Description
This course examines the portrayal of cities of the future seen over the century-long history of Science Fiction films – from bright, utopian phantasms of the future of urbanity, to dark, dystopian visions of future cities and environmental degradation (as well as strange, subtle, and even surreal mixtures of the two). Over the course of the semester, we will consider these vastly varied future cities from a global perspective, watching films from a dozen different countries/cultures that span the timeline of film history, starting at the turn of the 20th century, and closing with films from the 21st. At the core of this class are the questions: How do these science fiction cities reflect the cities we live in? How do they influence the cities we build? How do they shape our expectations, and the way we live in them?