The Portals: History of the Future of Film series starts May 11th at the Providence Public Library with the 2015 documentary “Dreams Rewired” narrated by Tilda Swinton.
Over 100 Years ago, the social anxiety we see in our hyper-mediated world of today, was already well on its way during the electric revolution of the late 19th century. Dreams Rewired presents a collection of films from the 1880s to the 1930s, many rare and previously unscreened, that trace contemporary obsessions and anxieties back to the birth of the telephone, television and cinema. The earliest electronic inventions were as revolutionary, inspiring and alarming to the public as the internet and artificial intelligence are today.
Stephen Holden called it “lively, visually enthralling” in the NYT.
Simultaneously backward-looking and forward-looking, the film makes you feel like a tiny scurrying insect on the global anthill. The unspoken dread that infuses the film is older than Orwell’s “1984”: a fearful fascination with the obliteration of personal identity and the nightmare of human beings as robotic puppets manipulated by the mass media. A recurrent theme is surveillance. Electronic media have allowed us to surveil ourselves, while the powers that be secretly watch us without our knowledge. But “Dreams Rewired” makes no judgments.
Running time 88 minutes. The Cable Car Cinema and the Providence Center for Media Culture in collaboration with the Providence Public Library present Portals: History of the Future Film Series. Q&A to follow film.
6pm to 8pm, Wednesday, May 11, Auditorium, 3rd floor, PPL, 150 Empire Street, (directions)