Forbidden Futures 

Forbidden Futures examines cinema’s visions of technological evolution and the transformation of human identity. Drawing on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner, the film explores the interplay between artificial intelligence, memory, and the posthuman condition. Through cinematic fragments and speculative futures, it considers how imagined technologies reveal contemporary anxieties about consciousness, mortality, and what it means to be human. As part of an ongoing investigation into cinema as a dynamic memory machine, the work reflects on how film preserves and reshapes our collective dreams of the future.

Forbidden Futures is an experimental film that explores how cinema imagines the future as a reflection of our present fears, hopes, and collective memories. Drawing inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner, the film examines the emergence of artificial intelligence, posthuman identities, and the evolving relationship between humanity and technology. These cinematic futures are not merely predictions of what may come but repositories of our cultural imagination, preserving the anxieties and aspirations of the societies that created them. Presented as part of my wider research into Cinema as a Dynamic Memory Machine, Forbidden Futures investigates the idea of Future Memories: the way cinema creates memories of events, worlds, and identities that never existed yet become embedded in our collective consciousness. Through experimental imagery, archival influences, and speculative storytelling, the film invites audiences to question where memory ends and imagination begins. How will future generations remember us through the futures we have created on screen? Forbidden Futures offers curators an opportunity to engage with cinema not only as a medium of storytelling but also as a living archive of humanity’s dreams, fears, and possible futures.

Ian Hunt is a filmmaker, cinematographer and postgraduate researcher whose practice explores the interplay between cinema, memory, time and cultural heritage. His doctoral research, Cinema as a Dynamic Memory Machine, examines how film can capture, preserve and reshape personal and collective memory. His experimental film practice brings together montage, archival imagery, Super 8, contemporary cinematography and location-based filmmaking. His films explore memory through place, history and imagined futures, often linking disparate cultures and landscapes. Following the completion of his PhD at Lancaster University, Ian continues to develop a body of practice-based work that positions cinema as both an artistic medium and a means through which memories, histories and possible futures can be created and experienced.