2001: A Time Capsule at Eye Film Museum

In 2001: A Time Capsule, Eye Filmmuseum presents a carefully curated film program centered around the year 2001. The museum juxtaposes twenty-five feature films from that year and uses them as a kind of time machine: back to a moment when politics, technology and culture clearly began to shift.

The selection shows how diverse that year was. From the dark teenage world and time loop confusion in Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko to the futuristic melancholy of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence by Steven Spielberg. On the other side is the physical, uncomfortable intensity of Michael Haneke's La pianiste and Dutch director Nanouk Leopold's intimate Îles flottantes. With Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki, there is also an animated classic in the program, in which fantasy and everydayness intermingle.

Eye explicitly chooses 2001 as the turning point between analog and digital. You can see this not only in the stories, but also in the method of screening. Early computer animations are shown here on 35mm copies, so you see that first-generation CGI in an analog setting. It gives a different kind of grain, light and pace than you're used to from later, all-digital productions.

Eye explicitly chooses 2001 as the turning point between analog and digital.

With 2001: A Time Capsule, Eye underscores its role as a national film museum that not only shows film, but interprets it. By re-presenting these films, audiences will have the opportunity to revisit a formative year in recent film history and broader society, with today's eyes.