THE HUMAN SURGE 3 (2023) with guest Eduardo Williams

Seven years after his debut feature THE HUMAN SURGE (2016) conjured a new cinematic vocabulary for navigating the age of digital global culture, Eduardo Williams returned to feature filmmaking with a not-quite sequel, THE HUMAN SURGE 3, which advances on its predecessor in its formal audacity, expansive scope, and hypnotic power. Adopting the digressive, world-roaming structure of role-playing games, THE HUMAN SURGE 3 tracks a cohort of characters–casting nonprofessional actors as avatars of global queer experience–as they wander and collide in far-flung locations in Sri Lanka, Peru, and Taiwan. While much has been made of the film’s technological novelty (Williams shot the film with a 360-degree camera, later framing the sequences by wearing a VR helmet), the film also returns us to the geographical, kinetic, and technological astonishment of early cinema, the emotional landscapes of Philippe Garrel, and the otherworldly immersion of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. One of the decade’s most original and essential films, THE HUMAN SURGE 3 forges, in the words of critic Beatrice Loayza, “a borderless realm rife with thrilling potential.”

Following the film, Williams will appear for discussion and audience Q&A.

Co-presented with support from the Michael and Jane Hoffman Visiting Artist Series and the MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern.

Eduardo "Teddy" Williams (born 1987) is an Argentinean film director. He first studied at Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, and then in Fresnoy, France, under the tutorship of Portuguese director Miguel Gomes. Williams works within an avant-garde/experimental tradition. His first feature film THE HUMAN SURGE won the Pardo D’oro in Locarno. His works have been presented at film festivals such as Cannes, Locarno, Toronto and New York.

Image credit: A scene from Eduardo Williams's "The Human Surge 3." Courtesy of Grasshopper Film.

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