Simulated Cities and Secret Escapes

Our day-to-day existences may be constrained by the physical outlines of streets and structures, but less tangible boundary lines may be just as significant. Cities may equally be modeled in the clean lines of architecture, the digital networks of communication that interconnect them, or the shifting webs of human interaction. This program deals with real and simulated worlds, and the ways in which lives may sometimes seek to circumvent the boundaries drawn around them.

FILMS

Ghost Cell | 7 min | Antoine Delach | France | 2014

A scientific and dreamlike documentary at once, Ghost Cell is a stereoscopic plunge into the guts of an organic Paris seen as a cell through a virtual microscope.

Hajwalah | 21 min | Rana Jarbou | Saudi Arabia | 2015

A young man’s passion for the illegal practice of tafheet—joyriding—provides a novel perspective on the rapidly growing desert metropolis of Riyadh, its highly regulated social interactions, and its structural economic stratification.

Shishette | 4 min | Scandar Copti | UAE | 2015

A parodic infomercial offers unsatisfactory freedoms via the latest in technology.

The Invention of the Desert| 7 min | Thibault Le Texier | France | 2014

Eerie architectural renderings map a post-human world, one where we’ve been superseded and cast out by our creations.

Digital Native | 5 min | Mahboobeh Mohammadzaki | Iran | 2014

Lost in an increasingly digital existence, an expectant mother attempts to download her child.

Waves ’98 | 15 min | Ely Dagher | Lebanon/Qatar | 2015
Disillusioned with his life in the suburbs of segregated Beirut, Omar’s unusual discovery lures him into the unexpected depths of the city.

Creation | 3 min | Dubai Abdulla Abulhoul | UAE | 2015

A phantasmagoric glimpse into a future of alarming genetic disregulation.

Microscopic Leaps | 1 min | Markos Kay | UK | 2015

Eric Betzig’s Nobel-winning work for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy forms the basis for groundbreaking visualizations of the microscale metropolis of the cell.

Organic Sleep | 18 min | Hasan Dagli | Turkey | 2015

An eerie tour of biological commodities in an unsettling future, where simulation has taken on entirely unprecedented forms.

Followed by Q&As with directors in attendance