Monday, April 21, 2014

Everytown: 2036



This is a video I've wanted to edit for more than 20 years. Really. For even longer than that, I've had a love affair with retro-futurism. Things to Come. Metropolis. Streamlined moderne architecture. Teardrop-shaped cars... For as long as I can remember, I've been entranced by the wind tunnel efficiency and earnest optimism of yesterday's tomorrows. William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum" reminded me also of the totalitarian underside to these fantasies, particularly those arising from the Great Depression. But I am drawn to their plucky can-do spirit all the same. So when I found myself in the middle of this semester's crush of projects, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the minutia of these days' obligations, I dug up hours of source material and cut this video. The song is by Donald Fagen. The scenes range from 1927 to 1968, the year I was born. The future, of course, is where it has always been: Just beyond today's fears.

Source Material

American Telephone and Telegraph (1961) Seeing the Digital Future

David Butler [Dir.] (1930) Just Imagine

Fritz Lang [Dir.] (1927) Metropolis

General Motors (1940) To New Horizons

General Motors (1956) Design for Dreaming

General Motors (1956) Keys to the Future

Peter Bogdanovich [Dir.] (1968) Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women

Philco-Ford Corporation (1967) Year 1999 A.D.

Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (1956) Man and the Moon

Westinghouse Electric Company (1939) The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair

William Cameron Menzies [Dir.] (1936) Things to Come