Zenith
Tues 1 Mar, Black Cat Cinema, Roberts Creek Hall, 7:30pm
Thirty or so years from now, in a desolate and indefinite post-industrial future, the population has been genetically altered to live in a constant state of happiness. But what they soon discover is that without contrasting it to sorrow, happiness dissipates, leaving only a feeling of never-ending numbness. Only pain can now make people feel alive.
Enter Jack, who offers his customers the phenomenon of pain via drugs from modern times. But when Jack receives a mysterious videotape of his dead father, he sets out to unmask the dangerous conspiracy that has created this dystopian world.
Added to the backdrop of this biological nightmare, this new world has been robbed of its language, and in its place is a bland, simplistic type of speech: "For" as one character puts it "what you cannot express in language, does not exist in human minds."
Tonight's screening of Zenith by Black Cat Cinema is the Canadian Premiere and I'm keen to hear what you think of the film - it's received some trippy reviews. If you're up for an art-house Bladerunner, with the frontal-lobe screwiness of Memento and 12 Monkeys then this could be the flick you've been waiting for.
