A Glitch in the Matrix (2020)
Director: Rodney Ascher Run Time: 108 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2021
Starring: Erik Davis, Joshua Cooke, Nick Bostrom, Paul Gude
Country: United States
Language: English, closed captions available
Presented in the Virtual Screening Room in partnership with Magnolia Pictures.
“Fascinating, mind-expanding, infuriating and bewildering, this is a bracingly ambitious documentary which embraces the artificiality of the computer generated animation which constitutes a large part of its approach.”
– Wendy Ide, Screen International
About the film:
World Premiere on January 30 in the Midnight section of Sundance Film Festival 2021.
What if we are living in a simulation, and the world as we know it is not real? To tackle this mind-bending idea, acclaimed filmmaker Rodney Ascher uses a noted speech from Philip K. Dick to dive down the rabbit hole of science, philosophy, and conspiracy theory. Leaving no stone unturned in exploring the unprovable, the film uses contemporary cultural touchstones like The Matrix, interviews with real people shrouded in digital avatars, and a wide array of voices, expert and amateur alike.
If simulation theory is not science fiction but fact, and life is a video game being played by some unknowable entity, then who are we, really? A Glitch in the Matrix attempts to find out.
About the filmmaker:
In his work, documentarian Rodney Ascher explores subjective experience, freely appropriating the vocabularies of genre, experimental, and found-footage films along the way.
His short film The S from Hell on the” scariest corporate symbol in history” – the 1964 Screen Gems logo – premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. His 2012 feature documentary, Room 237, an exploration of the various interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, screened in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes and the NEXT section of the Sundance. His inquiry into the frightening experience of sleep paralysis, The Nightmare, premiered at Sundance and was nominated for Best Documentary at the 2015 Moscow International Film Festival.
Watch Ascher’s introduction to A Glitch in the Matrix at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, then experience the filmmaker Q&A with documentary programming team member Stephanie Owens.
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Ohio Arts Council
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