Screening Surveillance: three short science fiction films about surveillance, with accompanying classroom materials

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada funded Screening Surveillance project: a trio of Creative Commons licensed short science fiction films about "everyday issues around big data and surveillance." The movies run about 10 minutes each, and come with classroom materials.

The movies were produced under the auspices of Queens University's Surveillance Studies Center as part of sava saheli singh's postdoc; singh is married to SF writer Tim Maughan, author of the wonderful recent debut novel Infinite Detail (Maughan also wrote one of the movies):

Blaxites follows the story of a young woman whose celebratory social media post affects her access to vital medication. Her attempts to circumvent the system leads to even more dire consequences. (written by Nehal El-Hadi)

In A Model Employee, to keep her day job at a local restaurant, an aspiring DJ has to wear a tracking wristband. As it tracks her life outside of work, she tries to fool the system, but a new device upgrade means trouble. (written by Tim Maughan)

In Frames, a smart city tracks and analyzes a woman walking through the city. Things she does are interpreted and logged by the city system, but are they drawing an accurate picture of the woman? (Written by Madeline Ashby)

Screening Surveillance project [The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada/Queens University's Surveillance Studies Center] Read the rest