"Flash Forward" by Arturo Infante: From Utopia to Dystopia

• In Event: Space and Ecocriticism in Latin American Film

Abstract

Arturo Infante's short film “Flash Forward” (2005), in the tradition of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895), Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) and the films inspired by the Wells novel from 1960 and 2002, addresses the dark side of an uncritical embrace of technology and “progress.” The short, filmed in Budapest with support from the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art of that city, follows an earlier short, “Utopia” (2004) in which he had questioned the ability of education to transform the violent and destructive side of humankind. “Flash Forward” presents Havana in 2026 as a city that has embraced technology, free market and heavy industry, but has also experienced extreme climate change and must confront waves of “climate refugees” from Asia and Europe. I intend to discuss the short within the context of utopias that turn into dystopias, and underline how contemporary speculative fiction and film have combined the focus on fear of totalitarianism with fear of habitat destruction and climate change, and the exclusion of the vast majority of the population from decisions regarding these issues. My analysis will be grounded on the theories of Timothy Morton as expressed in Ecology Without Nature (2009) and Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World (2013) where he explains how the ecological disasters we have created defy both language and traditional representation and call forth new forms of expression.

Author

• Ana María Hernandez, City University of New York