About the festival

click here for the 2002 and 2003 websites.

SCI-FI-LONDON, a strictly non-geeky, serious look at science fiction and fantasy film! We take place last weekend of January/first weekend of February at London's favourite cinemas, The Curzon SOHO (Time Out readers’ poll 2000 and 2001) and The Other Cinema, London's cool new arthouse screen.

Background:
SCI-FI-LONDON is the UK’s only film festival dedicated to the science fiction and fantasy genres. It began life in 2002 and in our first year we managed to screen 12 UK/European premieres, including the first showing of The Mothman Prophecies and the world premiere of Ken Russell’s The Fall of the Louse of Usher.

In 2003 we had the world premiere of Malice Doll, the UK premieres of Cube 2: Hypercube, Ever since the world ended and The Inside Story. We also introduced our documentary strand "stranger than fiction" and had the first ever UK screenings of The Gospel According to Philip K Dick and Life, the Universe and Douglas Adams.

With an average attendance to every screening in excess of 80% and fantastic media coverage, SCI-FI-LONDON is truly established as a serious film festival.

The aim was to attract an audience that was susceptible to science fiction, rather than hardened fans of a specific franchise. In our first year we purposely avoided typical and obvious choices; No Star Wars or Star Trek. Instead, we looked for unique and visually stunning new product for an eager UK audience, balanced against some rarely seen movie classics.

In the last two years we have screened some amazing and very rare classic movies. These included Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and the original Solaris recently remade with George Clooney, George Lucas’ first feature, THX 1138, the ever-relevant, Soylent Green and John Carpenter’s scifi/horror crossover, The Thing.

We devised an international sci-fi short film programme, rounding-up the best sci-fi shorts from the UK and around the world. The full programme is screened in our sold-out ‘Shorts @ Six’ slots and each feature we show is preceded by one of these shorts.

SCI-FI-LONDON re-introduced the all-nighter to London. In 2002 we had a sold out all-nighter programme at the Curzon SOHO. With free Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream, Red Bull and breakfast – the audience got to experience all 4 of the Alien series movies back-to-back and 4 John Carpenter classics, including his first feature Dark Star. In 2003 it was a manga fest hosted by the Other Cinema. Premieres of Spriggan showed alongside classics like Akira and Perfect Blue.

In line with our aim of attracting new audiences, 2002 saw us hold events at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts): After being granted permission from his estate, The Douglas Adams Memorial Debate saw our distinguished panel of writers, commentators and filmmakers look at how science fiction transfers from book to screen and Newtype Animé, an encyclopaedic overview of the history of Japanimation and the increasingly popular Manga genre.

In 2003 we were the guests of the ICA's Film Salon, a panel discussion about film. The Douglas Adams Memorial debate at the Curzon SOHO asked "is it real or is it sci-fi?"

2003 also saw us introduce the SCI-FI-LONDON Trailer Challenge. Make a trailer for a non-existant sci-fi film... in a week! The response was fantastic and we had 37 trailers completed.

In 2004 we keep the threads pretty much the same and introduce a few new goodies including the Internet section of the festival.

We refuse to charge submission fees and encourage filmmakers of all backgrounds, interests and obsessions to submit their work.