London Short Film Festival

A screening of short film adaptations exploring Ballard’s 20th Century preoccupation with the machine vs. the 21st Century obsession with the digital towards an anthropological take on disembodiment, honing in on how Ballard perceives both the body, and the human condition.

In conversation will be filmmakers Simon Barker, Jason Wood and Harley Cokeliss, plus Ballard scholar Dr. Jeanette Baxter (The Anglia Ruskin Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy).

JG Ballard in Crash! (Harley Cokeliss, 1971): “I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape. The sense of violence and desire, power and energy; the shared experience of moving together through an elaborately signalled landscape.
Everything is there: the speed and violence of our age; the strange love affair with the machine, with its own death.”

Join us in the ICA bar afterwards for a Ballardian Vinyl Therapy DJ set: Car Crash Disco!