Independent Lens
AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness
What begins as a science film emerges far beyond the explicable. AWARE follows six brilliant researchers approaching consciousness from different perspectives.
Frozen Angels
Using dreamlike cinematography and personal stories, Frozen Angels presents the future of human reproduction, available now in Los Angeles.
- Series
- Independent Lens
- Premiere Date
- May 16, 2006
- Length
- 90 minutes
- Funding Initiative
- Series and Special Projects
Producer
Eric Black
Eric Black is a photographer and documentary filmmaker based in San Francisco and Berlin, Germany. His films as director/producer/cinematographer (also with Frauke Sandig) include Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth, Frozen Angels, and After the Fall–all three were official selections in over 200 international film festivals.
- Other ITVS Films
- After the Fall
- AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness
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Producer
Frauke Sandig
Frauke Sandig is a documentary filmmaker based in Berlin. She works as a commissioning editor for Deutsche Welle. Her films as director/producer/dramaturgist (also with Eric Black) are Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth (2011), Frozen Angels (Sundance 2005), and After the Fall (Berlin IFF 2000).
- Other ITVS Films
- After the Fall
- AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness
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The Film
Frozen Angels investigates the future as it exists today in Los Angeles. Following a cast of bigger-than-life, often funny, characters, the viewer encounters wealthy sperm bank presidents, expectant surrogate mothers, gene researchers, radio talk show hosts, NASA scientists, infertile suburban couples, just-born and now-adult designer babies, blonde, blue-eyed egg donors, and feminist lawyers. The film warns of the coming dangers this brave new world poses to race relations, dividing society into genetic haves and have-nots. Two scientists at work in a laboratory, wearing lab coats and facing each other, amidst a table filled with test tubes and machines
The Sundance Film Festival describes Frozen Angels as “a mesmerizing work that is not so much a science film as a startling conduit into the future of the American Dream, where ‘perfect children’ can be added to the shopping list.” The film makes the connection between individual desire and a society that would seek to design its children. It takes a rollercoaster ride through Los Angeles, a city better known for freeways, film sets of epic proportions, silicone implants, Governor Schwarzenegger, Muscle Beach, and Disneyland ... for elevating the superficial to an art. But in the Mecca of the “Body Perfect,” one in six couples are now infertile and Angelinos lead the world in the number of fertility clinics per capita. With no government regulation to restrict them, L.A. is home to the world’s largest egg donor agency, largest sperm bank, and largest surrogate mother agency. Nearly all these businesses’ customers are wealthy, and almost all are white.
With the potential to screen for more than 2,000 genetic diseases coming on line in the very near future, who would risk having imperfect children the old-fashioned way? And what corporation would insure them?
Frozen Angels is a highly visual and stylized film, often more reminiscent of fiction or a science fiction film than documentary: the fluid camera is almost always in motion on a steadicam, in automobiles or helicopters. With no narration, the characters tell their own conflicting stories; viewers are asked to contemplate their own thoughts about the coming of the new eugenics and the world we will leave for the children being created. No one’s moral code is left unchallenged.
