Science on Screen: ALPHAVILLE November 13, 2006

$9.50 / $7.50 students and Museum of Science members /
FREE for Coolidge members

Hard-nosed detectives, evil professors, surrealist poetry, French New Wave master Jean-Luc Godard mixed these elements and more together to create this visionary piece of sci-fi cinema. American private-eye Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) is sent to the city of Alphaville (a gorgeous futuristic Paris) on a search for a missing agent. There he struggles with the perils of a techno-conformist society run by the he evil professor Von Braun and his Alpha 60 computer system. With love and self-expression outlawed in the city, Caution naturally enlists the help of the prettiest and most dangerous girl in town: the professor's own daughter, Natascha (Anna Karina). Straddling a line somewhere between Raymond Chandler and George Orwell, ALPHAVILLE is a defiantly unconventional, tongue-in-cheek meditation on the impact of technology on society.

Joining us for this special screening is Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Professor Jasanaoff's area of expertise is the interactions of law, science, and politics in democratic societies, with particular focus on public reason.

Official Website: http://coolidge.org/node/373