For those of you who are fans of Sci Fi, the Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival is on its sixth year. The festival was created to honor one of the greatest authors of the genre. Titles like “Blade Runner”, “Total Recall”, and “The Man in the High Castle” are inspiration for the works submitted for this festival.

Last Thursday, the Museum of the Moving Image, in Queens – NY, hosted the screening of a selection of the best short films of this year’s festival.

This article is intended to review these films:

Glitch Noir

This was a minute-long teaser trailer for a Sci-Fi  film currently in production.

The Last Office

This film portrays a switchboard operator who is responsible for connecting people to the last communication of their lives.  Calls come through from strangers to their loved ones and friends.  Suddenly, the operator is listening to a message intended for him.  He relives a pivotal and emotional moment in his life with the soon to be deceased.    

Harsh Reality

A cynical Gamer and Online personality suddenly faces the dystopian reality that seemingly only exists in his gaming platform.  The character’s cynical nature is challenged and his fears heighten the torture of the events he has to go through during his experiences in a simulated reality. 

Some of Her Parts

A woman visits her grandmother in the hospital, yet all that remains of her  grandmother is is a consciousness connected to the outside world by a faulty, outdated webcam.  Though the woman’s mind has survived over 100 years. The camera is eventually disconnected.  This film criticizes a futuristic, though eerily possible healthcare procedure that can prolong life, far beyond the lifespan of an average biological body.

How I got to the Moon by Subway –

In my opinion, the cutest film. An older man with ALS goes to a clinic to record memories with his partner in preparation for the life that awaits after his disease worsens. His unbridled imagination takes him to the moon.

To Be Forgotten –

Perhaps inspired by the European Union’s Right to be Removed from the Internet that was instituted in 2014, this film creates a scenario that challenges the limits of such a thing. A man who tries to delete his troubled past from the Internet ends up without a future.

Regulation

A government social worker tries to impose a “happy patch” on a healthy, imaginative girl.  The medication aids in governmental control of its users, while ensuring that there is a standard and regulation of thought and emotion.  This critique of modern psychiatric medical practices is punctuated by a dark betrayal of the girl’s freedom by the social worker.  

The Desert –

This film has an enormous production value.  The settings and plot harken back to another era of cinema.  Much of the narrative is inspired by older Western movies.  The basic story is that a married couple’s marital crises are aggravated by the fact that their son is experiencing neglect and isolates himself in a sophisticated simulator.

A trend of pessimism is apparent through the narratives of the films that were featured in the 6th Annual Phillip K. Dick Film Festival.  These dystopian adventures are certainly a reflection of the current political and social reality that the world that exists in America in 2019. But a lot of the masters of Literature from the 20th and 21st centuries such as Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Anton Wilson, Franz Kafka, and even Philip K. Dick portrayed a grey, muddled and unhappy future. Hopefully our reality gets brighter so we can enjoy more optimistic Sci-Fi works.

The festival will continue in the upcoming weekend in the West Coast.

Link to the festival:

http://www.thephilipkdickfilmfestival.com