Artist and filmmaker Philipp Humm today announced the release of the full theatrical trailer of The Last Faust starring Steven Berkoff. This is the world’s first cinematic adaptation of Goethe’s medieval masterpiece Faust 1 & 2.
The adaptation is a key element of Humm’s Gesamtkunstwerk ‘A Total Works of Art’.
The movie has transposed the 500-year old allegorical tale of Faust’s pact with the Devil to Silicon Valley in the year 2059. Humanity is on the brink of extinction as Artificial Intelligence (AI) heralds a new dawn of technological superiority.
The film stars screen and theatre legend Steven Berkoff as damned tech CEO Dr. Goodfellow. It also stars Martin Hancock as Faust and Glyn Dilley as Mephisto. This audacious production is the directorial debut of the London-based German artist, Philipp Humm. Co-directed by Dominik Wieschermann, the film has condensed Goethe’s epic into a 108-minute feature film.
Speaking in The Guardian earlier this year Stuart Jeffries wrote: “Humm’s adaptation tackles sexual harassment, artificial intelligence, the troubling ethical ramifications of technological innovation, the stuff of a million comment pieces. Humm’s Faust – no longer a medieval doctor-magician but an AI guru who yearns to emulate God by creating life.”
Philipp Humm is a former tech entrepreneur (CEO Vodafone, Amazon) who dropped out of corporate life to focus full-time on his art. Speaking about the film’s contemporary spin, he says:
“The story of Faust has more significance today than possibly any other time in history, our voracious thirst for technology means we’re sleepwalking into a dystopian future where artificial intelligence, unfettered by human concepts of empathy, reshapes the planet in its own image. The fact that we’re complicit in our own inevitable demise makes this tragedy all the more apposite. Before the Devil steals your soul, he’ll first steal your password.’’
The Last Faust is a fragment of Humm’s Gesamtkunstwerk or ‘Total Works of Art,’ that includes:
– Illustrated novella
– A series of Fine Art photography
– A series of watercolours
– Oil paintings and sculptures
The Last Faust feature film is scheduled for international release in November 2019.
