Conceiving Ada
| Conceiving Ada | |
|---|---|
.jpg) | |
| Directed by | Lynn Hershman Leeson |
| Produced by | Lynn Hershman Leeson, Henry S. Rosenthal |
| Written by |
Lynn Hershman Leeson Eileen Jones Sadie Plant Betty A. Toole |
| Starring |
Tilda Swinton Francesca Faridany Timothy Leary Karen Black John O'Keefe John Perry Barlow J.D. Wolfe |
| Music by | The Residents |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 85 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Conceiving Ada is a 1997 film produced, written, and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson. Henry S. Rosenthal was co-producer of the film. The Cinematography by Hiro Narita and Bill Zarchy, the latter being the director of photography.
Synopsis
Emmy Coer is a computer scientist obsessed with Countess Ada Lovelace, author of the first computer algorithm, written for Charles Babbage's "Analytical Engine".[2] She finds a way of communicating with people in the past by way of "undying information waves". In the film, Ada's ideas are portrayed as limited by discrimination against women in technology, science and mathematics in her time. Much of the story revolves around Coer's attempts to use genetic engineering to bring Countess Lovelace into the present.
Cast
- Tilda Swinton as Ada Augusta Byron King, Countess of Lovelace
- Francesca Faridany as Emmy Coer
- Timothy Leary as Sims
- Karen Black as Lady Byron/Mother Coer
- John O'Keefe as Charles Babbage
- John Perry Barlow as John Crosse
- J.D. Wolfe as Nicholas Clayton
- Owen Murphy as William Lovelace
- David Brooks as Children's Tutor (David)
Reception
Upon its February 1999 premiere in New York City, Stephen Holden called its premise "intriguing" though the film is "much better at throwing out ideas than at telling a story or at creating compelling characters"; it has a "overall air of woodenness and shrill didacticism."[1]
That same month, Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle called it a "film without category or precedent. A meditation on memory, feminism, immortality and the horizons of virtual reality, it's got enough ideas and intellectual fodder for a dozen films—which is its virtue and its defect at the same time. Directed by local video artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada is a fanciful, multilayered experiment about two women who connect through cyberspace across the divide of time and discover some remarkable parallels between their lives.[3]
External links
References
- 1 2 Holden, Stephen (February 26, 1999). "Conceiving Ada: Calling Byron's Daughter, Inventor of a Computer". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-06-14.
- ↑ O'Regan, Gerard (2013). Giants of Computing. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-1-4471-5340-5.
- ↑ Guthmann, Edward (February 19, 1999). "Complex Ada' Crosses Divides of Time, Cyberspace". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2015-06-14.