Utopia in Four Movements

Director: Dave Cerf, Sam Green

Institute History

  • 2010 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Throughout human history, people have had giddy dreams and fantastic notions about what the future would bring. Today the future has become more of a threat than a promise—a knot of intractable problems looming menacingly on the horizon. With a powerful sense of poetry, Utopia in Four Movements uses the collective experience of cinema to explore the battered state of the utopian impulse at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

In this “live documentary,” filmmaker Sam Green cues images and narrates in person while musician Dave Cerf performs the soundtrack. From the establishment of a man-made language designed to end war and cultural conflict and the undying optimism of an American exile in Cuba, to the current economic boom in China and the desire to give the remains in mass graves a dignified burial, Green and Cerf sift through the history of the utopian impulse with audiences and search for insights about the way to build a vision of the future based on humankind’s noblest impulses.

Live music by Dennis Cronin, T. Griffin, and Catherine McCrae

— Shari Frilot

Screening Details

As you use our Online Archives, please understand that the information presented from Festivals, Labs, and other activities is taken directly from official publications from each year. While this information is limited and doesn't necessarily represent the full list of participants (e.g. actors and crew), it is the list given to us by the main film/play/project contact at the time, based on the space restrictions of our publications. Each entry in the Online Archives is meant as a historical record of a particular film, play, or project at the time of its involvement with Sundance Institute. For this reason, we can only amend an entry if a name is misspelled, or if the entry does not correctly reflect the original publication. If you have questions or comments, please email [email protected]