£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
Doors 3:00pm
THX 1138 (1971) - 3:30PM
Welcome to Sci-Fi Sundays at Deptford Cinema. Join us for an afternoon movie on the last Sunday of the month. With quarterly themes, our 2018/2019 programme delves into wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, Earthly welcomes, post-Earths, new flesh and everything in between when it comes to our favourite Science Fiction cinema.
Alongside each screening we’ve organised a little something extra; quizzes, short-films, panel discussions and much more.
Our third theme is DYSTOPIA, a science fiction topic that is often close to the bone.
dir. George Lucas
year. 1971
country. USA
run-time. 86min
rating. 12
THX 1138
Before hope was instilled in a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas visited the future in 1971 with his feature-debut THX 1138.
Set sometime in the 21st century, the film offers a world where citizens live underground and are controlled by the use of mandatory drugs, altering their minds and suppressing their emotions. Sexual intercourse and the concept of family are prohibited - it’s a future where “love is the only crime”.
THX 1138, a loyal factory worker, and LUH 3417, a surveillance centre worker, find themselves developing sexual desires for one another when they secretly reduce their drug intake. They become sexually involved and, having broken the law, are both arrested and it is soon revealed that LUH is pregnant. With their fates sealed, THX is determined to escape - the only question is, can he?
Lucas creates a world, which like Star Wars, looks used but here it’s done in an abstract way; the future is clinical yet disturbingly threatening. It’s a world that Lucas would later describe as “being trapped in a case with the door unlocked, but being unwilling or afraid to open the door and go out.” The film is an allegory of the state of the world in the 1970s, an unbridled consumer culture that has lost connection with the natural world and is simply self-contained. Watching this today and seeing the similarities with our own world only makes watching the nightmare experienced by THX and LUH unfold all that more jarring. It’s no wonder the film has gained popularity since its release.