Ackland Film Forum: “Fantastic Voyage” (1966, USA)
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Ackland Film Forum | Spring 2019
Fantastic Voyage: Cinematic Journeys into the Brain
Tuesday, 19 Feb 2019 | 7 PM
Varsity Theatre, 123 E. Franklin Street
Fantastic Voyage (1966, USA), d. Richard Fleischer. 101 m.
TICKETS:
Free for UNC One Card holders; $7 general public. Tickets available at the Varsity Theatre Box Office.
Directed by Richard Fleischer (Soylent Green, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) and featuring Raquel Welch in her breakout role, Fantastic Voyage is a Jules Verne-style science fiction adventure film adapted for the Cold War era. Instead of dreaming of trips to the moon or the ocean depths, scientists are seeking to perfect the miniaturization of the atom. When the story begins, scientists can miniaturize atoms, but the effect lasts for just one hour. A Soviet scientist has devised the solution to permanent miniaturization and escapes to the United States with this knowledge. Before he is able to make it to the lab, he is shot, and develops a brain clot that is inoperable. A team of pilots, surgeons, and scientists, including Welch, volunteer to be miniaturized, along with their ship, aptly named the Proteus, and go into the scientist’s body to operate on the clot. Like much of mid-century science fiction, Fantastic Voyage provides a mix of fabulous set designs, retrograde gender politics, and a heady optimism for the future.
ABOUT THE SERIES:
The Spring 2019 Ackland Film Forum series “Fantastic Voyage: Cinematic Journeys into the Brain” is organized by the Ackland Art Museum and the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of English and Comparative Literature and presented in connection with the Ackland’s exhibition The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (25 Jan – 7 April 2019).
