Steven Spielberg's Sci-Fi

A three-time Academy Award winner who is often credited with laying the foundation for the Hollywood blockbuster, director Steven Spielberg’s filmography is an eclectic one which frequently finds him bouncing between periods, styles, and genres with an unparalleled sense of ease. Still, for as versatile a filmmaker as Spielberg is, it’s impossible to deny that one of the most consistently vital, thrilling, and ambitious throughlines within his formidable oeuvre is the trailblazing work he has done within the science fiction genre. For Spielberg, a true artist whose mastery of spectacle is equaled by an aptitude for mining the rich, often thorny emotional depths of the stories he tells, science fiction provides a vast, malleable canvas upon which he can couple his fundamental strengths as a filmmaker with the peerless sense of imagination that makes him such a truly singular storyteller.

To highlight our release of Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, the newest science fiction film from one of cinema’s great pioneers of the genre, the Jacob Burns Film Center will present screenings of a Spielberg-directed sci-fi film every weekend from May 9 through June 21.

Featuring Cinema Studies presentations from NYU Professors for Close Encounters of the Third Kind on May 31, A.I. Artificial Intelligence on June 7, and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial on June 14.