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<\/div>\nThe event was organised by festival director, Emma Preston, and chaired by Dr Senga Robertson from Dundee\u2019s School of Health Sciences. The other speakers were Dr Susan Mains from Geography and Environmental Science, Dr Hannah Loret, also from Health Sciences, and Dr Keith Williams from English and Film
\nThe speakers discussed the following themes, drawing on their various disciplinary backgrounds and expertise, before taking very lively Q&A from an audience which filled the smaller of the two DCA screens:
\n\u2022 What are your initial impressions of the film and the message it is trying to convey?
\n\u2022 Have you been able to communicate with someone without speaking a word? If so, how did you convey your message?
\n\u2022 Why is it difficult to communicate with those that are different from ourselves, such as those from a different culture or who speak a different language?
\n\u2022 The film\u2019s central question is: \u2018If you could see your whole life from start to finish, would you change things?\u2019 Would you?
\n\u2022 Would you change things if you knew some of your joys in life that would occur would also be lost?
\n\u2022 Why does the \u2018unknown\u2019 scare us so much?
\n\u2022 Would you say that Arrival is less about communicating with the aliens than with each other \u2013 internationally but also individually<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/263\/2024\/10\/Arrival-b-1024x769.jpeg\")
One of the languages considered was cinema itself. As Arrival exemplifies, this can show a space-time fluidity that shuffles past, present and future, moving backwards and forwards between them. It seems to give viewers a kind of vicarious experience of the protagonist\u2019s consciousness under alien influence, as she begins to decipher their language and experiences paradoxical \u2018memories of the future.\u2019 The theme and form of the film seem very reflexive in this sense.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/263\/2024\/10\/Arrival-a-1024x768.jpeg\")
<\/div>\nCinema has often been thought of as a kind of visual \u2018time machine\u2019. Arguably, modern science fiction and cinema were born in the same year from a shared set of cultural and technological factors. H.G. Wells\u2019s novel The Time Machine was first published in 1895, the same year the Lumi\u00e8re brother invented their cinematograph. Their nearest British rival, Robert William Paul even approached Wells after reading it. Paul proposed a joint patent for a kind of simulator that would give spectators a kind of virtual ride into the future and past by using moving image projection technology.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/263\/2024\/10\/cover.jpg\")
<\/div>\nFirst Contact of a Very Different Kind: HG Wells\u2019s Martians in 1953<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This year\u2019s Dundee\u2019s Festival of the Future featured a multi-disciplinary panel of University colleagues, following a special public screening of Denis Villeneuve\u2019s Arrival (2016) on Wednesday, 9 October, at Dundee Contemporary Arts. Arrival is one of the most unusual science fiction films of this century so far, in terms of its depiction of \u2018first contact\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":550,"featured_media":4909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","category-literature"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/550"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6130,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904\/revisions\/6130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nKeith Williams also features in the latest episode of Ayesha Khan\u2019s award-winning podcast series on science fiction film adaptations. The series has won the 2024 Ear Worthy Indie Podcast Award for Film History. This episode focused on Byron Haskin\u2019s 1953 \u2018Cold War\u2019 adaptation of Wells\u2019s The War of the Worlds, a text which seems to be remediated at critical moments in world history since first serialised in 1897:
\nListen | Every Sci-Fi Film<\/a> (everyscififilm.com)
\nOr, if you prefer it with visuals:
\nThe War of the Worlds: HG Wells’ Martians in 1953<\/a> (youtube.com)<\/p>\n