No Maps For - these Territories

No Maps For - these Territories

cyberspace, documentary, road trip

Science fiction author William Gibson is best known for 1984’s Neuromancer, a novel often credited with jump-starting the cyberpunk genre. Set in a virtual landscape of rapid-fire connections and published long before the World Wide Web extended its tentacles into your home and mine, Neuromancer quickly established Gibson as a visionary in certain circles (though the novel drew on many influences, from Raymond Chandler to William S. Burroughs to Philip K. Dick). Coining the phrase "cyberspace" cemented Gibson’s reputation, and a penchant for being reclusive didn’t hurt either. In his new documentary on Gibson, No Maps for These Territories, director Mark Neale has loaded a limousine with digital video cameras and strapped his subject into the back seat for a whirlwind ride through millennial America.

As Gibson ruminates on his life and work and pontificates about our rapidly changing times, Neale layers pertinent imagery and found footage over the author’s talking head to create a digital collage. He messes with the passing landscapes and street scenes we see through the limo’s windows, often speeding them up or adding pixilated images, presumably as a visual metaphor for the information superhighway or the accelerating pace of modern life. A New Age-y wash of techno music accentuates the road-to-nowhere vibe.

/sourced lovingly from here\

Mark Neale

FilmFreak Distributie

2000

William Gibson, Jack Womack, Bruce Sterling, Willam Burroughs

approximately 154 minutes long,

English, subtitles in Dutch, Spanish, French, German

documentry, cyber reality, biographical

WCDVD0078

Amsterdam, The Netherlands