Everything Everywhere All at Wes: Daniel Kwan and Mary-Jane Rubenstein in Conversation
Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 5:00pm
Goldsmith Family Cinema, The Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies, 301 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
FREE!
Film director Daniel Kwan and Wesleyan Professor of Religion, Philosophy, Science in Society, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Dean of the Social Sciences Mary-Jane Rubenstein will host an intimate conversation on various mind-bending topics, including the physics and philosophies of parallel universes; the relationship between scholarship, storytelling, and activism; techno-spiritualities and spiritual technologies; and the pseudo-religious fervor around AI (artificial intelligence). What do the philosophies and histories of religion and science have to do with contemporary American cinema and the new horizons for media and film production today? Bring your questions to join the discussion.
A short meet-and-greet reception with Kwan will follow the event in the lobby of The Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies from 6:30pm to 7pm. No photography or video will be allowed during the reception.
Event sponsored by Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts, the College of Film and the Moving Image, the Dean of the Social Sciences, the Department of Religion, the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, and the Science in Society Program.
Daniel Kwan has been writing and directing for over a decade as a part of the duo DANIELS with Daniel Scheinert. They got their start with a slew of viral music videos, commercials, and short films, before breaking into the feature film and TV space.
DANIELS have developed a reputation for combining absurdity with heartfelt personal stories. Oftentimes they incorporate a unique brand of visual effects and visceral practical effects into their genre-blending projects. Their new movie Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), a kung fu sci-fi dramedy starring Michelle Yeoh, became A24’s best-performing film of all time and won seven Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.
Most recently, Daniel Kwan made his publishing debut with a pair of children’s books released by A24, which explore existentialism and time travel. I'll Get to the Bottom of This! and 24 Minutes to Bedtime! are available now.
Mary-Jane Rubenstein is the author of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race (2022), Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse (2014), and numerous other books on the intersections of religion, science, and philosophy.
Image of Mary-Jane Rubenstein by Kristin Miller Photography.