CITY OF DREAMS
Kill Command and The Call Up are two of the films premiering at this year’s Sci- Fi- London film festival
In its 16 years, Sci- Fi- London has run 19 events, screened hundreds of films both new and old, and its famed 48 Hour Film Challenge spawned Factory Farmed, Gareth Edwards’ short, which would go on to be the starting point for Monsters. We spoke to founder Louis Savy to find out what we can expect in 2016.
Tell us about some of the films being screened this year...
We have the world premiere of Kill Command, which is great – robots and marines shooting each other, from the producers of Monsters. Alongside it is Embers, a fantastic, quite gentle film dealing with short term memory loss. We’ve also got a fabulous film called Polder, which is about Virtual Reality gaming – it’s bizarre and I loved it. The closing night film is the premiere of The Call Up, with a Q& A afterwards.
Is there an all- nighter this year?
We’re not doing an all- nighter, but there will be a 24- hour movie marathon! It will start on Sunday and finish on Monday with no breaks, just films back- to- back.
How many people take part in the 48 Hour Film Challenge each year?
Last year we had about 180 completed films. They’re only five minutes long, but that’s a huge amount of brand new SF films. Shorts are brilliant – you can just play with an idea for 10 minutes. We always have six or eight short film programmes alongside the features. We’re also running a 48 Hour Flash Fiction challenge.
The event is going to be focusing on Virtual Reality, too, correct?
We’ll be bringing together the best Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality experiences and playing with some of the latest technology. We’re also going to be looking at some of the really old Victorian tech – we’re all carrying around powerful phones in our pockets now which can make this old tech fresh again.
Sci- Fi- London runs from 27 April to 5 May in various venues throughout London. www. sci-fi- london. com; www.facebook.com/scifilondon; Twitter: @scifilondon