, lived-in dystopias that contain, at their most critical, possibilities for counternarratives of hope. Scarcity of natural resources (water, air, food) has been a particularly prevalent topic for current SF cinema. From the dusty California of Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium to the unnamed East African country devoid of life in the festival hit Pumzi, such films suggest how the genre is uniquely poised to speak to urgent environmental concerns. Ecological devastation is a mainstay in contemporary SF around the world. Science fiction (SF) cinema has much to contribute to broader debates on the future of the planet. In what UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has deemed “truly a historic moment,” the summit concluded with an unprecedented consensus that nearly every country, whether developed or developing, would make an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby helping to lessen the effects of climate change. After decades of failed talks, tensions ran high, discussions centering around the question of the respective roles of developed and developing nations, terms that reflect an understanding of the globe that is itself shifting dramatically each year. Meanwhile, representatives of 195 nations gathered in Paris for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change to forge a new international agreement limiting global warming, with the objective of preventing serious climate-related catastrophes. Schools and factories were closed, motor traffic was restricted, and subways sounded warning broadcasts that resembled bombing raid alerts. For the first time since instituting a color-coded emergency response system in 2013, the government issued a red alert, its highest air-pollution warning level. Shrouded in thick smog, China’s capital city came to a standstill. Last week, Beijing resembled an apocalyptic scene from a science fiction film. Global science fiction cinemaĪnd its common depiction of post-apocalyptic scenarios is increasingly resonating The French poster for the 2014 film Snowpiercer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |