Film Series | 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.

Strange Days, which was set in the near future at the time of its production, takes place at the turn of the last millennium in a city on the verge of social upheaval. Directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), the film was inspired by the tumultuous social and political events of the 1990s, especially the 1992 Los Angeles uprising following the Rodney King verdict. Strange Days hurls headlong into themes of social unrest and questions about immersive technology. Its bold statements seem shockingly prescient today, which has no doubt led to the film’s ardent appreciation and recent surge in fandom.

DIRECTED BY: Kathryn Bigelow. WRITTEN BY: James Cameron, Jay Cocks. WITH: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore. 1995. 145 min. USA. Color. Scope. English. Rated R. 35mm.