A Brief History of Time Travel
Here at Geektown we love to help support Kickstarter projects, so when the producer of a Kickstarter funded documentary about pop culture’s fixation on time travel and scientists’ efforts over the years asked us to help, how could we say no!
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME TRAVEL asks why travelling through time has inspired humans across borders and generations.
Long before it was a problem for Einstein, time travel peppered ancient myths around the world. Hundreds of years later, it remains one of the most compelling narratives we know. In fact, in the last decade, there has been an influx of time travel themes in popular media. In a society where time is a unit of value and instant gratification is prized, the idea of travelling through time offers us a means of escape.
In telling the story of the idea of time travel, this documentary explores issues including technology’s changing role in society, the relationship between science and science fiction, evolving debates about free will, collective responses to great disasters, and time’s effect on how we perceive life.
The story weaves together parallel narratives. One narrative shows how exciting discoveries in theoretical physics, along with sci-fi readers’ demands that fiction be “realistic,” transformed time travel into a scientific possibility. The implications of trying to make time travel real – through modern atomic research and cryogenic preservation – are explored in a second storyline. In a third, we learn how time travel stories have helped humans alter their religious and philosophical views on free will. A fourth storyline explores a futurist and apocalyptic visions in music and fiction, showing how time travel has allowed rebellious thinkers to comment on society.
While engaging with hard-hitting questions in science and culture, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME TRAVEL does so through entertaining lenses such as Back to the Future. Most of us know of these pop culture icons, but perceive them as having no social or historical significance. This film changes the conversation, asking: What really makes time travel resonate in each of us?
They were recently chosen as a Staff Pick on Kickstarter, but they’re currently still a little short of their goal for funding and, ironically, running short on time!
So if you’d like to help out, hop over to their Kickstarter page and make a donation NOW!
