Before and after the films, everyone’s invited to indulge in our Humanist
Vegetarian Tea House.
Wednesday, May 7 at 7:30 pm
Tragos
This audacious
cyber-noir suspense drama takes place underground in
San Francisco, 2012. An urban tribe of
techno-pagans practice their ecstatic rites in a
virtual reality program when one of them
unexpectedly goes blind and another uses the device as a suicide machine. The law intervenes and a fundamentalist Christian
prosecutor portrays the tribe in the media as a
satanic suicide cult.
This
is only the beginning.
Through surprise twists and turns, a cyber-noir
witch hunt unfolds to reveal a deeper story of love
and redemption. There's no mistaking
that this futuristic film will
demand your
brainpower and full attention.
It questions our over-reliance on gadgets and God;
it assaults many basic contemporary liberties,
coming too close for comfort. It
sheds
a disturbing light on the mass-hypnotic-narcotic
programming that we are all subliminally subjected
to. It's a complex
work that aims to the highest denominator and pays
off in a triumph of spirit.
This exciting film is exceedingly well produced, a
vision for those of us mired in everyday reality.
Here is a film
that takes place in Oakland! It happens just
after 9/11 in a small apartment building in Oakland
during October 2001. Ten years earlier a young
Croatian soldier and devout Catholic unwittingly
drank tea made from the hallucinagenic datura root
and experienced, what he believed to be, a genuine
religious vision of the Virgin Mary. Then ten
years later he migrates to Oakland to destroy what
he had been shown in his vision to be the "den of
iniquity" of decadent American life.
Local Berkeley filmmaker, Antero Alli, focuses on
the subjects of emotional isolation and rabid
obsessions, and his characters have a
self-destructive habit of locking themselves into
prisons of their own making. The three main
characters in this film bring new depth to this
brutal focus:
the Croatian soldier's endless pugilistic training
and consuming devotion to Catholic iconic symbols,
his girl friend's heliocentric self-worth and her
casual disregard for the feelings of others, and her
sister's self-sacrificing martyrdom as sister and
daughter to the point where her own identify is
obscured. The overlap between these three
people creates dangerous new ground which none are
fully prepared to endure, resulting in a powerful
and mature drama that covers issues of heaven and
Earth. The film is a profound and frequently
disturbing work of intelligence that forces viewers
to weigh in on emotional issues that haunted America
as a result of the tragic events of 9/11:
the damage created by religious dogma, the terror in
dealing with inner fears, and the inability to
justify a societal mind frame built on a foundation
of selfish behavior. Rich in stunning visuals,
and achieving a high level of artistry and honesty, this film solidifies Antero Alli's place among the
most talented contemporary filmmakers.
Take time to
time-travel in filmmaker Antero Alli's cyber-fi
film!
This riveting film follows a bemused time-traveling
librarian named "Flux" from the serenity of 2023
back to the chaos of Seattle in 1999, where he
uncovers video footage from a riot that triggered
the city's collapse. Our society's obsession
with communications technology created the
near-extinction of conversation. On top of
this jolting social examination, this film moves
viewers to think about where our world is heading.
This work should be seen by anyone who believes that
all is calm and well in our little digital sphere.
One of the most chilling yet innovative cinematic
essays on the flaws of today's technology-obsessed
society.
Wednesday, May 28 at 7:30 pm
The Mind is a Liar and a Whore
And now for a film
that takes place in Berkeley!
It's Christmas in the near
future. An Astrologer, a
closet Satanist, an Inuit opera
singer and a webcast diva--a typical Berkeley household(!)--
is forced indoors during an
unexpected citywide lockdown
initiated by the federal
government. Ona, who has
her own webcast show, thinks the
feds are shifting into a
full-blown police state.
Her roomies think she's
paranoid. Havoc and
hilarity unravel as they all
race to their own conclusions
about what they think is
happening during their
escalating states of
uncertainty.
The challenge of perceived and
genuine threats posed in this
film clearly parallels the logic
that lead to the Iraqi fiasco
(the phony insistence of WMD and
Saddam Hussein’s al-Qaeda
support). It also reminds
us that no one was ever arrested
for the anthrax poisoning of the
U.S. postal system in 2003.
