RICK PRELINGER PRESENTS THE LIVES OF ENERGY

RICK PRELINGER PRESENTS THE LIVES OF ENERGY
DIRECTOR: RICK PRELINGER
US, 2010-2011

VISITING ARTIST—Tonight we welcome film historian and archivist Rick Prelinger for the first of two programs featuring “found film” treasures drawn from the Prelinger Archives. THE LIVES OF ENERGY is a reflective collage film that uses archival images and sounds to reconstruct a history of human interaction with energy. Tracing energy from its pre-human existence to the industrial age and beyond, the film counterposes the persuasions of the past with the limits of the present and the dreams of the future. “This film is a ‘slow collage.’ Collage has migrated from the arts and crafts we associate with folk culture into digital culture, speeding up and fragmenting along the way. This film speaks not in syllables or phonemes like the work of other, faster-paced filmmakers, but in paragraphs. It treats the life history of energy by breaking it up into epochs and presenting a kind of narrative built around the changing relationship of humans to energy.”—RP. (80 mins.)

Rick Prelinger will introduce the films.