CeCiL's Screenings by Stephen Korytko
The Golden Record
Location: Cercle Cité, Henri Beck Auditorium (Entrance : 2, rue Genistre)
CeCiL’s Box celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2025!
Since 2015, Cercle Cité has been supporting local creation and has showcased the work of thirty-four young and emerging artists from the Greater Region in one of its windows on Rue du Curé, visible 24/7.
To mark this anniversary, the Cercle Cité is giving five of these artists carte blanche for a cycle of artist film screenings throughout the year. These screenings, which explore their current research or serve as a source of inspiration for their practice, will be followed by a dialogue with the artists, joined by specialists in their field or enthusiasts of their art.
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For this fifth screening, Stephen Korytko will present the film The Golden Record.
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The story of NASA’s Voyager mission is one of humanity’s most poetic endeavors. In 1977, a team of scientists and artists created the Golden Record—a collection of sounds and images representing human life. Launched into space, it was a hopeful yet vulnerable gesture: “This is who we are. Who are you?”
The Voyager mission embodies tragic hope. The odds of the record being intercepted, let alone understood, are infinitesimally small. Yet, perhaps its true purpose wasn’t communication with extraterrestrials but self-reflection—a way to ask ourselves: What makes us human?
These questions inspired The Golden Record, a dialogue-free short film about communication and connection. Set entirely in a sound recording studio, it tells the story of Mary and her father, whose strained relationship mirrors the complexities of humanity’s quest to communicate with the cosmos. How can we hope to connect with distant worlds when we struggle to understand each other?
The film juxtaposes the intimate and the cosmic, highlighting the tension between technological advancements and the organic messiness of human emotion. Its visual language underscores these themes: physical barriers, isolated framing, and shifting compositions reflect the main characters’ emotional distance and state of mind.
Selected by the renowned Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, The Golden Record invites audiences to reflect on our need for connection—both with each other and the universe. Known for showcasing bold and unconventional projects, the festival recognised the film for its atmospheric depth and open-ended narrative.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with Alessandra Luciano (Ministère de la Culture).
Free entrance, registration required
