A Natalia Almada Film Screening: 'Users'

The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, the Film Study Center, and the Harvard Film Archive invite you to attend two screenings of Natalia Almada's films, The Night Watchman (El Velador) and Users. This event positing is for the screening of Users on November 13. Born in Mexico City as the great-granddaughter of Mexico’s controversial president Plutarco Elías Calles, Natalia Almada makes intimate films exploring the tragedies in her own family history as well as the current violence in Mexico’s Sinaloa region. Her poetic, multilayered approaches to storytelling have won her a MacArthur Award, two Sundance Documentary Directing Awards, and screenings at Documenta13, The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, and the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Following the screening, Natalia Almada will be in conversation with Tabitha Jackson (Shorenstein fellow spring '24).

Wednesday, Nov. 13 | 7pm | Carpenter Center Theater at the Harvard Film Archive 

Users

Directed by Natalia Almada 

United States, Mexico, 2022, DCP, color, 81 min. 

English; Spanish with English subtitles 

Users begins with a mother’s question–will my children love the perfect machines more than they love me, their imperfect mother? She pushes the button, and a smart crib lulls her crying baby to sleep, flawlessly every time. This question guides her inquiry into the intimate relationship we have with technology that is increasingly driving all aspects of our society. We explore the unintended and often dehumanizing consequences of our society's embedded belief that technological progress will lead to the betterment of humanity. Is technological progress inevitable? Are we all increasingly isolated? Do we really have agency to direct its course? Is technology an expression of our humanity or is technology destroying our humanity? The film will be a critical and intimate meditation on these questions. 

Users traverses places ranging from the largest indoor vertical farm in the world to the perfect artificial wave, from an IVF embryo lab to a fiber optic cable landing. Invisible infrastructure that we all rely on is made visible. Our reliance on machines and our alienation from each other is palatable. Urgent global issues like climate change and privacy are explored from the intimate perspective of a mother thinking, worrying and loving her children. – Icarus Films