During the 1920s, art flourished through image experimentation and manipulation on canvases. Futurism, New Expressionism, Constructivism, and many other “ism” lenses were used to conceptualize the modern advancements that were taking place in the cities. Some of the Avant Garde directors of the time aimed their camera eye on their respective cities, documenting the impact of modernity on the city and its citizens. Dziga Vertov and Walter Ruttmann were two such visionaries who captured a day in the life of their respective cities into films known as city symphonies, The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), respectively. Because these were silent films, the directors used images that were universal while examining the flux between tradition and progress.

If the Hollywood sci-fi movies of 2017 have one unifying special effect that will come to epitomize the collective output of the year, it won’t be disk-shaped space ships, plastic actors reincarnated from the uncanny valley, or unending dustscapes of an orange-tinted future; it would be the damp-squib of disappointment.