The Fugitive Futurist (1924)

This witty short proffers futuristic visions of London landmarks by way of a 'magic' camera. But while its gleeful inventor turns out to be an escapee from the local asylum, French director Gaston Quiribet may not have been entirely barking up the wrong tree with one of his trick shots - which imagines Trafalgar Square flooded by rising sea levels. Could this be a prophetic glimpse of our great capital's fate? (Simon McCallum)

You can watch 1000 other complete films and TV programmes from the BFI National Archive free of charge at the new BFI Mediatheque - http://www.bfi.org.uk/mediatheque

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• BFI
• London
• Sci-fi
• Flood
• 1920s
• Trafalgar
• Square
• Tower
• Bridge
• Strand
• Westminster
• Climate
• Change
• Global
• Warming

[exsmackhed]

@tannalv Thank god and why would you want it to? Let me guess you want it knocked down and replaced with some garish modern building..NUTS!!

[formigadiabetica]

pô, quem criou esse filmaço?

[tannalv]

The house of parliament has not shown any signs of progress for the last 100 years...

[MisterSable]

I guess that's why they now call that editing transformation a 'dissolve'!

[MrJimmu]

I always wanted a device like this as a child. In my mind it looked almost identical to the one in the film. How strange.

[katakisLives]

Great film! I heard about it on a radio 4 programme about Tower bridge and its movie appearances, Trafalgar square under water! lets hope the Thames barrier doesn't fail, and having an airship dock on the Houses of parliament is similar to the idea of the airship dock on the Empire state building that never was.

[earthacademy]

quite prophetic. Shinkansen style monorail trains across Tower Bridge. Notice the design of the train. And the Nanobot style of creating buildings with bricks automatically. The use of melting film as a cross wipe is fantastic. But the best part was the talk of the ether and vibrations, and creating machines to see beyond the physical level. In otherwords to view the psychic realms. That IS the future.

[SeanButt]

Doctor Pretorius invented the box on Trafalmadore.

[richragsdale]

awesome!!!!

[FredSilmo]

Well I can't say for sure, but I imagine they did have sounds, music and all, but apart from the video. Like on Chaplin's movies that he did the soundtrack and they played on the theater using phonograph I guess (dunno)in sync with the video. But of course they could have some movies that really didn't have any soundtrack.