DKU Film Society｜Curatorial Statement of The Science Fiction Series

A new academic year, another year of Film Society at DKU. To open the year, our first theme will be Science Fiction.

Science fiction has long been associated with aliens, spaceships, and distant futures, but beneath the spectacle are questions that feel much closer to home: What does it mean to be human? How do we communicate, feel, remember, and know? What happens when the boundaries between ourselves and the world around us begin to blur?

Our lineup follows these questions across very different visions of the future. Arrival begins with the problem of communication: can understanding another intelligence change the way we understand ourselves? Coherence turns inward, using a fractured reality to explore identity, choice, and the unsettling possibility of other versions of ourselves. Solaris asks what happens when memory and desire become indistinguishable from reality, while Interstellar stretches those questions across time, space, and the bonds between people.

From there, Gattaca brings the future back to Earth, asking whether our attempts to perfect humanity might instead redefine what it means to be human. That question continues into our first double feature: Blade Runner: The Final Cut and Blade Runner 2049, two visions of a future where the distinction between human and artificial becomes increasingly difficult to draw. Finally, Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two expand our perspective once again, turning questions of identity and humanity toward power, destiny, religion, and the forces that shape entire civilizations.

Together, these films offer not one vision of the future, but many, and perhaps more importantly, many ways of asking what the future is for.

Join us as we kick off the year exploring different visions of the future, asking what it means to move forward.

Cordially,

DKU Film Society

To be screened in no particular order are—

降临 Arrival (2016) by Denis Villeneuve