Science and Magic in Film series continues

Thursday, February 23, 2012, By KC Duggan

SYRFILM INC. and The Red House Arts Center continue their collaboration on the series Science and Magic In Film. This four-part series takes place at the Red House Arts Center on the fourth Tuesday of each month. Each screening includes a discussion.

Program Passes are now available for $25; they can be purchased at the Red House Arts Center or at syrfilm.com. Single screening tickets are also available at the door for $8/$5 Red House members and students. Programs begin at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6:30pm at the Red House Arts Center, 201 South West St. Free parking is available.

This collaborative series celebrates the science fiction genre, and brings the audiences a chance to explore the impact of technology, artificial life, electronic music and the science of memory in cinema. The guest speakers provide an opportunity to delve deeper into the world of science fiction and the history of science and magic in film.

Feb. 28, Fellini “Satyricon” (1969); guest Jeffrey Gorney (writer, photographer, actor)

This Oscar-nominated, Italian fantasy drama film, written and directed by Federico Fellini, is loosely based on Gaius Petronius’ work “Satyricon,” a series of bawdy and satirical episodes written during the reign of the emperor Nero and set in imperial Rome. Fellini has described this film as ‘science fiction of the past,’ as though the Romans of that decadent age were being observed by the astounded inhabitants of a flying saucer. Curiously enough, in this effort of objectivity, the director has created a film that is so subjective as to warrant psychoanalysis.

Giovanni Grazzini argued that “Fellini’s Rome bears absolutely no relationship to the Rome learned about in schoolbooks. It is a place outside historical time, an area of the unconscious in which the episodes related by Petronius are relived among the ghosts of Fellini … His ‘Satyricon’ is a journey through a fairytale for adults. It is evident that Fellini, finding in these ancient personages the projection of his own human and artistic doubts, is led to wonder if the universal and eternal condition of man is actually summed up in the frenzied realization of the transience of life, which passes like a shadow. These ancient Romans who spend their days in revelry, ravaged by debauchery, are really an unhappy race searching desperately to exorcise their fear of death”.

Additional Science and Magic in Film screenings:

  • March 27, “The Last Wave” (1977); guest Owen Shapiro
  • April 24, “Blade Runner” (1982), guest Jim Loperfido