I will be giving a talk at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, on Friday 23 November at 4pm, about how cinema shapes our perception of our own world.
 
Alexey Marfin: The Neon-Lit Streets of Cinema
 
What does ‘the future’ look like? You could be forgiven for thinking of a dense neon-lit cityscape, a cross-breed of Shibuya and Kowloon Walled City, during a perpetual rainy night. But why do we have these associations? This particular vision of ‘the future’ appeared in 1980s movies because that was the rise of Japan as a superpower, during the personal electronics boom, when we walked around with Sony Walkmans, and neon signs illuminated streets across the world. Today we find ourselves in a very different society, with different hopes and fears – Japan as a rising superpower has given way to India or China, and even neon lights have been mostly replaced with LED ones – but these 1980s science-fiction cities still persist in our collective consciousness; once again confirmed in recent Hollywood blockbusters. The cities of cinema are mirrors of society at the time when they were written, but they also leave a tremendous cultural legacy for decades, shaping how we see our own world.

11月23日星期五下午四點，我將於香港城市大學創意媒體學院舉辦一個關於電影如何塑造我們對世界認知的講座。
 
馬樂思：熒幕上的霓虹街道
 
閉上眼，想象一下“未來的世界”是什麽樣的？你的腦海裏首先浮現的會不會是這樣的一個畫面，夜空中飄落著淅瀝的小雨，你站在一個高樓林立的十字路口，仿佛是澀谷和九龍城寨的混合體，四處豎立著霓虹燈的廣告牌。但是，你有沒有想過，為什麽我們都會有這樣的聯想。這種獨特的“未來的世界”的畫面第一次出現，是在1980年代的電影中。當時日本作為一個冉冉升起的新生力量，掌控著個人電子用品行業的命脈。人類世界迎來的除了索尼的隨身聽，還有霓虹燈照亮的街道。時至今日，世事變遷，日本作為超級大國的地位已然讓步給了印度和中國，霓虹燈也逐漸被LED取代。然而1980年代科幻城市的影子卻依然占據著我們的潛意識，一而再再而三的出現在今時今日的好萊塢大片螢幕中。熒幕中的城市猶如一面面鏡子，反射出作品被創作年代的社會背景，但他們同時也留下了影響深遠的文化遺產，進而塑造了我們看待自己世界的方式。