The last two days of the festival do tend to blur into one as the all-nighters end and the Sunday programme begins shortly after. Even Saturday is an early start for those who attended any of the late night screenings.
First off on Saturday was an almost finished version of Captain Eager and the Mark of Voth, which appeared at last year’s Festival as a work in progress, as part of a filmmaking workshop. This film is a tribute to Fifties sci-fi movies with a dash of Dan Dare thrown in, and comes with purpose-designed wobbly sets and corny dialogue and effects. Shot on High Definition Video it looks fantastic and a lot of effort has been put into making it look less so. Featuring Tamsin Greig (Black Books, Green Wing) and Mark Heap (Spaced), it is a jolly good romp, and despite not being finished it got a great response from the audience.
The second test screening of the day didn’t meet with as much enthusiasm. Another low-budget, self-funded British HDV sci-fi movie (they can’t really be called films anymore), Intergalactic Combat is a sci-fi martial arts film and features Gordon Alexander, who also starred in last year’s film The Purifiers. Being a martial arts film the story is pretty ropey, and the sci-fi element is even weaker, which is a pity because with some serious script doctoring and editing it could be a lot more watchable. To its credit the martial arts sequences were excellent, if a bit too long. The level of talent from the all-British cast was astounding, especially as there was no wire work. It was real martial arts that made Ong Bak a big success and with more effort Intergalactic Combat could work. Moviemaker, Ray Brady, said he wanted it to be a TV series and it does have the potential. Let’s see what happens. Meanwhile, in the other screen was Goblin Wars: more wonderful Japanese weirdness from Takashi Miike.
Next round of the day saw Tetsujin 28, a live action remake of the classic Sixties anime, which has also been recently remade as colour anime and released on DVD by Manga. Our review of it can be found here. A second screening of the shorts programme was a chance to see fifteen of the finest shorts from the hundreds that were submitted. These ranged incredibly in style and content and, like previous years, it was a simple animation that won the Best Short Film Award, which goes to show that it is content over style that really impresses, and not the other way round. Despite the fact that all the shorts were showing continuously at the mini-cine in the bar, all three shorts screenings were well attended, with people opting for comfortable seats and picture and sound quality over a freebie.
Possibly one of the most spoken about films of the weekend was Confederate States of America, beyond “I can’t wait to see Final Fantasy on the big screen”. It is a controversial alternate reality, what if film made as a documentary. While some may call it a mockumentary, it is a serious, and powerful, piece of satire that uses the documentary format to give it credence.
The conceit behind this film is that the Confederates won the American Civil War and that not only is slavery correct and proper but the Negroes are better off because of it. The film is presented as an entire television programme created by the British Broadcasting Service, complete with a warning to viewers of its controversial nature, and commercial breaks for products such as Darky toothpaste and slave insurance. Although the director makes a joke out of the broadcast being of a banned foreign film, “unsuitable for children or servants”, the BBC4 documentary series, The Power of Nightmares by Adam Curtis, which exposes the US government as the inventors of Al Quaeda, and of having a long history of creating a state of fear (or terror if you like) in the US, has been completely banned from broadcast there, and that is no joke.
Apart from the fact that the racist attitudes alluded to still prevail in many areas of the US, it is the cleverly scripted voiceover and believable authority of the talking heads, similar to those that appear in ‘real’ documentaries, which give it its power. Coupled with the use of actual historical footage, photographs and paintings, whose meaning are completely altered by the accompanying dialogue, you are left wondering what is real and what is invented. Even the ‘historical’ scenes and public information films that have been recreated are made to look as if they were contemporary with faded colours and film scratches, further adding to the illusion.
Like any good satire, it does make you laugh, cautiously, because it is outrageous in every sense of the word, but its impact comes from its message. And, given recent events in the US (i.e. New Orleans), this is a timely reminder of US human rights issues and the fact that they are not the great democracy they claim to be.
OK, it’s not bog-standard sci-fi or fantasy, but it is thought-provoking, and not likely to get a cinema screening anywhere else in hurry, but if you did miss it at the festival try to see it when it shows or comes to DVD.
Sadly, the other mockumentary, First on the Moon, was not as well attended as CSA, which is a pity because it too is an excellent piece of filmmaking, even if it did lack the social impact of CSA.
Saturday afternoon was a chance for people to catch up on some of the films shown earlier in the festival, Ainoa, Survive Style 5 and Subject Two all had repeat screenings. Makoto Shinkai’s latest film, Places Promised in our Early Days, was also screened for those not able to attend the anime all-nighter but who wanted to see this amazingly talented animators most recent work.
