FEATURE: END/FUTURE

Image: Dear Future Children

If the climate emergency wasn’t terrifying enough for you, Tyneside Cinema’s cheerily titled End/Future season will inspire genuine despair – but that’s precisely the reason you should attend, of course.

At the heart of the season, which runs from Thursday 9th-Sunday 26th March, are a series of three internationally acclaimed VR films which explore the future of humanity. Having premiered at Sundance Film Festival, Gondwana immerses the viewer in the world’s oldest tropical rainforest as live climate data impacts the virtual ecosystem to create a vision of what the forest might look like in 2090; On The Morning You Wake (To The End Of The World) plunges the viewer into a real-life end-of-the-world scenario as experienced by the people of Hawai’i who in 2018 received an official text message telling them they had 38 minutes to seek shelter before nuclear missiles hit the island; and at a time when Artificial Intelligence is starting to visibly impact our daily lives, the Tyneside Cinema commissioned To Miss The Ending explores what might become of us if we trust in technology to look after us after the end of the world. 

End/Future will be an annual recurring programme for Tyneside Cinema, as the venue welcomes feature films, artists commissions, events and discussions which put the future of civilisation at the forefront of the conversation. 

the End/Future programme is a festival of ideas that uses film and VR to challenge how we see the world

Andrew Simpson, Tyneside Cinema’s Head of Film, explains: “From environmental crisis and humanity’s impact on the planet, to rapid technological change, the end of the world, and how we might bring about future utopias, the End/Future programme is a festival of ideas that uses film and VR to challenge how we see the world, explore possible futures and inspire discussion and collaboration.”

The programme will be split into three parts taking place across consecutive weekends. Life In A Time of Crisis (9th-12th March) will explore themes of climate anxiety, the impact of technology on our lives and climate change in the North East, with highlights of the first weekend including a screening of award-winning documentary Electric Malady, about a man allergic to the technology of the 21st Century, which will be accompanied by a director Q&A, and Finite: The Climate of Change, which looks at a growing alliance of climate activists based in Germany and the North East. Imagined Futures (16th-19th March) seeks to uncover how Hollywood charts the apocalypse, with a rare screening of science fiction classic Snowpiecer by Bong Joon-Ho, and meteorological disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow. The final part in the season, A Guide To Saving The World (23rd-26th March), envisages how art and cinema can envisage our collective future, with screenings including stirring documentary Dear Future Children which follows three young female activists, and Atomic Hope, which sheds light on the role nuclear power could play in decarbonisation.

Tyneside Cinema have also commissioned four new films from artists across the UK, which cover themes including water scarcity, ecological disasters, nuclear waste and the assumptions cinema goers face when viewing natural beauty on the big screen.

End/Future is at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle from Thursday 9th-Sunday 26th March.