Celebrate the outliers of Cyberpunk – from the films that defined the subgenre to those that break all the rules.
Subgenres have rules, but rules are meant to be broken.
Born out of literature from the likes of Philip K. Dick and other sci-fi writers, Cyberpunk took hold of cinema in the early 80s around the same time that personal computers were entering the family home. The computer age had arrived, and so too had collective anxieties around technology’s role in our lives.
Cyberpunk cinema puts a voice to these fears.
Looking back at four decades of cyberpunk film, there are unmistakable tropes. Tech has infiltrated all aspects of life, unchecked capitalism rules the roost, social fabric has disintegrated and usually a (white male) hero rises up. But which films conform to the rules of the subgenre, and which film’s break free?
Celebrate the outliers of the subgenre. Kathryn Bigelow subverts the hero paradigm but letting Angela Bassett emerge as the hero in Strange Days, David Cronenberg casts Jennifer Jason Leigh as the world’s best videogame designer in eXistenZ, and Neptune Frost sees a Cyberpunk narrative move out of a Japan-infused cityscape to a Barrundi village.
Join us in the cinema as we avoid conformity, break the rules and celebrate the films that defined and redefine cyberpunk.
– Reece Goodwin, Curator (Film & TV)
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