These films highlight the central and liberating role of technology as social agent and aim at creating a wider understanding that machines are extensions of human performance and are means to only one end: make human life in particular and all life in general better.
The selection can be found with links to public reviews on IMBD and will be updated as time allows. The first screening sequence started in Shanghai in February 2016. Updates on upcoming screenings are posted on our 4M wechat group.
Past Screenings:
Apr 24:
Mar 13:
Dec 19, 2018:
Nov 14, 2018:
Oct 17, 2018:
Jun 13, 2018:
May 16, 2018:
Apr 18, 2018:
Mar 21, 2018:
Jan 31, 2018:
Jan 17, 2018:
Dec 6, 2017:
Nov 8, 2017:
October 7, 2017:
September 17, 2017:
July 9, 2017:
May 12, 2017:
May 5, 2017:
April 28, 2017:
March 24, 2017:
February 24, 2017:
January 11, 2017:
November 19, 2016:
November 12, 2016:
November 5, 2016:
September 23, 2016:
July 2, 2016:
June 23, 2016:
May 26, 2016:
April 22, 2016:
March 18, 2016:
February 25, 2016:
Apr 24:
- Fantastic Planet
- The Habits of Happiness
Mar 13:
- The Rise of the Warrior Apes
- Do animals have morals?
Dec 19, 2018:
Nov 14, 2018:
Oct 17, 2018:
Jun 13, 2018:
- Too Big to Fail
- Kevin Slavin: How Algorithms Shape Our World
May 16, 2018:
Apr 18, 2018:
Mar 21, 2018:
- 1984
- Susan Etlinger: what do we do with all this big data?
Jan 31, 2018:
- They Live
- Barry Schwartz: the way we think about work is broken
Jan 17, 2018:
Dec 6, 2017:
- Ricardo Sabatini: How to read the genome and build a human being?
- Gattaca
Nov 8, 2017:
- Andrew McAfee: What will future jobs look like?
- Metropolis: the ultimate movie for explaining the effects of the industrial revolution on mankind; read an essay on the theme here.
October 7, 2017:
- Demain | Tomorrow (2015) by Cyril Dion is one of the best environmental documentaries I have seen so far; Cyril Dion tells with a team of friends and the help of interviewed experts the story behind the global environmental destruction in five chapters: agriculture, energy, democracy, and education; but it does not stop here, it gives in each field best practices of how we can with local initiatives manage a turn around. Permaculture and agroecology instead of industrial farming; distributed renewable energy instead of centralized fossil fuels; Iceland's constitutional change to bring democracic systems back into the control of citizens; Finland's integral education system focusing on the individual child instead of industrial education with centralized exams and a focus PISA results in maths, natural science and language skills.
- Combine this film with climate scientist Alice Bows Larkin's TED talk on how we have to adapt to climate change or paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara's TED talk on the sixth mass extinction.
September 17, 2017:
- The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick is the 2011 masterpiece of Mingong's favorite director Terrence Malick - at least since he shot The Thin Red Line in 1998. Its a visually impressive exploration of how the stereotypes of motherly and fatherly love form human beings and how this formation reflects the forces which welded the universe. Highly recommended.
July 9, 2017:
- Only a year before Spike Jonze churns out Her, less well known director Jake Schreier completes Robert & Frank, an excellent and sensitive movie which is also set in the near future dealing with the question if and how robots can improve the life of the elderly. > ★★★★
- Eric Topol's 2009 TED talk on the wireless future of medicine complements this movie with a peek into the possibilities of how to heal and live better with the support of technology.
May 12, 2017:
- Silence by Martin Scorcese: two Jesuit priests leave 17th century Portugal in search of their teacher who disappeared in Japan and is said to have apostatized. Mediocre acting. Great basis for serious discussions on the essence of faith and the psychology of ruminations. More here. > ★★★
May 5, 2017:
- Captain Fantastic: unbelievable 2016 film by Matt Ross about the chances and risks of home schooling. Outstanding acting. Must see for parents and teachers alike. > ★★★★★
April 28, 2017:
- Graham Hill on how less stuff is more happiness.
- Minimalism: film on a movement of owning less in the planet's largest consumer society > ★★★★
- Unravel: short about an Indian town which recycles thousands of tons of used clothes a year. > ★★★★★
- Read more here.
March 24, 2017:
- Ellen McArthur telling us a story about the connection between one's dreams and one's purpose and the powerful experience of being in touch with nature beyond the filters of civilization and how she came up with the idea of the circular economy.
- Before the Flood: UN climate change ambassador Leonardo Di Caprio visits different locations on our planet that clearly show to which level our species the degradation of nature has already driven. A powerful mind changer, which hopefully does also change the action of its audience. > ★★★★
- Read more here.
February 24, 2017:
- Innovation & creativity expert Charles Leadbeater on Innovation
- Non-fiction author Steven Johnson on Where Good Ideas Come From?
- Novelist Amy Tan on Where does Creativity Hide?
