Screening
The Last Starfighter

Part of Computer Age: Early Computer Movies, 1952–1987
Sunday, November 17, 2013, 5:00 p.m.

Dir. Nick Castle. 1984, 101 mins. DCP. With Lance Guest, Robert Preston, Catherine Mary Stewart, Dan O'Herlihy, Norman Snow. Having demonstrated his superior arcade-game prowess, average trailer-park-teen Alex Rogan lands a job with the Rylan Star League to defend the universe from the tyrannical Xur and his armada of evil, leathery Kodans. More than an elaborate exercise in childhood wish-fulfillment, it was one of the first feature films to employ images primarily made from computer animation, marked by an unforgettable twenty-minute animation sequence, overseen by artist-filmmaker John Whitney, Jr. and CGI genius Gary Demos, using the Cray X-MP supercomputer, the world's fastest computer at the time. 

Preceded by:
Brilliance
Dir. Robert Abel and Associates. 1984, 30 seconds. Digital projection. Canned Food Information Council television commercial.

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