Edinburgh Science Festival @ Summerhall – Uneasy Worlds

Like a delightful sci-fi mutation, the Edinburgh International Film Festival has some tantalising additional film events protruding from its excellent main programme.

The film series at Summerhall, called Uneasy Worlds, has an architectural vibe, with four iconic future visions being presented and one relative newbie thrown in for good measure. Here’s how the programme is described in its brochure:

In these films directors have drawn upon, or created, landscapes and worlds that reflect themes of anxiety and alienation, creating fascinating psychogeographies that display our fears and uncertainties for the future.

The dystopian city of divided classes in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (6 Apr) certainly fits this description. It is the granddaddy of all future urban nightmares – scratch that, all future sci-fi movies. Its DNA pulses through every other cinematic future that followed. The Weimar era masterpiece’s influence can certainly be seen in Brazil (5 Apr), Terry Gilliam’s hugely imaginative comedy about paperwork and plumbing that's as chilling as it is funny.

As epic as Lang’s film but studded with a gentle absurdity is Jacques Tati’s Playtime (7 Apr, 3,15pm), where Tati’s alter ego Monsieur Hulot, a lanky luddite in a trench coat and pipe, struggles to get to grips with a futuristic Paris, although he’s faring far better than the group of clueless American tourists he’s constantly bumping in to in this surreal, dehumanised world.

The landscape of Red Desert (4 Apr) is also cold and dehumanised, but unlike Tati’s newly minted city, Antonioni chooses a hazy industrial backdrop for this work of modernist despair. At once ugly and beautiful, the setting’s desolation is reflected in the psychology of the beautiful young woman (Antonioni regular Monica Vitti) at the centre of the film who’s going through an existential crisis.

Finally there’s last year’s Abendland (7 Apr), a documentary from Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter. The title means ‘evening land’ and Geyrhalter's film is a poetic essay exploring how humankind goes about its business once the sun sets.

The film series is accompanied by a complimentary programme of lectures that look at the past, present and future of our cities.

Metropolis (Fritz Lang)