Live documentary by Sam Green here Friday

Oscar-nominated documentarian Sam Green returns to the Wex Friday night to perform Utopia in Four Movements, his epic multimedia piece that was one of the hits of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Alongside his images, Green will offer his own narration as he cues a live soundtrack and score by Brooklyn-based band The Quavers.

Utopia, codirected by sound artist Dave Cerf, is the culmination of Green's longstanding interest in the optimism of the early 20th century and our failure to realize so many of our collective hopes and ambitions. The piece is divided into four movements that each looks at a manifestation of the utopian impulse: the world's largest shopping mall in China (now abandoned), the invented language Esperanto, the tireless optimism of an American exile in Cuba, and the desire to identify remains in mass graves via forensic anthropology.

Sam Green is a San Francisco-based filmmaker. His documentary The Weather Underground was nominated for an Academy Award, broadcast nationally on PBS, and included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

Hear from the Green on Utopia after the jump.