Fixed The science/fiction of human enhancement

Streaming video - 2015

There is a growing buzz around the potential for science and technology to create significant "human enhancement" applications, such as bionic limbs, improved memory or cognition, or the ability to choose specific characteristics for our offspring. The possibilities stir the imagination and excitement of many, while for others the rhetoric and current research into human enhancement signals alarms of a new eugenics. And yet, for most non-scientists, this sounds like the realm of science fiction, a world awash in mystery and misunderstanding. Featuring disability studies scholar Dominika Bednarska; disability justice educator Patty Berne; exoskeleton test pilot Fernanda Castelo; bionics engineer Hugh Herr; NPR radio host John Hocke...nberry; biochemist and ability studies scholar Gregor Wolbring; robot scientist Rodney Brooks; futurist Jamais Cascio; bioethicist and policy advocate Marcy Darnovsky; brain-computer interface study participant Tim Hemmes; philosophy professor Cressida Heyes; transhumanist James Hughes; reproductive rights advocate Sujatha Jesudason; disability lawyer Silvia Yee. With cameo performances by some of the world’s leading integrated dance companies, featuring disabled and non-disabled dancers and artists, including the Anjali Dance Company, Antoine Hunter (of Sins Invalid and Urban Jazz Dance Company), AXIS, Candoco, Dancing Wheels, GIMP, Kounterclockwise, Lisa Bufano, Marc Brew, Remix Dance Company, and Sue Austin/Freewheeling. Through a dynamic mix of verité, dance, archival and interview footage, Fixed challenges notions of normal, the body and what it means fundamentally to be human in the 21st century. Awards: Harris Jury Prize for Best Film, Cincinnati ReelAbilities 2015 Best Feature Documentary, Picture This FIlm Festival 2014 Keynote at the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Association Annual Conference 2014 Keynote at 2nd Annual Conference on Governance of Emerging Technologies: Law, Policy, and Ethics 2014 Exploratorium 2014 Keynote at Future Past: Disability, Eugenics & Brave New Worlds, SFSU 2013 Academia Film Olomouc 2014 Institute for the Future Ten Year Retreat 2014 NY Reel Abilities Film Festival 2014 Ethnografilm Festival, Paris 2014 Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival 2014 Keynote at Society for the Study of Nanoscience & Emerging Technologies, Northeastern 2013 United Nations Association Film Festival 2013 Cyborg Ethics Film Festival, Edinburgh 2013. more