{{more citations needed|date=March 2012}} {{Use mdy dates|date=February 2026}} {{Use American English|date=January 2025}} {{Infobox film | name = Conceiving Ada | image = Conceiving Ada (film).jpg | director = Lynn Hershman Leeson | producer = Lynn Hershman Leeson <br />Henry S. Rosenthal | writer = Lynn Hershman Leeson <br />Eileen Jones <br />Sadie Plant <br />Betty A. Toole | starring = Tilda Swinton <br />Francesca Faridany <br />Timothy Leary <br />Karen Black <br />John O'Keefe <br />John Perry Barlow <br />J.D. Wolfe | music = The Residents | cinematography = Hiro Narita <br />Bill Zarchy <small>(Virtual sets)</small> | released = {{Film date|1997|09|10|TIFF}} | runtime = 85 minutes | language = English | country = United States<br>Germany | budget = }} '''''Conceiving Ada''''' is a 1997 film produced, written, and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson. Henry S. Rosenthal was co-producer of the film.
==Synopsis== Emmy Coer is a computer scientist obsessed with Countess Ada Lovelace, author of the first computer algorithm, written for Charles Babbage's "Analytical Engine".<ref>{{cite book | last = O'Regan | first = Gerard | year = 2013 | title = Giants of Computing | publisher = Springer-Verlag | ISBN = 978-1-4471-5340-5 }}</ref> She is upset to discover that she is pregnant, believing that the pregnancy will interfere with her work. Afraid of losing her boyfriend, she decides to keep the baby. Emmy tries to work on a way of communicating with Lovelace in the past by way of "undying information waves".
Emmy eventually succeeds and is able to communicate with Ada and learn about her studies, her work and how she felt that in many ways her work was hampered by her children and by the time she lived in. Emmy wants to bring Ada into the present by allowing her to inhabit her body. A dying Ada refuses, insisting that Emmy needs to live her own life. However, by 2002 Emmy is raising a daughter who has been embedded with Ada's consciousness and who already shows a precociousness with computers despite the fact that Emmy is trying to raise her to have a normal childhood.
==Cast== * Tilda Swinton as Ada Augusta Byron King, Countess of Lovelace * Francesca Faridany as Emmy Coer * Timothy Leary as Sims * Karen Black as Lady Byron/Mother Coer * John O'Keefe as Charles Babbage * John Perry Barlow as John Crosse * J.D. Wolfe as Nicholas Clayton * Owen Murphy as William Lovelace * David Brooks as Children's Tutor (David)
==Reception== Upon its February 1999 premiere in New York City, Stephen Holden of ''The New York Times'' called its premise "intriguing" though he felt the film is "much better at throwing out ideas than at telling a story or at creating compelling characters"; and that it has a "overall air of woodenness and shrill didacticism".<ref name="nyt">{{cite web|url= https://www.nytimes.com/library/film/022699ada-film-review.html | title= ''Conceiving Ada'': Calling Byron's Daughter, Inventor of a Computer | work= The New York Times | date= February 26, 1999 | first= Stephen |last= Holden |author-link=Stephen Holden |access-date=2015-06-14}}</ref>
That same month, Edward Guthmann of the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' called it a "film without category or precedent. A meditation on memory, feminism, immortality and the horizons of virtual reality, it's got enough ideas and intellectual fodder for a dozen films — which is its virtue and its defect at the same time. Directed by local video artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, ''Conceiving Ada'' is a fanciful, multilayered experiment about two women who connect through cyberspace across the divide of time and discover some remarkable parallels between their lives."<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Complex-Ada-Crosses-Divides-of-Time-Cyberspace-2946477.php |title= Complex 'Ada' Crosses Divides of Time, Cyberspace | work= San Francisco Chronicle | date= February 19, 1999 | first= Edward |last= Guthmann |access-date=2015-06-14}}</ref>
On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 82% based on reviews from 11 critics.<ref>{{cite web |title=Conceiving Ada (1997) |url=https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/conceiving-ada |website=Rotten Tomatoes }}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * {{IMDb title|id=0118882|title=Conceiving Ada}}
Category:1997 films Category:1990s feminist films Category:Films set in 2002 Category:Films about mathematics Category:American feminist films Category:American science fiction films Category:German science fiction films Category:1997 biographical films Category:1997 English-language films Category:1997 American films Category:1997 German films Category:Ada Lovelace Category:1997 science fiction films Category:English-language science fiction films Category:English-language biographical films
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