“DESTINATION… THE FUTURE”: SCIENCE FICTION, SPACE TRAVEL AND THE FATE OF THE PLANET

Published 03/03/2022

This year the special section of the Festival offers a journey through time, exploring the great classics of science fiction and adventuring into the mysteries of the cosmos.

On the occasion of its seventieth anniversary, Trento Film Festival presents a special edition of the traditional and much-loved section Destination…, which this time proposes a journey distant not so much in terms of geography as in time. Since 2011, Destination… has presented a film and cultural itinerary dedicated to a country or geographical area matching the themes of the Festival, combining interest in a geographical area, its landscape and environment with attention for its geopolitical and cultural significance. To celebrate the Festival’s seventieth birthday, Destination… is transformed into a journey through time, observing the future of our planet, a subject increasingly central for the event, through the perspective of science fiction and space studies. This is the basis for Destination… The Future: a film programme  including a science fiction film selected for each decade of the festival from the 1950s to the 2010s, films that have used the landscape, mountains and nature to explore the future of the Earth or give shape to distant planets, places to which only film can “take us”, now as in the 1950s; an events programme with guests and experts who will take the public on a journey exploring the mysteries of space.

THE FILM PROGRAMME

The seven full-length films in Destination… The Future (plus one for younger spectators) represent different times, traditions and approaches within science fiction film, reflecting the different phases in our relationship with the future, through thematic presentation and representation of the landscape and nature, projected forward in time and often into a dystopic dimension.
We start in the 1950s with the classic American B-movie It Came from Outer Space by Jack Arnold, filmed in California and the Mojave desert. For the 1960s we move to eastern Europe with Late August at Hotel Ozone by Jan Schmidt, a post-apocalyptic feminist cult film of the Czechoslovak New Wave, while the 1970s will be represented by the only and extraordinary film directed by Saul Bass, famous for his special effects and opening sequences: Phase IV, a battle between scientists and highly evolved ants filmed in Arizona and Rift Valley in Kenya. Then it’s back to Europe for the 1980s with the unique, visionary and unfortunate film, On the Silver Globe, which Andrzej Żuławski filmed in the 1970s (also in the Tatra mountains, Caucasus and the Gobi Desert) but only completed a decade later, after infinite battles with the Polish government and censors. Another European pioneer directed the film (American), chosen for the 1990s: the pop masterpiece Starship Troopers by Paul Verhoeven, who uses the rocky landscapes of Wyoming and South Dakota as the setting for the savage planet Klendathu. The final films, from the first two decades of the new century, are surprising hybrids: the first combining science fiction and documentary, The Wild Blue Yonder by Werner Herzog, one of the most mysterious and powerful films by the German director, narrated by an alien on Earth; the second uniting science fiction and architecture, music and literature, Last and First Men by the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, whose first and only film (Jóhannsson died shortly after shooting ended) depicts the imposing monuments and brutalist memorials disseminated around the mountains of the former Yugoslavia, as seen by a future narrator who has the voice of Tilda Swinton.
An event for children and families will complete the programme of Destination… The Future: Wall-E by Andrew Stanton, one of the most popular animated films produced by Pixar, a space comedy starring an untiring robot condemned to tidy up a planet (our own?) overtaken by rubbish and transformed into a garbage tip in space.

THE EVENTS PROGRAMME

There will also be plenty of events taking the public on a journey exploring space, «which is the ultimate future destination», as underlined by Emilio Cozzi, journalist, author and popularizer of video game culture, eSport, space and technological innovation, who will act as the presenter for the two main events in this section. These have been organised synergistically with the MUSE: “Women Beyond the Horizon”, with Marcella Salussolia, an engineer with Thales Alenia Space handling the planning of the Lunar Gateway, the base orbiting the moon that will provide support for forthcoming lunar pilgrims, and with Amalia Ercoli Finzi, “the lady of the comets”, one of the leading figures in Italian space history, formerly Principal Investigator of the SD2 drill aboard the Rosetta spacecraft; and “Starship Earth: the future of our planet observed from above the sky” with Paolo Nespoli, a former ESA astronaut, who took part in three missions on board the international space station and will recount how and why the awareness of our present and our future change, when viewed from space. An exploration of challenges and new opportunities, offering a fascinating point of view on the state of the Earth and a new collective responsibility, through the words of someone who has lived… outside the world.

Film will again be the topic of conversation with Roy Menarini, author of “Il cinema degli alieni” (published by Falsopiano), a work dedicated to the figure of the alien as viewed in past decades, in the context of cultural history and film, technology and the news, specific language and literary tradition, sociology and psychoanalysis. The author is a film critic and university lecturer, lecturing in Film and the Culture Industry at the University of Bologna. Our era, which is the future in which the science fiction classics were set, will be discussed with Marco Malvestio, author of “Raccontare la fine del mondo. Fantascienza e antropocene” (published by Nottetempo). Marco Malvestio works at the University of Padova, where he manages a research project on Italian science fiction and ecology in collaboration with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Scientific Forums, by now traditional and organised in collaboration with the provincial climate change forum, will be dedicated to Destination… The Future, with special events relating to the world of research and innovation. Lastly, the programme of Destination… will have a special focus in the T4Future section, dedicated to schools and families, organised in the gardens of the MUSE.