Science Fiction Against the Margins Film Series
UCLA Film & Television Archive

part of
PST: Art & Science Collide

Dystopian Futures: 
"Pumzi" and "Night Raiders"

November 22, 2024 – 7:30 p.m.
Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum

Tickets are free, no RSVP required
Box office opens at 6:30 p.m.

followed by a discussion with
Danis Goulet, filmmaker
Moderated by Professor Kathleen McHugh, UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television

Pumzi (Kenya, 2009)

Set 35 years after World War III, during the Water War, in Maitu Community, East African Territory, Pumzi is the story of Asha, who lives in this indoor and fully sustainable community. A depleted planet, devoid of vegetation, has forced the community to be 100 percent self-sufficient; residents must recycle their sweat and urine, turning it into drinking water. When Asha, an employee at the virtual natural history museum, discovers a package of soil with a high water content, she breaks protocol and plants a tree seed. Pumzi brings to the forefront the inextricable link between authoritarian rule and the power struggle for environmental resources, and within those tensions, the possibility of individual dreams of a replenished green planet. —Maya Montañez Smukler

Night Raiders (Canada/New Zealand, 2021)

Children are the most vulnerable and, as a result, the most valuable members of Night Raiders’ dystopian society. Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) and her young daughter Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart) have taken refuge in the woods in order to escape a military-controlled state that regulates the lives of children. When Niska encounters a group of Cree who have been organizing raids to save children captured by the government, she must weigh the decision to act as an individual and protect only her daughter, or join the vigilantes and fight on behalf of everyone’s families. The film was nominated for 11 Canadian Screen Awards, winning six. “I think we're on the precipice of a golden age of Indigenous cinema,” filmmaker Danis Goulet, who is Cree/Metis, told the press during the film’s release. Through cinematic allegory, Night Raiders’ speculative future unpacks a traumatic past experienced by Indigenous people and the children who survived North America’s residential school era. The film’s Cree-led resistance forges an alliance across generations, cultivating a collective knowledge that will act as the group’s best weapon against the totalitarian state and a colonial past to reclaim their future.—Maya Montañez Smukler

Background on Film Series

The Science Fiction Against the Margins film series of the UCLA Film & TV Archive is a constituent part of the Getty’s PST: Art & Science Collide, a broad range of art exhibitions and events held throughout Southern California in fall 2024. The films in the festival will be shown free of charge from October 4–December 14, 2024 at the Billy Wilder Theater of the Hammer Museum at UCLA. The series is presented in partnership with Cinema & Media Studies of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television; the UCLA International Institute is a community partner of the festival.

Filmmakers showcased in Science Fiction Against the Margins occupy the “margins” of mainstream cinema in order to challenge and subvert the science fiction genre. Hollywood’s ubiquitous sci-fi story structure functions within the conventions of action-driven melodrama, resolving social issues in private, emotional and moral terms that reinforce the status quo.

While the focus is on the feature film as a global form of mass entertainment, the series also includes documentaries, shorts, video art and television episodes.

Cost : Free

Sponsor(s): UCLA International Institute, Film and Television Archive, UCLA Alumni Association, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television