- Father of Invention with Kevin Spacy > ★★★★
January 11, 2017:
- TED talk: Data analyst Susan Etlinger calls for re-focusing on humanities in our educational systems. It is the humanities which teach us critical thinking skill; skill which are required more and more as we need to deal with large volumes of data and their application upon our lives. > ★★★★
- The Wind Rises is considered to be Hayao Miyazaki’s last and final movie, which tells the story of Japanese airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi. It is an insightful study of how a person can be torn between following one’s dream (in this case designing airplanes) and the possibility that this technology is used for destructive purposes. > ★★★★
- The Essence of Humanity: 17’ Youtube documentary by Channel Criswell - Superb 2016 film about the Japanese animation director Miyazaki; summarizing five decades of masterpieces. > ★★★★★
- Read here an essay on the theme.
November 19, 2016:
- Gever Tulley, a software engineer who founded the Tinkering School, tells us in this TED talk that kids need to be exposed to dangerous situations to learn; they learn in a 3 dimensional environment by failing and being encouraged to start over again; parental supervision is necessary, but shall not deprive children of their freedom to make experiences on their own. > ★★★★
- The Goonies: This 1985 movie by Steven Spielberg was my all time childhood favorite. I must have seen it a dozen times. When we travelled across the US in 2009, a stop in the Seattle suburbs, where the movie was shot, was obligatory. It left a deep impression on me, but apart from it being a children's remake of Indiana Jones, I really never understood why until I started to become interested in education. A pretty recent Washington Post article describes spot on, that unsupervised time is important for a child's character formation. > ★★★★
November 12, 2016:
- Billy Graham on technology and faith: Mr. Graham’s talk is the oldest TED talk which I have seen so far, but it has not lost its relevance; then, in 1998 given to an entrepreneurial audience in Silicon Valley, which was mainly concerned with the implications of the recently invented internet, it continues to touch us in our present transition from reality to virtuality, from organic to synthetic. one might have a serious problem accepting Mr. Graham’s Christian terminology, which feels like he is excludes everybody who does not believe in Jesus Christ; but when one tries to understand his message beyond this terminology and substitutes, for example, Jesus Christ with any other term she feels fit to use, then Mr. Graham has a point: technology enhances our livelihoods, but it will never answer our most human questions or sooth our deepest fears, that is after all our most fundamental fear: death. > ★★★
- Artificial Intelligence: A couple in the not too distant future looses their only child and decides to take an intelligent android instead. > ★★★★
November 5, 2016:
- The Journey of Man: Geneticist Spencer Wells shows that all humans are part of an extended African family. He also explains the cognitive revolution as the end of a cultural stasis between 1 mio to 60k years ago. If you want to find out more about your own genetic heritage, check out Spencer Well’s Genograpic Project. > ★★★★
- Everything is Illuminated: A young American Jew of Eastern European heritage travels to Ukraine to learn more about his mysterious grand father. A slow movie about connecting to one’s family history and about accepting one’s cultural identity. > ★★★
September 23, 2016:
- Bicentennial Man: Robin Williams in one of his best performances as an android who developes consciousness and creativity and raises the courts of the future similar questions like the anti-slavery movement did to Greeks, Romans and the fathers of the 19th century enlightenment. Probably Asimov's most important book, because it raises questions which are not related to mankind's fear of being controlled or made obsolete by machines, but about the possiblity of machines being actually morally better than we actually as a species are. > ★★★★★
- 8 talks on AI curated by TED: looking at AI from different angles, we recommend in particular the tech-sociologist's take of Zeynep Tufekci
July 2, 2016:
- Wall-E: planet Earth has been left behind by mankind as one large waste dump with a single surviving robot dwelling on its destroyed surface. Humans are shown as obese and degenerated individuals whose new habitat is a department store like spaceship where they indulge in consumption. A HAL like control system prevents its cattle from regaining consciousness. > ★★★★
June 23, 2016:
- Her: a mentally fragile man falls in love with his operating system > ★★★★
May 26, 2016:
- Metropolis: the ultimate movie for explaining the effects of the industrial revolution on mankind > ★★★★★
- read an essay on the theme here.
April 22, 2016:
- Tarzan the Ape Man > interesting historic document about the James Bond of the pre-WWII period; shows what then audience was interested in, but does not provide any significant input to the project theme > ★★★
- Fantastic Planet > psychedelic 70ies animation movie; indicating a relationship between a humanoid giant species that keeps man as pet and a mind at large through meditation. Director Rene Laloux was without doubt the mastermind for Avatar. > ★★★★
March 18, 2016:
- Caveman > witty comedy about man’s pre-neolithic life; fun addition to the theme > ★★★
- Gorillas in the Mist > gripping story of a nurse turned zoologist finding her vocation in the protection of mountain gorillas; intimate portrait of a scientist motivation and our kinship with the great ape > ★★★★
February 25, 2016:
- Encounters at the End of the World > Werner Herzog’s inspiring and somewhat gloomy documentary of Antarctica; a sociological study of a tribe of scientist living at the very margin of civilization; offering a unique perspective of where mankind will go > ★★★★★