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Anime's Human Machines Season at Barbican Next September

The website for London's Barbican centre is listing an upcoming season of anime films, called Anime's Human Machines, which will take place in September 2019. The curator is Helen McCarthy. The festival is described as follows:

In 1963 Osamu Tezuka's TV series Astro Boy brought a new kind of robot to Japan. The robot child with a loving heart began a line of compelling, conflicted cyborgs whose existence challenges humanity.

Japanese animation has embraced robotics, cybernetics and artificial intelligence as major themes. More interestingly, it uses these themes to explore complex moral and social questions: humanity's responsibility for its actions, response to the other, greed, short-termism, failure to care for the ecosystem that sustains us.

Our season examines the challenge of the man-machine interface through eight films on various aspects of humanity's response to technological change. One interesting factor to emerge from these films is how our own view of technology has changed since the earliest was released. Another is how humanity still refuses responsibility for the impact of our actions. These films give no answers, but suggest responses.

The following screenings are listed:

September 12 - 6.30 p.m. Tetsuo, The Iron Man, preceded by panel discussion including Jasper Sharp, Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere and Rayna Denison.

September 14 - 6 p.m. Macross Plus Movie Edition, pictured right

September 15 - 4 p.m. Patlabor: The Movie, pictured left

September 18 - 8.45 p.m. Ghost in the Shell (with introduction)

September 24 - 6.45 p.m. Roujin Z (with introduction)

September 28 - 6 p.m. Summer Wars (with introduction)

September 29 - 4 p.m. Metropolis (with introduction)

September 30 - 8.45 p.m. Paprika (with introduction)