Mark Sumner: Let two short films challenge you with visions of a hopeful future

By Dilip -

In 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) teamed with illustrator Molly Crabapple to create a short film called A Message from the Future. That film presented something extraordinarily rare when it comes to looking ahead these days: optimism. After what seems like an endless parade of dystopias in literature and film, the short film, in which Crabapple illustrates scenes to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's narration, seems almost shocking in its optimism. Set two decades in the future, it brings to life - or at least, to still life - a world in which the Green New Deal becomes reality. Starting from that basis, it projects the kind of changes that might be expected by 2040, and the kind of world the next generation could inherit.

But that was 2019. As in "Before 2020." In the wake of everything that has happened over the last 10 months—the pandemic, the protests, the ongoing police violence, the continued threats to democracy—is it still possible to paint a picture of a future where things take a turn for the good? Now there's a new A Message from the Future, one that takes 2020 into account. And the future it projects may be challenging in ways that you don't expect.

The original AOC version of A Message from the Future is heavily focused on the effects of living in a world where the Green New Deal upset the course humanity was taking toward climate disaster. Though it projects those changes in the future, it actually spends about half its time in the recent past, showing how we found ourselves on the path to the climate cliff … before projecting a world that starts with Democratic victories in 2018, adds new wins in 2020, and lifts the nation into a far fairer, greener place…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/put-down-that-dystopia-let-two-short-films-challenge-you-with-visions-of-a-hopeful-future/

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