This document discusses the concept of hope and utopian ideals in various creative works such as films and stories. It references philosophers like Ernst Bloch who argued that popular culture can contain "utopian material" that sparks personal longing for transformed scenarios. While specific films may not overtly portray utopias, they can create "utopian hints" that provide glimpses of escape from everyday life. The document also suggests that the memories and interpretations of creative works are personal and can represent different utopian ideas beyond just the direct content. Overall, it examines how hope and visions of improved possibilities are embedded in and inspired by cultural works on both conscious and subconscious levels.

1. Dreams,
daydreams
& memories
of Hope
Craig Hammond

2. The Power of an Idea
• Vision
• New Possibilities
• Hope
• 1902: Georges Méliès
‘Trip to the Moon’
• 1969 – Moon landing

3. In remembrance of forgotten Hope
(Gaston Bachelard)
[A creative] beauty is within us, at the bottom of
memory. It is the beauty of a flight which revives us,
which puts the dynamism of one of life’s beauties
within us.
On the thread of our history as told by the others,
year by year, we end up resembling ourselves. We
gather all our beings around the unity of our name

4. Forgotten adventures

5. ERNST BLOCH – THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE
 From ‘loss’ of childhood to an
incomplete/unfinished childhood
 Some popular culture contains
utopian material, which can prompt
personal traces of longing
 Utopia, is Not-Yet, so we daydream
about the possibility of transformed
scenarios – through books / comics /
films / fairytales
 Hope-Detectives: future = Not-Yet

6. … HOPE …

7. Philip K Dick: We Can Remember it for
you Wholesale
• Something is missing
• Discarded somewhere …
along the onset of routine
– But beyond Doug’s
– Spiritual emptiness
– Ache for redemption
• He still dreams against the
odds – of escape

8. Daydreams, wishes,
escape… (through film)
Siegfried Kracauer suggests that to investigate today’s society, we must listen to
the confessions of the products of its film industries
They ‘blab a rude secret’, without really wanting to; revealing how society wants
to see itself
And offer a limited number of typical themes recur again and again
Ernst Bloch – suggests that Films create utopian hints for ‘employees’; images of
escape from the capitalistic routine.
From the glaring tedium of the everyday, we escape in to night-time of film

9. “Let my People Go!”
But … is all
that it
seems?
Let’s see
what the
clip
contains …

10. So … where is utopia in all of this?
• Hope … is snatched back at the end of the film
• The machinations of the Industry
– smother the message in ‘cheese’
• But, is there scope for Utopia beyond the
film?

11. ‘Just a dream’… (so what!?)
Every film we have enjoyed one day takes a place in our memory next to
others. Movies are one memory among others, and they submit, like
them, to the menace of oblivion, to the erosion of memory … (Marc Aúge
Casablanca)
Consciousnesses may be synchronised in a shared moment of viewing, but
the film we saw is never the film I remember. (The Remembered Film)
A utopian ‘something’ exists beyond doorway of the re-imagined film

12. Beyond the door of
the work lies an
empty-space
Ernst Bloch:
“The story of the old painter belongs
here, who showed his friends his final
painting
in it was a park, a narrow path winding
past trees and ponds up to the little
red door of a palace.
But as the friends turned back toward
the artist he was no longer next to
them,
but within the painting, strolling down
the little path toward the fabulous
door, standing quietly before it;
turned, smiled, opened it, and
vanished.”
(Ernst Bloch, Traces: 118)
An interiority of creative
possibility