The Dryden will screen Dreams Rewired (Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart, Thomas Tode, Austria / Germany / U.K. 2015, 88 min., DCP).

Tilda Swinton's hypnotic voiceover and a treasure trove of rare archival footage culled from hundreds of films from the 1880s through the 1930s—much of it previously unseen—combine to trace today's hyper-connected world back a hundred years. Then, too, electric media sparked idealism in the public imagination—hailed as the beginning of an era of total communication, annihilation of distance, and the end of war. But then, too, fears over the erosion of privacy, security, morality proved to be well founded. Dreams Rewired traces contemporary appetites and anxieties back to the birth of the telephone, television, and cinema. These earlier technologies were expected to serve everyone, not just the elite classes; human relationships would become stronger, efficiency would increase, and society would be revolutionized. . . . But these initial promises were very different from what new media eventually brought to daily life.

[source: George Eastman Museum website, 2016-Jul-4]