Exhibitions
Events
On display
Screening Pandemics
Still from The Andromeda Strain (Dir. Robert Wise, 1971, Universal Pictures)
Talk
Past event
Philip Carter Family Auditorium
Free
Join Dr Erin Harrington (senior lecturer in Critical and Cultural Theory at the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha) as she gives an illustrated talk about what we can learn from watching film and television about pandemics in the middle of an actual pandemic.
Film and television have long explored contagions and their effects on individuals and societies, offering rich, often dystopian metaphors for the way we think about our place in the world. But what’s it like to revisit these works in the middle of an actual pandemic? In this illustrated talk Erin Harrington discusses films such as The Seventh Seal, The Andromeda Strain, The Thing, 28 Days Later, and more recent series Creamerie and Station Eleven, and asks: what do these narratives get right, and wrong, about our attempts to get through the current crisis?
