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Past Events
Film Series: Wednesday at the Movies with The Once and Future Web
In conjunction with The Once and Future Web: Worlds Woven by the Telegraph and Internet, the Exhibtion Program at the National Library of Medicine hosted a free public film series. Wednesday at the Movies offered a mixture of popular films that explore the impact of the telegraph, computers, and the Internet on our society and culture.
Each film was introduced by an invited guest speaker with expertise in the film's subject area, with an audience discussion to follow the screening. All movies were shown with closed captions and a sign-language interpreter was available for the introductions and discussions.
When:
Select Wednesdays from 6:30 to 9:00 PM.
Where:
Lister Hill Auditorium (Building 38A), 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland. Seating was on a first-come-first-served basis.
Film Schedule
- April 3: Western Union (director Fritz Lang, 1941)
A grizzled guide hired to protect a crew in charge of stringing the transcontinental telegraph line winds up in a romantic battle with a brash young Easterner who is a member of the engineering crew, when they both fall in love with the chief engineer's sister. Stars Robert Young and Randolph Scott. With short film: The Post Telegrapher, an early silent Western.
Speaker: Bernard Finn (Curator, Division of Electricity and Modern Physics, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)
- April 10: Fail Safe (director Sidney Lumet, 1964)
In this gripping Cold War drama, America's automated, computer-networked defense system almost starts World War III. A series of human and computer errors sends a squadron of American B-52 bombers to nuke Moscow. As the planes near their target, the crisis deepens and together the Americans and Soviets decide on a final, desperate solution. Stars Henry Fonda, Jack Webb, Walter Matthau.
Speaker: Janet Abbate (University of Maryland, College Park; historian of computer networks and the Cold War; author of Inventing the Internet, MIT Press, 1999)
- April 17: Edison the Man (director Clarence Brown, 1940)
In flashbacks, fifty years after inventing the light bulb, an eighty-two-year-old Edison tells his story starting at age twenty-two with his arrival in New York. While inventing an early form of stock market ticker, he meets his future wife and proposes in Morse Code! Stars Spencer Tracy.
Speaker: Robert Freidel (University of Maryland, College Park; historian of technology; author of Edison's Electric Light and The Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty)
- April 24: The Matrix (directors Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1999)
Keanu Reeves stars in this movie where the Matrix is a construct set up to grow humans, hook them up into a computer system and harvest their energy as they live out their lives in a virtual reality. Humans are slaves, used as batteries to keep the artificial intelligence ruling the world of the late 22nd century.
Speaker: Lisa Lynch (Catholic University; Visiting Professor, Media Studies)
- May 1: Balto (director Simon Wells, 1995)
When an outbreak of diphtheria threatens the children of Nome, Alaska in the winter of 1925, Dr. Curtis Welch sends out a call for help via wireless telegraph and a half-wolf, half-husky named Balto gets a chance to become a hero. Balto leads a dog team on a 600-mile trip across the Alaskan wilderness to get antitoxin serum and saves the city in this feature-length animated film. It will also include a short feature: 1925 newsreel footage of Balto entering Nome.
Speaker: Chuck Howell (Curator, Library of American Broadcasting, College Park)
- May 8: Enemy of the State (director Tony Scott, 1998)
Starring Will Smith, this edge-of-your-seats thriller shows the power of the high-tech world of surveillance as the protagonist's life is turned upside down by a chance encounter with an old friend.
Speaker: Marc Rotenberg (Georgetown University School of Law; director, Electronic Privacy Information Center)
- May 15: You've Got Mail (director Nora Ephron, 1998)
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan play characters who hate each other but who nonetheless fall for each other through email in this romantic comedy.
Speaker: Katie King (Women Studies Program, University of Maryland, College Park; author of Theory in its Feminist Travels)
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