"The New Politics": sci-fi short: what if your "alien" lover is a hologram and you don't even suspect it?

Joshua Wong presents Aleisha Rose as the heroine in a Dust sci-fi short film, “The New Politics”. Some of my Facebook friends say they want a break from politics now, for spiritual renewal.

Aleisha plays Zara, who is preparing for combat in the People’s games.  She can grow her clothes on her body and even her wristwatch or fitbit.

She doesn’t know she is a hologram and a character in a real human’s video games.

Of course, if she were a white male, it could be interesting, especially if “he” could teleport himself around the way Clark Kent does.  Lose the metal wristband watch. A mockingbird will get named after you.

  

What if your boyfriend were a hologram and you didn’t know.  Let “Next Door Mates” do a film on that theme.

"We Are Not Alone": Is Oumuamua a spaceship from a dead alien civilization?

“We Are Not Alone”,  Is Oumuamua an alien space ship?  Is the civilization that could have sent it still around? 

Clixroom presents an interview with a Harvard professor.

Interesting facts:  It accelerates more than the Sun can account for;  it has a constant spin so it is not outgassing like a comet.  It has the reflectivity of a light sail.

But we did not get signals from the objec

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The professor suggest we look for planets with dead civilizations.

The object seems to have come from an M-star, which may be one of the more stable ones without excess variation in solar radiation.  Such a star’s planets would be tidally locked.  That suggests such a planet would have been inhabited as a satellite civilization from somewhere else, a premise of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” (2012).

Wikipedia attribution link for gif by nagualdesign, CCSA 4.0. 

"The Black Hole", from Dust films, convenient tool for burglars

Napoleon Ryan stars in the “super short” film “The Black Hole” directed by Phil and Olly, from Dust films, sci-fi for binge watching (and too much screen time, as my iPhone now keeps track of).

I can remember in the early 1980s that proficiency with xerox machines for presentations and walkthroughs was an important part of the workplace.  The name of this film could be an unfortunate pun.

The protagonist prints a dark spot with what looks like and all-in-one printer. He finds it an effective burglary tool, and it doesn’t remove any body hair when he sticks his arm through it.  But it can remove him altogether.  He’ll never create Napoleon Dynamite’s dance moves.

"Straight A": In Japan, a gay college student with an American boyfriend must come out to his "ancestral" father

Todd Lien directs a short film “Straight A”.

In what appears to be a home in Japan, a college undergraduate boy has a rather athletic white American boyfriend, Kyle.

The boy’s father is still concerned about the family’s bloodline and has trouble accepting what is going on.

The father says he wants to be a friend of his son, like Kyle.

The dialogue between father and son is in Japanese with subtitles.

Copyright Office allows more filmmakers important DMCA exemptions, a welcome development

The Copyright Office has interpreted copyright law in a way favorable to most filmmakers.

Now the exemption to DMCA circumvention prohibitions allowed only to documentary filmmakers, will be allowed to all filmmakers, as long as the intention transformative, such as parody or to demonstrate historically significant information.

  

Techdirt has the story by Timothy Geigner here.  I would expect to see Electronic Frontier Foundation comment soon. 

"Wherever You Are": In rural England, a grieving father looks for the companion of his deceased son

Gabirel Varita and Joan Montinenos direct “Wherever You Are”

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In rural Britain, a grieving father (Guy Hargreaves) looks for the boyfriend of his deceased son. He uses an old ring rotary phone, so this film looks set in the past a few decades.

He is often riding trains, but there are many flashbacks where he and his son play with toy Thomas trains.

  

The film won awards at the Shropshire Film Fesitval.

"Misinfo Nation": short film from Mozilla, ought to be in the festivals

“Misinfo Nation: Misinformation, Democracy, and the Internet” from Mozilla as a complimentary short film.

The piece takes the position that the barrage of false information in social media may not have as destructive a political effect as has been feared.  People who receive it are already in their echo chambers and have already decided on which candidates to support (such as Donald Trump in the 2016 election).  So the piece seems design to counter the view that social media threw the 2016 election to Trump.

The film defends individualized speech, and may be designed to counter the political pressure on platforms which is increasing and could lead to much less speech by individuals (even like me) than what we have come to take for granted in the past two decades.

The film doesn’t cover the radicalization cycle (say the way Brian Stelter keeps explaining it on CNN) as much as it might have tried to do.

This is an important short film.  Maybe it should be in a festival (like Tribeca next spring).