THE TIME ZONE: TIME TRAVEL CONFERENCE & PANEL DISCUSSION

Free entry.

Time Travel, a popular theme in science fiction and fantasy novels, took longer to catch on in the cinema than on the printed page and TV. With the exception of some early outliers, it wasn’t until the 80s, with the massive success of “The Terminator” and “Back to the Future”, that Hollywood studios recognised the dramatic potential of time travel on the big screen. Since then, time travel has become a popular theme in films, its tropes spilling out of science fiction into other genres, so that nowadays even mainstream comedies and romances shuffle their sequential decks with flash- backs, flash-forwards, parallel universes and reverse trajectories. This international conference will addresses cinema’s relationship to time travel, the feasability of the science depicted on screen, and the narrative deployment of relativity, causality, paradoxes, loops and wormholes.

CONFERENCE AND PANEL DISCUSSION

Dr. Russ Hunter (Northumbria University) presides the conference and will moder- ate the concluding panel discussion. George Van Hal, a Dutch science journalist whose books include “Robots, Aliens and Popcorn – Science on the Big Screen”, will present the introductory lecture about the true science of time travel behind some renowned science fiction films. Dr. Amy C. Chambers (Manchester Metropolitan Uni- versity) will talk about the public understanding of science and film and Dr. Jonathan Mack (Northumbria University) will talk about agency versus fatalism in time travel narratives.

The introduction, discussion and talks will be in English. Also on the menu:

THE LATE PHILIP J. FRY

PETER AVANZINO / US, 2010, HD, 22'
Professor Farnsworth invents a time machine that can only go forwards in this

Emmy Award-winning episode from Matt Groenig’s animated series “Futurama”.

LA JETÉE

CHRIS MARKER / FR, 1962, 35MM, VO FR/DE, 28’

A prisoner obsessed with a childhood memory is sent back in time from a post- apocalyptic Paris. Chris Marker’s seminal avant-garde short, comprised almost entirely of black and white still images with voice-over narration, has subsequently been a huge influence on time travel cinema - not least on Terry Gilliam’s “Twelve Monkeys”.