Zeros And Ones

In the midst of a pandemic, life somehow goes on. In Abel Ferrara’s latest feature, this means that global techno-warfare continues unabated, only now with a healthy squirt of hand sanitizer. Following the career high point of SIBERIA, Ferrara delivers a film whose bold images and complicated anti-narrative recall earlier achievements such as THE BLACKOUT and NEW ROSE HOTEL. Depicting a time period somewhere between Covid and an unspecified future, ZEROS AND ONES is a film about global warfare and omnipresent terrorism, and the thin line between those devoted to protecting the old order and those laying down their lives to bring it down. Ethan Hawke plays twin brothers, one an American soldier, the other a revolutionary, but in essence they are simply two sides of the same coin. Hawke’s military man is, ironically, a kind of photographer.
ZEROS AND ONES suggests an intimate connection between expanded vision and political control. Thermal imaging, night vision cameras held like weapons, and Zoom calls from quarantine: all are agents in the degradation of the visual world into “data”. By contrast, Ferrara’s extreme low-light cinematography (courtesy of Sean Price Williams) suggests that freedom and beauty exist well beyond the greedy eye’s reach. (Michael Sicinski)

In the presence of Abel Ferrara and Cristina Chiriac.

Abel Ferrara: THE DRILLER KILLER (1979), MS. 45 (1981), FEAR CITY (1984), CHINA GIRL (1987), CAT CHASER (1989), KING OF NEW YORK (1990), BAD LIEUTENANT (1992), BODY SNATCHERS (1993), SNAKE EYES (1993), THE ADDICTION (1995), THE FUNERAL (1996), THE BLACKOUT (1997), MARY (2005), NAPOLI, NAPOLI, NAPOLI (2009), PASOLINI (2014), PIAZZA VITTORIO (2017), HANS (2017, V’ Trailer), THE PROJEC- TIONIST (2019), TOMMASO (2019), SIBERIA (2019), SPORTIN’ LIFE (2020)