eXistenZ | Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema
Join the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures for a film series featuring cyberpunk films like The Matrix, Ex Machina, Blade Runner and more! These films accompany the museum’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide exhibition Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema. Cyberpunk, a subgenre of science fiction, first appeared in the early 1980s and uniquely captured the anxieties of that decade. Featuring near-future scenarios set in worlds that resemble our own, cyberpunk stories juxtapose technological advances with social upheaval, ecological crisis, and urban decay.
In person: David Cronenberg
eXistenZ follows virtual reality video game designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whose new project is sabotaged by activists. Before becoming a filmmaker, director David Cronenberg studied organic chemistry and cell biology, and this resonates in his approach to themes, props, and makeup: players interact with a fleshy controller that connects to their bodies via umbilical-like power cords. Cronenberg’s fifteenth feature considers cyberpunk concepts like biohacking, wearable technologies, body modification, and transhumanism not through mechanical devices but via common organic material, setting the film in dialogue with similar Y2K-era works of cyberpunk cinema like The Matrix (1999).
