for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world

The future is a foreign country in Gala Hernández López’s for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world.

Or perhaps more accurately, it is a speculative resource – a shifting imaginary to be exploited in vastly different ways. “I believe in the future,” explains the voice of Hal Finney (Joseph Grossi) a real-life player in the history of Bitcoin but here a conjuration in the dream of the film’s unnamed narrator (voiced by Olivia Delcan). Her dream imagines a future in which there has been a crypto-currency collapse and, as a result, many people have undertaken cryogenic suspension to wait out the economic catastrophe.

The narrator observes the similar way they are still banking on the future, however – in both cases, people are crossing their fingers for some change to transform their fortunes. In the case of Finney, who the narrator meets in this dream, he was not just a key figure in early crypto but has also been cryogenically frozen since 2014. In its wandering essayistic meditation on these intersecting ideas, Hernandez Lopez’s film tries to wrestle with how such notions of suspended animation figure into a present in which people feel such deep uncertainty about the future.

It is through its audio narration that the film primarily does this, but Hernandez Lopez employs a dual-screen visual method that is perhaps more redolent of moving image installation than cinema presentation. Through a variety of found and created footage – from YouTube clips and archival photographs to bespoke created animation – she consistently probes at the intricacies and inconsistencies required to become in thrall to these technological promises of a better tomorrow. for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world takes you on a voyage not into the future, but into what it means and takes to bank everything on it.

Director, screenplay, editing, sound: Gala Hernandez Lopez
Cast: Olivia Delcan, Joseph Grossi
Producers: Gala Hernandez Lopez, Wuentin Brayer, Yannick Beauquis
Music: Diego Delgado
Sound design: Mathias Arrignon
Animation: Xinxin Kong
Production companies: Don Quichotte Films (France)
Venue: Berlinale (Forum Expanded)
In English
18 minutes