MIF17: Last and First Men at The Bridgewater Hall
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
There are few performers who project a more otherworldly presence than British actress Tilda Swinton. So, it comes as no surprise to find her on narration duties for Jóhann Jóhannsson’s new multimedia adaptation of Olaf Stapledon’s epic sci-fi novel, Last and First Men. Jóhannsson – the Oscar-nominated Icelandic composer behind the scores for Arrival, Sicario and the upcoming Blade Runner 2049 – combines music, film and Swinton’s elegiac narration for what has been billed as a “poetic meditation on memory, loss and the idea of Utopia”.
Manchester International Festival will present the world premiere of the new work, which promises beautifully desolate futuristic landscape imagery, filmed in 16mm black and white in the former Yugoslav republics. Stapledon’s cult novel is vast, heady sci-fi that projects terrifying, apocalyptic futures for humanity, and this new adaptation, performed as a world exclusive by BBC Philharmonic at The Bridgewater Hall, takes on an equally bleak air as it documents the breathtaking end of the last human species in civilization.
