FUTURE FUTURES – SERIES

How do we bring our physical bodies with us into our inevitably digitally-bound futures?

Collaboratively conceived by Director Brian J. Johnson and Vancouver's acclaimed Company 605, Future Futures is a collection of 5 short dance films that explore the digital destiny of humankind through a unique merging of camera and visual effects with an intensely specific choreographic vision. Embracing the absurdity of centering dance inside a sci-fi narrative, the experimental series collapses time to portray human culture at an unprecedented moment: an emergence of a new, autonomous and intelligent being - the digital reflection and culmination of ourselves. In a state of mass transition, and forced into a bizarre coexistence alongside this growing presence, the remaining population of embodied "real" humans confront their own fears and curiosity of this new dawn while grieving what might be left behind in their looming obsolescence. Through its otherworldly imagery, choreography and driving electronic sound score, Future Futures evolves as a strange, highly visual and compellingly watchable exploration into what we are if no longer tied to our bodies, and how we will define humanity when being faced with a fading physical existence.

Brian Johnson is a cinematographer, filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist whose work ranges from traditional filmmaking for broadcast, to visual art, theatre and performance. He is an avid and enthusiastic collaborator as well as an independent artist creating works that tend to operate within the continuum of cinema.

Brian has been winning awards for his cinematography for over 15 years with credits including Sweet Magnolias and The Killing for Netflix/AMC and You Me Her for Direct TV and E-one. His own films and broadcast-based work have been equally fêted with awards and inclusion in festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand's ISFF and more recently the San Francisco Dance Film Festival where Inheritor Recordings was awarded best cinematography and runner-up for best short. He is currently developing a feature film project with Toronto based novelist David Eddie. Most recently he directed a series of short films titled Future Futures that will launch on the CBC's streaming platform GEM in the summer of 2022. These films were produced in collaboration with Screen Siren Pictures and Company 605 - one of Canada's leading dance companies.