{"id":7168,"date":"2010-04-18T12:23:25","date_gmt":"2010-04-18T01:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/?p=7168"},"modified":"2010-04-21T07:42:27","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T20:42:27","slug":"weekend-fright-flick-festival-post-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/04\/18\/weekend-fright-flick-festival-post-apocalypse\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Fright Flick Festival: Post-Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whereas disaster films such as Roland Emmerich’s ADD exercise in visual frenzy, 2012<\/em>, are about immediate survival and in-progress destruction (with thrills coming from the destruction itself), post-apocalypse tales tend to explore in a more reflective manner the aftermath of universal catastrophe. Generally speaking, they examine society and how we relate to it by destroying it and making the survivors struggle to find a way to live in what remains of it, either by rebuilding society, finding new ways of sustaining life and human interaction, or by finally giving in to the realisation that the end is inevitable.<\/p>\n

Recently John Hillcoat’s bleak post-apocalytic film, The Road<\/em> (2009) — based on the even bleaker, Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy — showed just how dramatically effective post-apocalyptic stories can be, though of course they have been around since before the 20th century “invention” of Science Fiction as a genre. For example, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year<\/em>, published in 1722, is not post-apocalyptic in the scifi sense as it takes place in the past, but its fictional depiction of one man’s experience during the year 1655 — the year in which the Great Plague hit London — has a definite fin de si\u00e8cle<\/em> end-of-the-world feel about it. Frankenstein<\/em> author Mary Shelley’s The Last Man<\/em> (1826) is set in a post-apocalyptic future — a future in which the sole survivor of a plague that has wiped humanity from the planet struggles to survive alone. Another is After London<\/em> by Richard Jefferies, published in 1885 — though here the author sees the destruction of most of the population as a good thing, allowing humanity to revert to an idyllic rural lifestyle based on proper Christian principles, renouncing the evil, corrupting influences of city life.<\/p>\n

I also recently read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Poison Belt<\/em> (1913), which has Earth pass through a stretch of poison “ether” in space, with the result that every living thing on the planet dies, only Professor Challenger (of the earlier The Lost World<\/em> fame) and friends lasting longer than most thanks to his foresight. The story is a metaphor for the cosmic fragility of Man, and the fact that once the Earth passes through the Belt the “death”-effect also passes merely adds to the sense of cautionary warning.<\/p>\n

This Weekend Fright Film Festival features a number of short post-apocalyptic films that you may not have come across before. Most involve some sort of plague — uncontrollable disease being a particular obsession of the contemporary world, whether man-made or “natural”.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Netherworld<\/em><\/h3>\n

Netherworld<\/strong> (UK-2009; short [7:26]; dir. Steven King)<\/p>\n

Netherworld<\/em> reflects the decade’s related cinematic obsession, zombie apocalypse, though it is not actually about the carnivorous dead as such — in the post-Night of the Living Dead<\/em> sense. It was made as part of the director’s Higher National Diploma film course.<\/p>\n

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2.\u00a0 Connected<\/em><\/h3>\n

Connected<\/strong> (Denmark-2009; short [7:32]; dir. <\/span>Jens Raunkj\u00e6r Christensen and Jonas Drotner Mouritsen)<\/span><\/p>\n

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Synopsis:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Set in the distant future, Connected<\/em> is a story about survival and greed with a post apocalyptic wasteland as its backdrop. Survivors of an unknown disaster shuffle through a desolate landscape, as it quickly becomes clear that not everybody has the strength to survive. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n