Friendship’s Death

Director: Peter Wollen
Screenwriters: Peter Wollen

Institute History

  • 1988 Sundance Film Festival

Description

I am fascinated by science fiction. Friendship’s Death was originally published as a SF story. Science fiction dominates the writing of our time far beyond the confines of the genre—J.G. Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges, William S. Burroughs, Italo Calvino . . . Ursula K. LeGuin, Stanislav Lem, Doris Lessing. In cinema, the achievement is much thinner. I admire 2001, Blade Runner, Mad Max 2 , but there is still a space for a more realistic and philosophical form of science fiction film.

In Friendship’s Death , I wanted to graft the SF concepts of the robot and the extra-terrestrial on to a precise and authentic moment of history: Amman, September 1970. This would give me a framework in which to explore questions about the place of machines in human culture, the relation of reason and violence, the nature of evolution and the strangeness of the human body.

— Peter Wollen, Director

Screening Details

Credits

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