Topic

Computing

The machine that ate every other machine.

3: in film
13:00: average
39 min: in total
309: across the network

Computing across the network →

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13:00

Naqoyqatsi

Godfrey Reggio · 2002

Naqoyqatsi (2002), the final film in Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy, uses digitally manipulated archive footage and Philip Glass’s cello-led score to argue that modern life operates under a regime of ‘civilized violence’: abstraction, competition, and technological acceleration displacing embodied reality. Edited by Jon Kane and produced by Reggio, it abandons the observational style of its predecessors for a collage of stock, surveillance, and CGI imagery. Its reception was divided — critics called it the trilogy’s weakest — yet its formal rigour and thematic persistence make it a singular, unsettling document of early-digital consciousness.

13:00

World on a Wire

Rainer Werner Fassbinder · 1973

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 two-part television serial adapts Daniel F. Galouye’s Simulacron-3 as a cool, methodical inquiry into perception, memory, and institutional control. Set in a near-future West Germany indistinguishable from the present, it follows cyberneticist Fred Stiller as he uncovers layers of simulation — not as spectacle, but as bureaucratic fact. Shot on 16mm by Michael Ballhaus, scored sparsely by Gottfried Hüngsberg, and performed with deliberate restraint, it sustains a quiet, recursive unease across 210 minutes. Its power lies in accumulation, not climax: names disappear, people vanish, logic folds — all without fanfare.

13:00

Blackhat

Michael Mann · 2015

Michael Mann’s 2015 thriller Blackhat follows a convicted hacker released to track a global cyberattack spanning nuclear plants, ports, and financial markets. Shot entirely digitally across Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur, it prioritises procedural realism and atmospheric tension over conventional plotting or emotional exposition. Though critically divided and commercially unsuccessful, it stands as a formally rigorous, thematically coherent attempt to render networked threat as physical, geopolitical, and human-scaled.

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13:00

20th Century Women

Mike Mills · 2016

Set in 1979 Santa Barbara, Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women follows 15-year-old Jamie as his single mother Dorothea enlists two younger women — photographer Abbie and teenage friend Julie — to help raise him. Anchored by Annette Bening’s restrained performance, the film observes their overlapping lives with warmth and precision, treating feminism, illness, ageing and adolescence as lived conditions rather than themes. Shot by Sean Porter and edited by Leslie Jones, it moves at the pace of real conversation, building meaning through accumulation rather than climax.

13:00

24 Frames

Abbas Kiarostami · 2017

Abbas Kiarostami’s final film, 24 Frames, comprises twenty-four uncut, static shots — each ninety seconds long — observing nature, animals, and thresholds between interior and exterior. Beginning with animated movement superimposed on Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow, it proceeds into real-world stillness, testing how much meaning resides in time, attention, and unmediated presence. Released posthumously at Cannes 2017, it is a rigorous, unsentimental essay on perception and impermanence.

13:00

3:10 to Yuma

Delmer Daves · 1957

Delmer Daves’ 1957 Western 3:10 to Yuma adapts Elmore Leonard’s taut short story into a study of obligation under pressure. Rancher Dan Evans agrees to escort outlaw Ben Wade to the 3:10 train for Yuma, facing ambush, betrayal, and his own wavering resolve. Shot by Charles Lawton Jr. with sun-bleached realism and scored sparingly by George Duning, the film builds suspense through pacing, performance, and moral granularity — not spectacle. It was preserved by the Library of Congress in 2012 for its cultural and aesthetic significance.

13:00

3 Women

Robert Altman · 1977

Robert Altman’s 1977 film 3 Women follows the uncanny merging of identities among a timid young woman, her garrulous roommate and a silent, pregnant artist in a sun-scorched California town. Built from a dream and shot with deliberate, unhurried precision, it uses repetition, reflection and improvisation to explore how selves are borrowed, performed and abandoned.