ROBOCOP: 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.

ROBOCOP

Paul Verhoeven | 1987 | USA | 1h42m | Presented in the original English audio with English subtitles

When Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner wrote ROBOCOP, they looked at America in the 1980s and concluded the next logical step was that corporations should own police officers. At the time, this was considered satire. ROBOCOP is a corporate nightmare disguised as an 80s action film, which is probably why it’s aged better than most of the decade around it.

The film is set in a collapsing Detroit where public services have been handed over to private industry. Police officer Alex Murphy, played by Peter Weller, is killed in the line of duty and rebuilt by Omni Consumer Products as RoboCop, a cyborg law enforcement product designed to clean up the city and restore corporate confidence. His body belongs to the company. His memory doesn’t.

What makes ROBOCOP work so well is how completely Verhoeven understands the world he’s mocking. The fake news broadcasts, boardroom language, TV commercials and casual privatisation of violence all feel absurd until they don’t. The film’s funny, vicious and much more politically alert than its reputation as an 80s action movie sometimes suggests.

There’s also a strange sadness under the metal. Murphy isn’t simply a machine discovering he was once human. He’s a man whose identity has been repackaged as intellectual property. The action still works and the satire still lands. And with every passing year that increasingly common brand of "Corporate Logic" starts to look a little less ridiculous.

I’m including ROBOCOP in this week’s FOMO FUTURE SHOCK program because it understands artificial intelligence as part of a much larger system: policing, profit, surveillance, media spectacle and the fantasy that technology can fix social collapse without changing the conditions that caused it.

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/