The Last Angel of History with Neptune Frost | 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.

The Last Angel of History
John Akomfrah directed this docufictional essay on the history of Black influences in music and culture that argues the drum was the “first Afrofuturistic technology.” His fellow Black Audio Film Collective member Edward George wrote the script and stars as a time-travelling “Data Thief.” Interviews with Parliament Funkadelic’s George Clinton, trip-hop musician DJ Spooky, and science fiction author Octavia Butler are intermixed with evocations of composer Sun Ra and lo-fi video art in this cutting-edge exploration of late-20th century Black aesthetics.

DIRECTED BY: John Akomfrah. WRITTEN BY: Edward George. WITH: Edward George. 1996. 45 min. UK/Germany. Color. English. Not rated. Digital.

Neptune Frost
This aesthetically daring science-fiction musical—written and co-directed by artist and musician Saul Williams—opens in the coltan mines of Burundi, East Africa, where laborers extract this precious resource for use in mobile phones, smartwatches, and laptops. Recognizing they’ve been exploited as drastically as their land has been, the laborers form an underground band of anti-colonialist hackers and set up camp in an e-waste dump of obsolescent technologies. A futuristic fable with a powerful punk ethos, this genre-defying work reminds us of the political power we have at our fingertips and our collective responsibility to hold power to account.

DIRECTED BY: Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman. WRITTEN BY: Saul Williams. WITH: Cheryl Isheja, Elvis Ngabo, Kaya Free, Eliane Umuhire. 2021. 105 min. USA/Rwanda/France/Canada/UK. Color. Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French, English. Not rated. DCP.