Soylent GreenAstoria, New York (August 17, 2022) — Museum of the Moving Image’s year-long edition of Science on Screen focused on the theme “Extinction and Otherwise” continues this fall with three monthly programs. Among the highlights is the iconic 1973 sci-fi thriller Soylent Green, set in 2022 New York City, introduced by legendary science educator Bill Nye on September 25. Nye, whose new series The End Is Nye, debuting August 25 on Peacock, focuses on how to survive global disasters, will speak about Soylent Green in the context of climate change and human actions. Other films in the series are Jessica Kingdon’s Oscar-nominated documentary Ascension, presented with the short film Europium (August 21); and Earth II, a supercut of Hollywood blockbusters depicting civilization and the world collapsing, with its makers, the Anti-Banality Union, in person (October 23).

Organized by Sonia Epstein, Associate Curator of Science and Film, the series Science on Screen: Extinction and Otherwise presents scripted and non-scripted films that depict extinction, survival, and life as it might be. Film programs are paired with newly commissioned writing by scientists, scholars, and filmmakers published on MoMI’s Sloan website scienceandfilm.org.

Science on Screen is part of the Museum’s Sloan Science & Film initiative, supported with a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which also includes the current gallery exhibit Twitch, Pop, Bloom: Science in Action, recently featured on NPR’s Science Friday. The exhibit has been extended through September 18, 2022. On view are archival films made for scientific education between 1904 and 1936 that showcase unique aesthetic sensibilities. Among the works selected are some of the first films utilizing time-lapse, slow motion, and micro-cinematography; one of the earliest color films; one critical to the rapid diagnosis of disease; and popular early nature films.

SCHEDULE FOR ‘SCIENCE ON SCREEN: EXTINCTION AND OTHERWISE’:
All screenings take place in the Sumner M. Redstone Theater or the Celeste and Armand Bartos Screening Room at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Ave, Astoria, NY. Tickets are free for MoMI members at the Senior/Student level and above; $15 for the public with discounts for seniors, students, and youth. Advance tickets are available online at movingimage.us.

Program Five, Capitalocene:
Global capitalism has incentivized systems of destruction and waste, domination and extraction, which have specific, local consequences, explored in this pairing.

Ascension
SUNDAY, AUGUST 21, 5:00 P.M.
Dir. Jessica Kingdon. 2021, 78 mins. DCP. In Mandarin with English subtitles. This Oscar-nominated documentary is a visceral, curious, and cautionary portrait of the Chinese industrial complex. Filmed in 51 locations—including a Trump hat factory, a bottlecap recycling plant, and a sex doll workshop—Ascension offers staggering observations of daily labor, consumption, waste, and wealth that make up a global superpower. Accompanied by an interview with director Jessica Kingdon by Cosmo Bjorkenheim. Preceded by: Europium. Dir. Lisa Rave. 2014, 21 mins. DCP. Europium is an essay film centered on the rare-earth element Europium, dredged from the bottom of the sea, a silvery element named for the European continent used today in everything from computer screens to banknotes. Director Lisa Rave recalls this history and brings it, ghost-like, into images of the present. Accompanied by an essay by geographer Adam Bobbette.

About the writers:
Cosmo Bjorkenheim is a writer and filmmaker who lives in New York City. He is the managing editor of Screen Slate.
Adam Bobbette is a geographer and Lecturer at the University of Glasgow in the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences. His writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, N+1, and Cabinet Magazine and he is co-editor and contributor to Political Geology: Active Stratigraphies and the Making of Life (2019) and New Earth Histories (2022). New Earth Histories tells the history of the environmental and earth sciences from a cosmopolitan, global perspective. He is currently working on a project about 20th-century spiritual movements, fossil fuel prospecting, and conceptions of self. He is co-founder of Kebun Lithos, a research center on Mount Merapi volcano in central Java.

Program Six, The Future:

Soylent Green
Introduced by Bill Nye
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 3:00 P.M.
Dir. Richard Fleischer. 1973, 97 mins. With Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors, Joseph Cotten, Brock Peters, Paula Kelly, Edward G. Robinson. It is 2022 and New York City is hot, thirsty, overpopulated, and short on food. So begins Richard Fleischer’s iconic sci-fi thriller, one of the first ecologically minded films to envision the effects of climate change. Detective Thorn (Heston) is investigating the murder of a businessman (Cotten) whose affluent life—fresh fruit, air conditioning, running water, apartments that come furnished with women—contrasts drastically with the way most people live, sleeping on top of each other and subsisting on a synthetic product called Soylent. Following on cautionary landmarks such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), Paul R. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), and the Clean Air Act (1970), Soylent Green is an essential film, and one worth reconsidering especially now that we live in the year in which it was set. Science educator Bill Nye will place Soylent Green in context, compare what was known about climate change in 1973 to today, and address how humans relate to our unstable world.
About the guest: Bill Nye is an American science educator, engineer, comedian, television presenter, inventor, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling author. In his role as the creator and host of the Emmy Award-winning television series Bill Nye the Science Guy, Nye helped introduce viewers to science and engineering in an entertaining and accessible manner. Today, Nye is a respected champion of scientific literacy who has challenged opponents of evidence-based education and policy on climate change, evolution and critical thinking. He currently serves as CEO of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest and most influential non-governmental space organization, co-founded by Carl Sagan. He is also an executive producer and host of upcoming science series The End Is Nye, which will air on Peacock in August 2022.

Earth II
With the Anti-Banality Union in person
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23, 5:00 P.M.
Dir. Anti-Banality Union. 2021, 97 mins. DCP. With Keanu Reeves, Matt Damon, Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum. The Anti-Banality Union, an anonymous collective that makes collage-style films out of Hollywood movies, strikes again. Earth II is a supercut that draws from the past four decades of blockbusters in which civilization and the world itself are collapsing, disaffected villains scheme for their own survival, Keanu Reeves leads the resistance, and Matt Damon becomes a Martian. Recurrent cinematic tropes reveal truths about society’s past, present, and future. To speak about “the most expensive climate disaster epic to be produced for no money,” the Anti-Banality Union will join us in-person for a Q&A. The screening will also be accompanied by an essay by acclaimed author and researcher Britt Wray (Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis) who works at the forefront of climate change and mental health. She is currently a Human and Planetary Health Fellow at Stanford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

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Top image: Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green (1973, Dir. Richard Fleischer). Image courtesy of MGM/Photofest.

 

Press contacts:
Tomoko Kawamoto, MoMI, tkawamoto@movingimage.us or 718 777 6830
Sunshine Sachs for MoMI, momi@sunshinesachs.com

Press images are available here (pw: MoMIpress)

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