I Have Seen the Future

The 1939 New York World's Fair is the subject of Lisa Seidenberg's rudimentary documentary, which stitches together archival footage with reminiscences from aging attendees. The central theme here, enunciated by futurist Watts Wacker, is that the 1939 exhibition represented a shift in tone, reflecting the era of consumerism that would dominate American life for the remainder of the century, a point illustrated by a simple device—the pop-up toaster—as well as by the introduction of television to an amazed public. Seidenberg also finds connections to the revival of the Depression-era Big Apple by city planner Robert Moses, and to the threatening situation in Europe: Germany was conspicuously absent, and as the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe continued, Czechoslovakia and Poland closed their pavilions. In addition, a bomb found in the British exhibit took the lives of two policemen (one interviewee here opines that the English planted the explosive device themselves to stoke U.S. public opinion against Germany). As a footnote, Seidenberg adds an episode about Buckminster Fuller's prototype for a super-efficient car, which was banned from display because the powerful automobile manufacturers (along with the big oil companies) considered it a threat. Using the focal point of the fair to touch on some significant issues of 20th-century American life, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)