FILM COURSE. EUTOPIAS: THE SEARCH FOR THE 'GOOD PLACE' IN FILM

Utopia is usually thought of as a chimera, an impossible projection from a dark present to a better, yet also unreachable, future time. The term was coined by Thomas More in 1516 in his work of the same name—in one of the possible interpretations—from the Greek words ou (which expresses negation) and tópos (place): that is, ‘nowhere,’ according to the first English translation, or ‘no hay tal lugar (there is no such place),’ as translated into Spanish a century later by Francisco de Quevedo. 

More founded his utopia, therefore, on an intended ambivalence between the necessary desire for it to exist and the impossibility of its achievement. Utopia is a promise, a ‘good place’ that does not exist… yet. Because utopian desire, like every prospective imagining, casts itself towards the eutopian realisation of said desire: those who do not agree with their reality dream of a better world; always, however, as Herbert Marcuse defended, intending that utopia become topia, a reality that will, in the end, come about.

As such, utopia is no longer a chimera or fanciful tale bearing no relationship with history: its desire to be a reality renders it a tale anchored in its time, which, furthermore, proliferates in times of crisis. This is why utopia is as necessary today as it has always been. But the social utopias that aim to create ‘the best of worlds’ often result in the opposite: in the dark discourse of ‘anti-utopia’ or dystopia. Thus, in this course we are going to take the intimate tangent that will take us away from ‘social utopia’ towards ‘individual (personal, but transferrable) utopia.’ Because perhaps the only utopia possible, as Lewis Mumford defends, is our own life—here and now—taken to the limits of its ideal possibilities.