Sci-Fi London Film Festival 2009 Preview

Sci-Fi London 8, or The London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastical Film to give it its full title, kicks of on April 29, and for six days will provide all willing participants with a flurry of premieres, free screenings, events, classes and all nighters.

The festival begins with the most prestigious award in the UK for science fiction, the Arthur C Clarke award, which is now in its 23rd year, and honours the best science-fiction novel of the year. After the presentation, the world premiere of Eyeborgs takes place with director Richard Clabaugh up for a Q&A afterwards. The film centres on a new system of security cameras that are put in place by the American government after another terrorist attack. All CCTV cameras are linked into a single, all-seeing system known as ODIN (Optical Defence Intelligence Network), which utilises mobile, robotic surveillance cameras called ‘Eyeborgs’. But after a series of ‘accidents’, ‘Gunner’ Reynolds (Adrian Paul), an agent for the Department of Homeland Security, grows suspicious of the system and believes terrorists have seized control.

Blink of an Eye: The Short Programme 1 presents 10 films sent from around the globe that represent the eclectic nature of the genre. One of the more interesting events of the festival comes courtesy of the Girl Geek Dinners, set up by Sarah Blow in 2005 as a community that provides regular informal events for anyone who describes themselves as ‘female, into technology, and a girl geek’. At this dinner the guest speaker will be Dr Rachel Armstrong, and while it’s just for girls, man geeks are welcome should a geek girl invite them.

Australian film Eraser Children (another world premiere) has been described as ‘Gilliam directing The Matrix meets 1984 by way of Max Headroom’. Set in an oppresive society ruled by the Misner Corporation, those who refuse to live by the rules are forced underground as part of the ‘system dropouts’ who only come above ground during the one hour of darkness that occurs everyday. Finnegan Wright, a lower level worker at Misner Corp, is forced to live underground and becomes certain he can change the world if he kills Misner. Much more than a fantastical film set in another world, it’s a satire on the way humans are so easily fooled into buying products they don’t need, having ridiculous jobs and worshipping leaders who have no respect for the planet or anything on it.

Saturday May 3 provides the most jam packed day of the festival, including panel discussions on Writing Young Adult Fantasy; The Problem of Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film Making; Robots – Rise of the Machines; Comic as Sci-Fi Literature; and Robots and Reality. Meanwhile, writer/director/star of The Mother of Invention, Andy Bowser, brings sci-fi to the much loved and much maligned form of filmmaking, the mockumentary. Aspiring inventor Vincent Dooly (Andrew Bowser) who is vying for his last chance to win the Young Inventor Award before he is too old, and finally beat his arrogant nemesis and perennial winner, Martin Wooderson.

For anyone looking to spend their Saturday night watching movie marathons, Sci-Fi London is a classic venue for the all nighter. You can choose between Anime (Ghost In The Shell 2.0, Afro Samurai: Resurrection, Naruto The Movie 3: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom, Panda! Go Panda!, Origin: Spirits from the Past) or Italian horror (The Mask of Satan, Sleepless, Macabre, Black Sabbath). If that’s not to your fancy, you could always get ready for the new JJ Abrams version with the Star Trek all nighter consisting of The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home and Undiscovered Country .

More of a fan film than an actual picture, The Hunt for Gollum was inspired by notes in the appendices from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It achieves a notable milestone for fan films when it becomes the first to be simultaneously released online at Dailymotion.com and screened at a festival. This is the first ever LOTR fan film with serious production values and aims to bring a unique high quality HD cinema experience to the internet. Director Chris Bouchard started the project two years ago with a small cast and crew, which steadily built momentum as more and more enthusiastic filmmakers, volunteers and supporters took up the challenge, which finally culminated in an amazing team effort that has had over 100 volunteers contributing to the project worldwide.

Another panel will discuss comedy and satire in science-fiction followed by G.O.R.A. and A.R.O.G., a spoof hailing from Turkey, which is apparently one of the most expensive films the country has ever produced.

While the crowds expected are a friendly bunch, all courtesy may go out the window once the pub quiz begins. The free event pits notoriously hard questions against anyone who squares up to the experts, and as some of the questions are on the likes of Tron, Kin Dza Dza and Buckaroo Banzai, it’s the perfect place to get in touch with your inner geek.

Before CGI took over, Jim Henson’s puppetry provided kids with endless entertainment. His last feature film before his death in 1990, Labyrinth, was a financial failure at the box office that came nowhere near to recouping its $25 million budget. Over the years it has, however, become a cult classic, and they’ll be a free screening for kids accompanied by one adult on Bank Holiday Monday morning, which’ll give the nippers a chance to enjoy the forgotten art of puppetry, and adults a chance to see a very young Jennifer Connelly take on David Bowie.

Only the Japanese could take a song by T-Rex and turn it into an award-winning, 24-volume sci-fi fantasy manga series which has become a national phenomenon. 20^th Century Boys, created by Naoki Urasawa, has now been adapted into one of Japan’s most expensive movies. Yukihiko Tsutsumi has turned the manga into a compelling three-part, live-action saga, with the first part proving to be one of Japan’s biggest box office hits of 2008. Part two is being screened for the first in the UK and part one will be shown for those who missed it’s theatrical release.

For more info, visit the website.

Sci-Fi London Film Festival 2009 Preview (text) by Limara Salt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.