Horizon, 13 minutes, 2011 (excerpt)

Horizon (2011, 13 minutes, Hi-8 video, stereo)
Written, directed, and edited by Joshua Thorson
Narrated by Kyle deCamp

Premiered at Pleasure Dome ("Magic Kingdoms"), 2012 and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, 2012/13.

In 1982 Walt Disney World’s EPCOT Center, or, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow,
opened to the public—a little late for such a utopic modernist project. The original park featured an “infotainment” ride called Horizons, which was sponsored by G.E. It showed a future in which technology and innovation coupled with the family unit would evolve into exciting and previously unimaginable territories–with colonies in outer space and under the Earth’s oceans. In 2000, the ride was demolished to make way for an immersive thrill-ride called “Mission: Space.” The story in this video, about a family doing research on a colony in the Chamaleon Complex whose supplies and funding inexplicably stop arriving, and who are determined to survive however they can, accompanies archival Hi-8 video footage of the original EPCOT ride.