DARK STAR: Future Shock Film Week at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

FOMO Cinema Presents: Future Shock

A week of rogue machines, unstable realities, artificial intelligence, cybernetic bodies, corporate paranoia, cosmic dread, and a very cranky robot policeman.

This program traces a century of cinema asking the same uncomfortable question: what happens when human intelligence develops an Artificial Intelligence it can’t fully control?

The answer, judging by this week’s films, is never good.

DARK STAR

John Carpenter | 1974 | USA | 1h23m | Presented in the original English audio with English subtitles

DARK STAR is John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon discovering that the funniest place to put bored, disaffected worker drones is several light years from help.

DARK STAR is where John Carpenter’s career begins, not with polished horror or studio muscle, but with a group of bored astronauts stuck in space with faulty equipment, a talking bomb, and far too much time to think. The film follows the crew of the Dark Star, a scout ship travelling through deep space to destroy unstable planets before they become a threat to future colonisation. It sounds grand in theory. In practice, the ship is falling apart and the crew are tired of each other. Space - in Carpenter’s hands - is cramped, repetitive and badly managed.

What makes DARK STAR so enjoyable is how matter-of-fact its absurdity feels. A beachball-like alien escapes containment. A frozen commander still offers advice from storage. A bomb starts espousing existential philosophical doubts at exactly the wrong moment.

The film began as a student project at USC before being expanded into a feature. You can see the budget limitations, but you can also see the ideas forming Carpenter would return to in later films like HALLOWEEN, THE THING and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. O’Bannon would later write ALIEN, and DARK STAR already contains an early version of that film’s crew dynamic: tired people trapped together in deep space, arguing over procedure, boredom, hierarchy and the basic unpleasantness of doing a dangerous job in a badly behaved ship. Whereas ALIEN is a straight-shooting sci-fi horror film, you could argue DARK STAR is the world's first sci-fi workplace comedy.

I’m opening this week’s FOMO FUTURE SHOCK program with DARK STAR because it captures something the whole week returns to again and again: the future doesn’t always arrive as sleek progress. Sometimes it arrives broken, underfunded, mildly ridiculous and carrying a machine that has started asking questions nobody is prepared to answer.

FOOD AND DRINK POLICY: FOMO Cinema Lounge Bar opens 1 hour before the first screening of the day and closes at 02:00,.serving a wide selection of beer, wine, cocktails, and non-alcoholic refreshments including coffee and tea, as well as fresh hot popcorn! Outside food is allowed in the bar but not in the cinema. No alcohol from outside allowed. All guests are invited to arrive early and stay late!

LOCATION: FOMO Secret Cinema, Bazari Orbeliani, Tbilisi. A five minute walk from Liberty Square metro.

HOW TO FIND FOMO: Enter Bazari Orbeliani via Atoneli St above Carrefour and take the stairs on your left to Level 1. Signage on the door. You can also check our Instagram story highlights for a video showing exactly how to find us:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17933106294029235/