A great review of 2B from “down under’s” Film Industry Bloggers website in the wake the film’s international premiere at the Fantastic Planet Film Festival in Sydney, Australia.
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2B director Richard Kroehling responded “this guy really understands the production process!” Well, the reviewer Brian Trenchard-Smith is a veteran director and apparently one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite filmmakers.
This week marked 2B’s international premiere at the Fantastic Planet Film Festival “down under” in Sydney, Australia… and by all accounts the festival was a smashing success.
Sci Fi Channel Australia’s blog gave the film one the best plugs yet, calling it “mind-bending, hard-hitting, classic Sci-Fi, starring ‘Dexter’s Dad’ James Remar” .
The film was certainly in good company, screening alongside Woody Harleson’s Zombieland and Czech director Karel Zeman’s 1961 classic “Baron Prasil”
The first look at the behind the scenes and making of this thinking person’s science fiction film in which 2B stars James Remar and Jane Kim talk about the issues the film confronts.
In another scene Doctor Erich Einman leader of the Fleshist coalition, played by Ronal Guttman, in an interview with TV talk-show host Biko Johnson, played by Larry Pine, confronts the fundamental moral questions raised by the issue of transhumanism.
This first episode of the Making of 2B also gives a glimpse into the what went into bringing the images to the screen – the hard work of a small filmmaking army that makes magic come alive.
TransAlchemy is a group that is seemingly opposed to the very concept of Transhumansim – a recent post on their website had a dramatic warning:
Could these be the seeds of an anti-transhumanist movement similar to the “Fleshist Coalition” portrayed in 2B determined to stop Tom Mortlake’s vision of what he believed to be “the next step in human evolution”?
One of the group’s members, Aaron Franz, came to see 2B at the Woodstock Film Festival and interviewed Eric Nadler, one of the film’s screenwriters and producer.
Watch TranAlchemy interview with 2B co-screenwriter and producer Eric Nadler on You Tube
Going by Aaron’s review of the film on the TransAlechemy website, it appears he and his group are now big fans of 2B!
The Re-Designing Humanity panel was a standing room only hit. Live streaming went out to k’s of folks, including a class in bio-ethics at Boston University. Martine Rothblatt and Ray Kurzweil laid out the cases for cyber-consciousness and the Singularity. Yale Prof. Wendell Wallach, concerned about the morals of machines, urged caution and Jim Hughes, the moderator, took a Buddhist approach to all that’s coming… Audience totally enthralled for 90 mins. plus, and buzz continued well into dinner…..
At the Bear Café, we supped next to our friends Ray Kurzweil and Jim Hughes, the executive director of IEET, a transhumanist salon, who told us that there is a politics emerging opposing post-humanism. He said that he has already debated one Nigel Cameron, a DC-based associate of Watergate mastermind Born-Again felon Chuck Colson. And Hughes urged us to keep our eyes on Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute and John Kilmer of Trinity University in Chicago. He also said to stay away from Rev. Tom Horn who preaches that post-humans are the ‘Nefalim”—powerful agents of Satan who surface in Revelations maneuvers during the Final Call to Battle.
Digesting this, we entered the sold-out screening of 2B in beautiful downtown Bearsville. Held in an auditorium with serious Rock credentials: 2B had its world premiere within the aura of studio space used by Bob Dylan, the Band and Todd Rungren back in the day. To me, this was holy ground… Bring on the Nefalim!
Director Richard Kroehling arrived to introduce 2B. He told us that he just learned earlier in the day, that his friend, the gifted composer Michael Galasso who scored our film , had suddenly died ..RK dedicated the film to him in moving remarks before the film screened.
2B is a different film every time you watch it. That’s what many folks are telling us. And we agree. There is plenty of rich material to mull. And that was clear in a lively q and a session following the screening. Kevin Corrigan made an appearance and talked about how excited he was to work in a film with Jim Remar. Corrigan labeled his experience during the film’s 19-day shoot as “intense”…
Next stop on the 2B world tour – Australia for the Fantastic Planet – Sydney Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Festival.
Woke up this morning to find a production still of 2B star Jane Kim heading a feature article in the Sunday New York Times.
“Looking at the Future of Artificial Intelligence” about the upcoming Woodstock Film Festival and how our movie is one of the cornerstones of the festival’s theme of Transhumanism.
It’s a real honor for us to have 2B featured alongside Caprica and we’re all excited about the buzz that both the film and the upcoming panel are already generating.
The still used by the New York Times is just one of hundreds taken by our amazingly talented 2B set photographer Jena Duncan which can be viewed at
this link on our website.
Producer and film festival maven Christina Kotlar from FilmFestivalReviews.com interviews 2B producer and co-screenwriter Eric Nadler on the science behind the movie and the panel “Re-designing The Future – the New Frontier” that preceded its premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival on October 2nd 2009.
Moderated by Dr. James J. Hughes, Executive Director of the Institute for Emerging Ethics and Technologies and bioethicist at Trinity College, this revolutionary panel featured futurist Raymond Kurzweil, the author of four best selling novels, and an inventor responsible for many breakthroughs in biotechnological fields; Dr. Martine Rothblatt, lawyer, author and entrepreneur, responsible for several satellite technology companies and Executive Producer of 2B; and author Wendell Wallach, regarded as one of forefront thinkers in the field of Machine Ethics who, after co-authoring Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong, is working on a new book examining what humans might become through emerging technologies.
The issues discussed in the panel provided much the foundation and inspiration for 2B
The Woodstock Film Festival buzz began Monday night with the festival launch party at the trendy Libation Bar on NYC’s Lower East Side.
The place was packed shoulder to shoulder with filmmakers, producers, actors, the festival organizers and journalists all priming themselves for the coming cinema event, including Lucy Liu representing the doc Redlight which narrates and produced and writer Stuart Nusbaumer who profiled the party in the Huffington Post.