News
The Anti-Dystopian Congress

A regional project by the Goethe-Institut Bratislava, Budapest, Krakow, Prague and Riga.

In memory of the science fiction author Stanislaw Lem, who would celebrate his 100th birthday this year, we organize “The Anti-Dystopian Congress”. The proposition: the future will be imperfect and chaotic, but we can make it a better place against all odds. Part of the congress curated by Isabella Hermann is a film program curated by German author and theorist Georg Seeßlen and will be available online via stream. Under the title TOMORROW´S HUMAN – THE HUMAN IN TOMORROW´S WORLD the film program will reflect the notion of identity and diversity in the era of Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality. The selection is intended to show that films under the label Science Fiction can also be completely different: No spectacles from the construction kit of popular mythology, no fantasies of eternal struggle, of destruction and apocalypse and no leading articles in futuristic disguise. It’s about personal visions and transgressions, about film as a thought and form experiment, about freer thinking and narration beyond the simple duality of utopia and dystopia, it is about understanding the future as an open space that is more than just an extension of the present and its problems. It’s about science fiction as a brave genre. (G.S.)

Film program on demand: 9 – 14 November 2021 curated by Georg Seesslen

ART GIRLS (for vod without geoblocking see also sooner.de or amazon.com)
AUTONOME ARTEFAKTE
DER TEST DES PILOTEN PIRX
KRABBEN
TEKNOLUST
THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN
WELT AM DRAHT
HOTEL “ZUM VERUNGLÜCKTEN ALPINISTEN”

CONGRESS: 10 – 12 November 2021

Panel: Tomorrow’s Human – Future Narratives in Film, Presenter: Sonora Broka; Speakers: Georg Seesslen, Robert Bramkamp / 11.11.2021, 16:30 CET/ 17:30 EEST
Science fiction films are visual demonstrations of the motifs and conflicts developed in science fiction literature. They tell more or less grand stories of the future simulated as credibly as possible with the means of today. However, science fiction films can also be something completely different, namely attempts to expand and question the dimensions of storytelling in images. Radical science fiction films are films in which space and time and the subject are experienced in new ways. Science and art can meet in this quest to find space, time, and the man of the future.

Goethe on Demand — TOMORROW’S HUMAN – Art Girls

c Goethe Institut