Thursday: Mathias Hoegg's futuristic short film, "Thursday", with its motherboard-like landscape seemed nightmarish to me, especially because I am a nature lover. The little black bird has no trees to build a nest on, it has no grass or straw with which to build its nest, and alas, it has no food to give its young! Human beings are mechanical and are totally dependent on gadgets for their every movement. So much so, when the bird takes a small piece of red wire from a network for its nest, it makes all systems come to a standstill, and human beings are left with nothing to do!
The film presents a dystopic view of technology, yet the humans in the film look happy (perhaps they don't know better), and interestingly, the bird and its chicks seem determined to survive against all odds. Nature's loss seems to be human's gain, but is it really so? The film shows straight lines, said to be invented by humans; and there are no curves as in nature. The star-gazing every Thursday seems to be their only tryst with the natural world, but they are also in awe of their own creations as they are seen simultaneously city-gazing.
It seems like it is the human beings who have 'agency' in this film, that is, their capacity to make the choice to embrace technology. For all practical purposes, they have conquered nature. However, when the film ends with the family of birds taking off vertically, you want to ask the question, "Have they, really"?
A stark, effective and thought-provoking film.
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