Future Cinema

GPS Valentine

Valentine’s Day is the second most celebrated holiday around the world, second to New Year’s Day. Its most important trait is cross-cultural, non-religious and even universal symbolic meaning. Whether it is celebrated in Canada, Mexico or Russia, the Valentine’s Day has the same signifying attributes – the celebration of love. While New Year’s Day, Christmas and even Thanksgiving, have evident religious connotations, Valentine’s Day has been regarded as the most secular of all holidays, seemingly exempt from historical or religious narratives. However, the so-called “universal” aspect of its secular properties is not relieved from certain socio-cultural idiosyncrasies. In other words – love is a concept that can take up a variety of forms, depending on historical and cultural influences that structure it. While most people are familiar with various discourses that accompany other public holidays, very few people are aware of what provides the signifying background to the Valentine’s Day celebration.

One of the goals of our project is to provide the audience with forgotten historical and scientific facts that surround the concept of love. Given the fact that the whole film will be realized on the ground of university, the educational dimension of the film should have even more relevance. However, beside education purpose, every clip incorporated into the GPS movie will have entertaining qualities as well, and will narratively relate to a particular location to which it is attached. For example, the Osgoode Hall building will be given a short clip that connects the concept of love with nature of law practice; the clip intended for philosophy building will present the concept of love through the perspective of philosophy, etc.

The second goal of our project is to create an alternative entertaining platform for Valentine’s Day festivities. While most celebratory practices of the Valentine’s Day, especially in North America, include activities meant to be realized in pairs (in other words, Valentine’s Day usually refers to couples, married or non-married, but still mostly couples), not very often Valentine’s Day provides amusement for those that don’t fit into the ‘couple’ category. For that reason, our GPS Valentine’s Day project will try to bring the celebration of love to everyone who happened to walk by our locations. While offering an alternative to ‘the dinner for two’, ‘romantic vacation’, or a ‘box of chocolate with flowers’, our Valentine’s Day GPS movie will provide entertainment to both couples and non-couples, and remind them of the diverse nature of the concept of love.

Finally, since the most distinct nature of York University is multiculturality, we have chosen to create an audio-visual style for our clips that would reflect the multicultural nature of the notion of love by using segments of various popular TV, film and video found footage.

Maia, Radojka, Jon, Matthew

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