Blade Runner
Headlines surrounding the debate about animal cloning have dominated the news in recent weeks, but cloning has also been a subject of fascination for cinema over the last few decades.
With such a hot topic generating discussion across the country, Filmclub - the after-school charity for children - is dedicating its film ‘Season of the Week’ to movies featuring cloning and genetics.
Filmclub ’s experts in film for young people have selected seven tantalizing titles, which highlight the issue of cloning and genetics in some of the most entertaining and enthralling films from the last sixty years.
One of the earliest films to bring the idea of cloning to a mass audience is the 1950s sci-fi thriller Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956), which remains one of the most enduring and eerie cinematic classics.
Director Woody Allen’s Sleeper (1973) takes a more comical look at the world of genetics, in which the main character Miles Monroe enters hospital for a minor operation and wakes up 200 years later having been cryogenically frozen after an accident on the operating table.
The groundbreaking sci-fi classic Blade Runner, which questions the ethics of cloning, has been a favourite of both critics and film fans ever since it first came out in 1982.
Set in a world where humans and ‘replicants’ live together the film is both about the meaning of life itself and an action packed thriller.
Filmclub member Robert, age 15 said of the film; "Blade Runner is one of those "thinker" movies...The overall theme of what it means to be "human" is very interesting and very deep. This movie is a MUST see for any fan of deep stories, 80's American cinema or science fiction."
For younger film fans Jurassic Park is an eye-popping creature feature following the story of a research organisation which has worked out how to clone dinosaurs from long-dormant DNA - and the boss has set up a "zoo" on a remote island to display the living results.
For all these and more films, check out Filmclub ’s Season of the Week: Clones and Genetics:
· Blade Runner (15, 1982) - A film about the meaning of life itself, and an action-packed thriller full of suspense that will keep you glued firmly to the screen.
· Gattaca (15, 1997) - In this thought-provoking science fiction thriller set in the not-too-distant-future, humans are divided into two groups - Valids (those born physically perfect through the marvels of science) and In-Valids - born naturally and subject to disease and defect.
· I, Robot (12, 2004) - As technology keeps advancing, one of our biggest lurking fears remains what might happen if one day we invent something that develops a will of its own? That's the subject of this nerve-jangling sci-fi thriller set in the near-future
· Invasion of the Body Snatchers (PG, 1956)- Sci-fi movies experienced a boom in the 1950s and this remains one of the enduring classics. Miles Bennell is a respected doctor who discovers that people in his small Californian town are being replaced by identical-looking aliens.
· Jurassic Park (PG, 1993) - A research organisation has worked out how to clone dinosaurs from long dormant DNA - and the boss has set up a "zoo" on a remote island to display the living results.
· Sleeper (PG, 1973) - In 1973 Miles Monroe enters hospital for a minor operation and wakes up 200 years later having been cryogenically frozen after an accident on the operating table.
· The City of Lost Children (15, 1995) - When Krank's henchmen kidnap young Denree from his guardian, strongman One, he must find a way to get away from the evil scientist and his strange family. A wonderful French film full of imagination and life.
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