settima

scifi

The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)

Mar

5

National Scott Day

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

Scott Carey (Grant Williams) standing in a palm of someone's hand, his arms outstretched as if pleading. DP: Ellis W. Carter.

Despite its sensationalist pulpy title and #ColdWar premise, Jack Arnold's adaptation of the Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man (1956) is an existentialist treatise.

“A strange calm possessed me. I thought more clearly than I had ever thought before – as if my mind were bathed in a brilliant light.”

– Scott Carey

The Incredible Shrinking Man plays with the understanding of what it means to be acknowledged as a human, and one's place in the world. The story is told through the eyes of the titular Shrinking Man – Scott Carey – who after being exposed to strange fog, finds himself increasingly lost in this world.

Sur un air de Charleston [Charleston Parade] (Jean Renoir, 1927)

Feb

14

Extraterrestrial Culture Day

Sur un air de Charleston (1927)

Parisian savage Catherine Hessling and African explorer Johnny Hudgins exploring each other's alien ways. DP: Jean Bachelet.

Legendary African-American #vaudeville performer Johnny Hudgins – in historically correct Blackface – plays an African explorer who descends onto 2028 Paris to learn about the primitive ways of the white natives. Soon, he discovers the Charleston.

“I have finally discovered my ancestors' traditional dance.”

– Johnny Hudgins

A fantastic Afrofuturist short, made a decade before Sun Ra's trip to Saturn.