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Support Long-term ThinkingJoin the Long Now Community for a night of films that inspire long-term thinking. On October 27, 02020, we’ll screen Samsara followed by 2001: A Space Odyssey at Fort Mason.
SAMSARA is a Sanskrit word that means “the ever turning wheel of life” and is the point of departure for the filmmakers as they search for the elusive current of interconnection that runs through our lives. SAMSARA transports us to sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial sites, global gatherings and natural wonders. By dispensing with dialogue and descriptive text, the film subverts our expectations of a traditional documentary, instead encouraging our own inner interpretations inspired by images and music that infuses the ancient with the modern.
Filmed over five years in twenty-five countries, SAMSARA (02011) is a non-verbal documentary from filmmakers Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson, the creators of BARAKA. It is one of only a handful of films shot on 70mm in the last forty years. Through powerful images, the film illuminates the links between humanity and the rest of nature, showing how our life cycle mirrors the rhythm of the planet.
The genius is not in how much Stanley Kubrick does in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but in how little. This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn’t include a single shot simply to keep our attention. He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations. Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001″ is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.
What Kubrick had actually done was make a philosophical statement about man’s place in the universe, using images as those before him had used words, music or prayer. And he had made it in a way that invited us to contemplate it — not to experience it vicariously as entertainment, as we might in a good conventional science-fiction film, but to stand outside it as a philosopher might, and think about it.
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About FORT MASON FLIX
With drive-in theaters experiencing a renaissance around the country, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) announces FORT MASON FLIX, a pop-up drive-in theater launching September 18, 2020. Housed on FMCAC’s historic waterfront campus, FORT MASON FLIX will present a cornucopia of film programming, from family favorites and cult classics to blockbusters and arthouse cinema.