Join an ill-fat­ed sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion with the first trail­er for Space­ship Earth

In the year 1991, a team of eight intre­pid vol­un­teers sealed them­selves in a self-con­tained geo­des­ic dome called Bios­phere 2 for a dura­tion of two years. Their goal? First and fore­most sur­vival, and beyond that, new insight on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sus­tain­ing life with­in its own envi­ron­ment and atmos­phere. If all went well, this would’ve been the first step toward estab­lish­ing liv­able colonies on the moon, Mars, wher­ev­er the lim­its of human imag­i­na­tion might stop.

All did not go well. The new doc­u­men­tary Space­ship Earth chron­i­cles this bizarre and fas­ci­nat­ing foot­note in the his­to­ry of sci­en­tif­ic inquiry, from its ori­gins as an exper­i­men­tal the­atre troupe’s effort to free them­selves from the bonds of soci­ety to its even­tu­al out­come as a media cir­cus can­ni­bal­ized by a skep­ti­cal pub­lic. In the sto­ry of a quixot­ic project car­ried out by super-smart hip­pies, direc­tor Matt Wolf finds a para­ble of the envi­ron­men­tal­ism movement’s utopi­an rise and sober­ing fall.

The film impressed crowds up at Sun­dance when it pre­miered back in Jan­u­ary, lead­ing to a dis­tri­b­u­tion deal from NEON (the stu­dio that squeezed a dou­ble-nom­i­na­tion out of niche non­fic­tion title Hon­ey­land for this year’s Oscars, a heart­en­ing sign for this film’s future prospects). Today brings the first trail­er, along with the news that the film will be ​“launch­ing every­where” on 8 May, a propo­si­tion that requires a bit of cre­ativ­i­ty to real­ize under the restric­tions of coronavirus.

NEON has employed a nov­el new strat­e­gy in which they’ll offer busi­ness­es – not just movie the­aters, but muse­ums, book­stores, restau­rants, you-name-it – the oppor­tu­ni­ty to become a ​“part­ner” and host the dig­i­tal stream of the film on their own web site, retain­ing half the price of all vir­tu­al ​“tick­et sales.” In addi­tion to select dri­ve-in the­aters and cityscape pro­jec­tions, with specifics on that to come, view­ers will have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sup­port a busi­ness they care about when pur­chas­ing the film.

Any inter­est­ed enter­prise can fill out the form and apply to host the film now; already on board are such unlike­ly par­ties as the NYC Triv­ia League, Brook­lyn eatery Locan­da Vinii & Olie, and the Tal­cott Moun­tain Sci­ence Cen­ter. How appro­pri­ate, to try out an exper­i­men­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem on a film such as this, ori­ent­ed as it is around think­ing out­side the box and chang­ing the sta­tus quo.

Space­ship Earth comes to, well, not cin­e­mas, but every­where else, on 8 May.