Uncyborgable? November 6, 2009

İstanbul Modern Cinema is presenting four movies dealing with the cyborg theme on the occasion of the Third Amber Art and Technology Festival.

TETSUO, THE IRON MAN (TETSUO), 1989
Japan | DVD, Black-White, 67’ | Japanese
Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Cast: Tomorowo Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka
A unique production that goes beyond being just a cyborg movie, Tetsuo: The Iron Man is the tale of a biomechanical war between a metal fetishist, who inserts metal pieces into his body, and a young clerk who accidentally kills him. The ensuing struggle between these two rivals evolves into a strange sort of love affair and the pair join forces in order to turn whole world into metal and rust. Shot in the same low-budget, underground-production style as his first two films, Tetsuo: The Iron Man established director Tsukamoto internationally and created a worldwide cult following.

APPLESEED (APPURUSHÎDO), 1988
Japan | DVD, Color, 71’ | Japanese
Director: Kazuyoshi Katayama
One of the most important representatives of Japanese anime films of the 80s, Appurushîdo (Appleseed) is set in a dystopic future. In a utopian city called Olympus whose population is half human and half cyborg, two policemen (appropriately one cyborg and one human) join forces against terrorists who are trying to take over. While the duo struggle to prevent chaos and catastrophe and to protect peace in Olympus, the supercomputer GAIA that controls the city wonders if the terrorists might not be right after all. Appurushîdo shares some of the characters of a well-known manga series while also indulging in the typical manga penchant for violence, slang, and philosophy.

LIQUID SKY, 1982
USA | DVD, Color, 112’ | English
Director: Slava Tsukerman
Cast: Anne Carlisle, Paula E. Sheppard, Susan Doukas, Otto von Wernherr
An extraordinary example of the cyberpunk genre, Liquid Sky is a weirdly deft concoction of punk rock, science fiction, and black humor. A group of aliens that land on Earth in search of heroin take up residence in a New York penthouse apartment, one of whose denizens is a bisexual, cocaine-addicted fashion model named Margaret (played by Anne Carlisle). An independent film produced with a budget of just half a million dollars, Tsukerman’s Liquid Sky parses like a whacked-out version of Close Encounters of a Third Kind.

WESTWORLD, 1973
USA | DVD, Color, 88’ | English
Director: Michael Crichton
Cast: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Norman Bartold

Set in a computer-controlled theme park (called “Delos”) that offers adventures in fantastic worlds to rich tourists in some unspecified future, Michael Crichton’s 1973 Westworld contains numerous themes and events that foreshadow films such as Terminator and Jurassic Park. Delos is divided into three zones –WesternWorld (Wild West), MedievalWorld (Medieval Europe), and RomanWorld (Ancient Rome)– and all of its “interfaces” are androids (ie cyborgs) that are almost indistinguishable from “real” human beings. Westworld is the story of two buddies who’ve picked the Wild West adventure and what happens to them after the park’s main computer crashes.

İstanbul Modern Cinema is presenting four movies dealing with the cyborg theme on the occasion of the Third Amber Art and Technology Festival.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man, 1989

Showing at: 12:00

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto, 67 min, Japanese, Black & White

Cast: Tomorowo Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka

A unique production that goes beyond being just a cyborg movie, Tetsuo: The Iron Man is the tale of a biomechanical war between a metal fetishist, who inserts metal pieces into his body, and a young clerk who accidentally kills him. The ensuing struggle between these two rivals evolves into a strange sort of love affair and the pair join forces in order to turn whole world into metal and rust. Shot in the same low-budget, underground-production style as his first two films, Tetsuo: The Iron Man established director Tsukamoto internationally and created a worldwide cult following.

Appleseed / Appurushîdo, 1988

Showing at: 13:30

Director: Kazuyoshi Katayama, 71 min, Japanese, Color

Voice actors: Ai Kobayashi, Jûrôta Kosugi

One of the most important representatives of Japanese anime films of the 80s, Appurushîdo (Appleseed) is set in a dystopic future. In a utopian city called Olympus whose population is half human and half cyborg, two policemen (appropriately one cyborg and one human) join forces against terrorists who are trying to take over. While the duo struggle to prevent chaos and catastrophe and to protect peace in Olympus, the supercomputer GAIA that controls the city wonders if the terrorists might not be right after all. Appurushîdo shares some of the characters of a well-known manga series while also indulging in the typical manga penchant for violence, slang, and philosophy.

Liquid Sky, 1982

Showing at: 15:00

Director: Slava Tsukerman, 112 min, English, Color

Cast: Anne Carlisle, Paula E. Sheppard, Susan Doukas, Otto von Wernherr

An extraordinary example of the cyberpunk genre, Liquid Sky is a weirdly deft concoction of punk rock, science fiction, and black humor. A group of aliens that land on Earth in search of heroin take up residence in a New York penthouse apartment, one of whose denizens is a bisexual, cocaine-addicted fashion model named Margaret (played by Anne Carlisle). An independent film produced with a budget of just half a million dollars, Tsukerman’s Liquid Sky parses like a whacked-out version of Close Encounters of a Third Kind.

Westworld, 1973

Showing at: 17:00

Director: Michael Crichton, 88 min, English, Color

Cast: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Norman Bartold

Set in a computer-controlled theme park (called “Delos”) that offers adventures in fantastic worlds to rich tourists in some unspecified future, Michael Crichton’s 1973 Westworld contains numerous themes and events that foreshadow films such as Terminator and Jurassic Park. Delos is divided into three zones –WesternWorld (Wild West), MedievalWorld (Medieval Europe), and RomanWorld (Ancient Rome)– and all of its “interfaces” are androids (ie cyborgs) that are almost indistinguishable from “real” human beings. Westworld is the story of two buddies who’ve picked the Wild West adventure and what happens to them after the park’s main computer crashes.