www.cyberpunkfilm.com wrote:Cyberpunkfilm.com is a unique film group which has created three films.
"The Cyberpunk Educator", is our first film. It is a documentary study of mainstream 'cyberpunk' films of the 1980's- with a heavy focus on their literary, political, and cultural content. The film uses the structure of literary theorist Northrop Frye, and the cultural critiques of renowned anthropologist Michel Foucault to describe the common, repeating stories in Western culture, and their application to the political process. Though it's an academic film, its also film about existentialist robots with guns, and it's fun to watch.
Source
cvilleindymedia wrote:The Cyberpunk Educator- a new film by director and political activist Andrew J. Holden.
The Cyberpunk Educator is a documentary study of mainstream cyberpunk films of the 1980's- with a heavy focus on their literary, political, and cultural content. Cyberpunk films briefly held a spot in the mainstream of 1980's hollywood, when films such as Blade Runner, Robocop, and the Terminator series dominated the creative landscape. These 'mechanical tragedies however, were shortly edged out by a renewed interest in romantic comedy and other genres.
Holden's film uses the structure of literary theorist Northrop Frye, and the cultural critiques of renowned anthropologist Michel Foucault to describe the common, repeating stories in Western culture, and their application to the political process. Though it's an academic film, its also film about robots with guns, and so it should be fun to watch.
Films studied in The Cyberpunk Educator include 'Terminator', 'Akira', 'Aliens' and 'Robocop', but the film itself is composed of thousands of sources, which include toy doll commericals, tv news parodies, cartoons, and even popular works of Western art- such as Goya's May Third and renaissance sculptor Lorenzo Bernini's 'David'.
Ultimately, the film moves from defining the common stories and structures of Western art, and moves into a close definition of the 'cyberpunk genre'. From there, it's all politics, as Holden details the prime story-tellers in todays culture; corporate advertisers and the government; and then shows how understanding the structures they use better enable us to make informed decisions.
By understanding the Romantic Mode described in The Cyberpunk Educator we can, for instance, see why in 2000, two presidential candidates who spent most of their lives in DC and Ivy league schools spent millions to advertise themselves as both being from the countryside, and growing up and learning politics in the sort of imaginary town that Norman Rockwell used to paint.
But the heart of the film is the modern industrial age, and it's science fiction interpretations. Backed up by a hip-hop, electronic, and jazz soundtrack, The Cyberpunk Educator often plays like a long music video, with the computer-generated voice of narrator EVE2.0 outlining the film between the beats.
Fun to watch.
Source
The film is available for direct download and as Bittorrent download at the official website: http://www.cyberpunkfilm.com
ed2k link: ed2k: Cyberpunk%20Educator%20-%20Gnostic%20Documentary.avi [650.99 Mb] [Stats]
And while searching for some info about the film, I came across this quite nice article: Bruce Sterling: Cyberpunk in the Nineties
And this collection: Beyond Cyberpunk!