Although this is a film festival and not a convention as some people mistakenly think, we do like to offer our patrons some intelligent discussion. There is the annual Douglas Adams Memorial Debate, and Talkaoke was attracting some serious discussion on all manner of sci-fi and related subjects. Saturday night saw a debate on female roles in contemporary horror and fantasy films after a screening of Ginger Snaps, the Canadian film with a new twist on the werewolf story and lunar cycles, directed by John Fawcett, whose latest film, The Dark, is on general release at the moment (read review here). I missed the discussion due to the arrival of the Night Watch truck.
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For those of you not familiar with the film, the Night Watch race around Moscow in a yellow, nitro-injected truck that, at one stage, does a somersault of a person standing in the road. The vehicle that arrived was not that actual truck, but a similar one, and came loaded up with goodies for those attending the Tears Before Bedtime all-nighter. Once unloaded the truck took off for a cruise around the West End, Saturday night and it sure looked like there were plenty of Dark Others on the streets.
The cinema was starting to fill as the all-nighter crowd was arriving. The Manga wall was under way and the really keen anime fans were lining up to get their choice of seats. Due to a mix up with the prints of one of the films, which was a longer cut, the screenings were running late, but no one seemed to mind. There were many earnest discussions happening around the Talkaoke table and DJ Mermaid was playing an eclectic mix of music, while upstairs the manga wall was filling up. All-in-all it was a mellow scene (man), even if the temperature was rising with all the bodies.
The all-nighters are the main event of the Festival, and this year’s anime line-up was one of the best we’ve had. The MST3K crowd were seated and ready to go, with guest appearances from Tom Servo and Crow T-Robot. Meanwhile the Tears Before Bedtime crowd getting comfortable so as to avoid any unnecessary pains in the neck. Night Watch T-Shirts and badges were in plentiful supply, to supplement the already generous goodie bags, and then even more stuff was showered upon the crowd, including Night Watch DVDs, before the film started rolling.
The first of the anime salons was filled while we waited for the other one to empty. More goodies were thrown into the audience and the big bag of prizes for the cosplay competition were shared among the few folk who dared to dress up for the night. Hugh David from ADV did an introduction to the night’s programme and started off with Shinkai’s short film, Voices from a Distant Star, while the other screen was prepared because, through the wonders of modern technology, we were able to show the same film on two screens simultaneously (give or take a minute). For the otaku the best news of the night was the fact that Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was being shown in Japanese, with subtitles. In fact the whole anime programme was, although this did leave the hardcore struggling to read in the wee, small hours.
Once everyone was seated it was a chance for the volunteers to take a well-earned break before the next assault during the change of films. Luckily these were staggered so they didn’t have to cope with over 400 people all clambering for the limited supplies of Red Bull, ice-cream and coffee at the same time. And so it went through the night into the cool Spring morning when everyone was kicked out into the fresh air to give the staff and the air-con time to recover from the event.
With most people going home in a comatose, but happy, state, Sunday’s session started quietly, with a final big screen showing of the shorts programme. A few brave souls remained for this and the pub quiz.
The first SFL pub quiz was a great success, mostly thanks to generosity of Cobra Beer. Some people arrived with fully prepped teams, some cobbled theirs together on the spur of the moment while others were solitary affair, like the Popular Front of Judea (name that movie). While waiting for everyone to settle, Louis read extracts from Gary Lockwood’s memoirs, one of the prizes, to roars of laughter. After a rapid distribution of blank question sheets and bottles of cold gold, the best use of PowerPoint I have seen started the quiz. The questions, written by Sci-Fi-London’s Geek, Nerd and Boffin Dept, were met with a mixture of sighs, groans, enthusiasm and stunned silence as they were progressively revealed on the big screen. By the end of the three rounds of eight questions, the hastily cobbled together team of Front Row Centre Bladerunners beat the SFX team and walked away with a huge bag of goodies and a crate of Cobra. The third place team got the signed Lockwood book amongst their prizes. The well-lubricated teams left the salon to ready it for a possibly final big screen viewing of Logan’s Run before it heads off to Carousel.
 The Winners |
 Runners-up |
 Third place |
So ended Sci-Fi-London 5. It was great, with plenty of positive enthusiasm from the crowds, a fantastic new venue and the usual eclectic mix of films. Roll on next year. But don’t be a stranger to the website and forum because apart from the great competitions we may have some other surprises.
Sci-Fi-London 6: You know you want to.