CYBERMAN

Screening time: Friday, May 3, 6:30 PM, Charles Theatre 3

Director: Peter Lynch

Cast: Steve Mann, William Gibson, Mitchell Kapor

Country: Canada
Year: 2001
Running Time: 87 min
Format: 35mm

Artist, inventor, University of Toronto professor, and all-around cybergeek Steve Mann is a self-professed cyborg (part man/part machine). For decades he has lived his life "connected" to his self-invented machinery, including a one-hand keyboard, an eye-tap that allows him to view the world through a small TV screen, and a camera that that feeds to his website so that visitors can "be me rather than see me." As an artist, Mann's cybernetic photography, known as "dusting", is a beautiful process to watch. Meanwhile, he raises issues about public surveillance and private space, about body and machine, and the vision of reality in a logo-saturated world.

Cyberman is an enthralling, sometimes hilarious look at a truly original thinker and provocateur, whom the filmmaker describes as a combination of "Professor Gadget and Michael Moore." The film takes a look at his interactions with his students, family, sci-fi author William Gibson, and department store security guards, often seen through the same video signal that Mann witnessed "first hand."

--Skizz Cyzyk

Presented By: Peter Lynch

Biography

Toronto's Peter Lynch has become one of the most important Canadian filmmakers for consistently stretching and exploring the boundaries of the documentary genre. Cyberman, and his previous two features, Project Grizzly (1996) and The Herd (1998) are all highly praised portraits of men driven by their single-mindedness.

 

 

 

 

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