Two films by Finnish filmmaker Mike Tannila will be presented at the List Visual Arts Center's Film Night on Thursday, June 8, at 7 p.m. in Bartos Theater.
"Futuro: A New Stance for Tomorrow" (1998) is a 29-minute documentary about the rise and fall of "Futuro," the flying-saucer-shaped plastic house designed by architect Matti Suuronen in 1968. The ovoid house with its porthole windows and groovy Austin Powers-style interior reflects the era's optimism about the conquest of space and belief that technology would ultimately solve all problems.
"The Future Is Not What It Used to Be "(2002) explores the innovative designs of Erkki Kurenniemi, a pioneer of Finnish electronic music whose work blends sound, film, computers and robotics to explore the relationships among art, nature and technology. The core of the 52-minute film documents Kurenniemi's obsessive effort to record his own life, preserving all his thoughts and observations through a constant stream of video and audio plus 20,000 photographs a year.
Organized by LVAC's guest film curator John Gianvito, the List Center's Film Nights offer screenings and discussions of films selected in conjunction with the gallery's current exhibitions, "9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre and Engineering, 1966" and "The Choreographic Turn," both on view through Sunday, July 9.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on June 7, 2006 (download PDF).
