Last and first men

Poster Last and first men

Last and first men.

2017
Black and white - 70mn - Original version with French subtitles
Iceland.
Science-fiction, Documentary.
  • 5 September 2020 17:00
    Showroom 300
  • 13 September 2020 21:15
    Showroom 300
Direction: Jóhann Jóhannsson.
Production: Thoranna Sigurdardottir.
Screenplay: Jóhann Jóhannsson, José Enrique Macián.
Editing: Mark Bukdahl.
Photography: Sturla Brandth Grøvlen.
Music by: Yair Elazar Glotman, Jóhann Jóhannsson.
With: Tilda Swinton.

We haven't felt an eschatological sensation that powerful since Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy. Fascinated by the architecture of chaos, Jóhann Jóhannsson filmed the Spomeniks, these gigantic monuments built under Tito's communist dictatorship. Symbols of death and oppression, they tower like pagan temples in a land of ashes. The director borrowed the title of his only film from Olaf Stapledon's book, a philosophical sci-fi novel about the evolution and the end of the human species: Tilda Swinton's appeasing voice reads out the chilling pages over the composer(s tormented music (co-written with Yair Elazar Glotman). Last and First Men is for sure a ghost movie. No humans in sight, but their presence - at the time of their existence - is felt constantly. In 16mm black and white, this is a hypnotic and terrifying experience, a chronicle of our predicted disappearance.