Science Fiction Against the Margins

Science Fiction Against the Margins showcases filmmakers who occupy the “margins” of mainstream cinema in order to challenge and subvert the science fiction genre. Hollywood’s ubiquitous sci-fi story structure functions within the conventions of action-driven melodrama, resolving social issues in private, emotional and moral terms that reinforce the status quo. This series offers an alternative body of media wherein a speculative mode of thinking outside familiar expectations of narrative resolution opens up representations of race and ethnicity, gender politics and cultural identity. While the focus is on the feature film as a global form of mass entertainment, the series also includes documentaries, shorts, video art and television episodes.

The titles selected reflect a global scope, including films from various regions of the world as well as those by minority and Indigenous cultures. Central to the program is investigating how different independent and international cinemas utilize speculative fiction as a means of exposing inequality — the rationalization of authoritarian rule, capitalist exploitation of racialized labor and environmental imperialism. The series rejects the notion of an underlying “sameness” across cultures and social protests, instead bringing attention to the divergent ways in which social identity, cultural context and material relations are represented by media artists.

Science Fiction Against the Margins reimagines the relationship between science and art by challenging and sometimes finding new inspiration in old cinematic traditions. Works span the history of world cinema, including reflections on colonialism and the moon in Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (France, 1902), Nuotama Bodomo’s Afronauts (Ghana, 2014) and Yosep Anggi Noen’s A Science of Fictions (Indonesia, 2019). Several films offer speculative visions of societies struggling to overcome dictatorship, whereby the present is explained as either one of collective madness or of a planet under alien invasion, such as Man Facing Southeast (Eliseo Subiela, 1986). In other films, the future presages the total privatization of critical resources supporting human existence, envisioning an endgame brought about by forced labor, political subjugation and environmental collapse, as in Sleep Dealer (Alex Rivera, 2008), Pumzi (Wanuri Kahiu, 2009) and Neptune Frost (Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman, 2021). Overall, the series explores an alternative mode of science fiction that raises critical questions rather than offering comforting answers.

—Science Fiction Against the Margins Curatorial Team: Paul Malcolm, Maya Montañez Smukler, Chon Noriega, Nicole Ucedo

Science Fiction Against the Margins is part of this year’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, presented by Getty. For more information visit pst.art(opens in a new tab).

Series presented in partnership with UCLA Cinema & Media Studies in the School of Theater, Film and Television