Surge of Transference

Born in a small town in Romania and, as her entire generation, raised on the Internet, Geo Barcan uses a very open-form, soft Science Fiction video essay to retell the local history of early Internet connections. Remixing tens of improbable images, familiar and documentary, personal and semi-fictional, she sets them all to the rhythm of various narratives. Looking back at the early years — of her own life, of Romanian late capitalism and of the Internet —, those technolibertarian peer-to-peer connections from after the end of history, with their improvised antennas hanging down the walls of brezhnevkas, are perceived by the filmmaker as one of those many beautiful utopias of the “new” world, forever postponed in Romania ever since. But what if the utopias so much desired by our culture already exist in nature? Surge of Transference imagines an offline peer-to-peer future. (Călin Boto)