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EVENT, SCREENING

Sleep Dealer

Sunday, Dec 3, 2017

Location: Bartos Screening Room

With Alex Rivera and Dr. Wendy Ju in person

Sleep Dealer. Dir. Alex Rivera. 2008, 90 mins. Digital projection. With Luis Fernando Peña, Leonor Varela, Jacob Vargas. In Mexico in the near future, people perform crucial jobs in the United States without crossing the border. Memo (Luis Fernando Peña) finds a digital factory that connects his nervous system to a robot based in the U.S., but the job comes with physical and personal costs. Sleep Dealer won awards at the Berlinale and the Sundance Film Festivals, including the Sloan Feature Film Prize at Sundance, when it premiered almost ten years ago. Seen today, the film is more relevant than ever. The screening will be followed by a discussion between the filmmaker and Cornell Tech professor Dr. Wendy Ju.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Alex Rivera: is a filmmaker and artist who has been making work for the past 20 years, in a variety of formats, with a focus on immigration and the internet. His films have played internationally at the Berlinale, MoMA, the Guggenheim, Sundance, and on PBS. He has been supported by organizations including the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Sundance Institute, Sloan Foundation, and the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum.

Dr. Wendy Ju: is an Assistant Professor at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island in the Information Science program. Dr. Ju researches human-robot interaction and automated vehicle interfaces, focusing on the ways that interactive devices engage with people. She was previously Executive Director of Interaction Design Research at Stanford, where she received her PhD in mechanical engineering. Her book The Design of Implicit Interactions was published in 2015.

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