The End Stage
2024
Documentary Film
Title Sequence
Sound Recording
Welcome on board The Train of Capitalism.
The End Stage is a documentary film directed by South Korean director Seungjae Oh. It is a pointed look at the COVID-19 pandemic and capitalism. Oh brings together an international cohort of thinkers to contemplate the connection between COVID-19, capitalism, and climate change. These thinkers include Pulitzer Prize journalist and author Laurie Garrett, American academic and animal behaviorist Temple Grandin, and NASA’s climatologist Gavin Schmidt. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek sets the stage by claiming that first-world societies are riding comfortably on a train while the effects of global warming torment the rest of the world. However, if we do not pull the emergency brake, our train will collide head-on to an oncoming train. Walter Benjamin: "Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train—namely, the human race—to activate the emergency brake."1
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1Benjamin, Walter., Eiland, Howard., Smith, Gary. Selected Writings: 1938-1940. United Kingdom: Belknap Press, 1996. pp 402.
The End Stage is a documentary film directed by South Korean director Seungjae Oh. It is a pointed look at the COVID-19 pandemic and capitalism. Oh brings together an international cohort of thinkers to contemplate the connection between COVID-19, capitalism, and climate change. These thinkers include Pulitzer Prize journalist and author Laurie Garrett, American academic and animal behaviorist Temple Grandin, and NASA’s climatologist Gavin Schmidt. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek sets the stage by claiming that first-world societies are riding comfortably on a train while the effects of global warming torment the rest of the world. However, if we do not pull the emergency brake, our train will collide head-on to an oncoming train. Walter Benjamin: "Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train—namely, the human race—to activate the emergency brake."1
I collaborated with Oh on several parts of the film, namely the cinematics inside the film that depict hallucinations of climate change generated by AI that invade a safe train cabin, the livery of The Train of Capitalism, the substantial head-on train collision where the high-speed bullet train collides with an iron locomotive, and the typography throughout the film.
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1Benjamin, Walter., Eiland, Howard., Smith, Gary. Selected Writings: 1938-1940. United Kingdom: Belknap Press, 1996. pp 402.
