Taking Me Into the Future (2009-10) 03:07
A short melancholic film explores ideas and fears about the future, mortality, and immortality and the isolation it would bring.
Digital photographs, super 8mm, old video 8 footage from VHS
Taking Me Into the Future is a collaboration between Helen Nias and Cassandra Vervoort. The brief was to create a short film for the ThinkSync film competition, which "rewards the most skilful and appropriate use of the music within a short film."
Helen and Cassandra chose both the music and the images to complement the words of the narrated poem, rather than to particularly illustrated them. In the end they went off-list so never entered the film to the competition.
The poem was written by Helen, partly inspired by H.G. Well's The Time Machine and work by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Music credits
- Slight Night Shiver - M83
- Morwenna - Worriedaboutsatan
- 40 Years Back\Come - Röyksopp
- The Mast - Araya
Taking Me Into the Future – transcript
I remember the past.
When you’re a child your parents tell you,
‘The world doesn’t revolve around you’
So you grow up
With ups and downs
You accept the fact that you’re nothing, yet something
That the world may not be as it seems
And you just have to believe, and trust
That reality is where you end up when you’re awake, and sober.
But, imagine this:
The only thing you expect for certain at the end of your life is death
And instead you live on while everyone around you dies
And the world changes and still you live on
Forever
And ever
Until the days merge into one long dream
Life is no longer real
The people around you had made it real
But now they are gone
The routines of your life had made it real, but the world is so different from your beginning
How can this be real? You are still alive and the world keeps changing.
Another war
Volcanic destruction
Earthquakes, and bombs
And still,
you live on.
Alive.
Kept alive through memories while everything else slowly…perishes.
Until one day, you find yourself wandering the barren planet
The only living creature left in a world of red dust
The red sun low in the sky.
And you walk, forever you walk through the banal eternity.
And you remember those first days on earth as though a dream…
…But you never wake to realise it was.
May 2009
