In an interview recorded at SCI-FI-LONDON, Virginie Sélavy talks to the makers of sci-fi drama True Love, about a young married couple who find themselves locked in separate sealed rooms and forced to answer questions about how much they trust each other. Writer-producer Fabio Guaglione and director Enrico Clerico Nasino discuss trust and betrayal, using genre to analyse a romantic relationship, and other ‘locked room’ films, including Vincenzo Natali’s Cube (1997).
First broadcast on Resonance FM 104.4 on Friday 18 May 2012. For more info and formats to stream/download, visit www.archive.org.
Electric Sheep editor Virginie Sélavy talks to Russian scholar Sergei Kapterev (Institute of Cinema Art in Moscow) about Soviet science fiction and the connection between SF cinema and politics, the impact of the space race and the Cold War period, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979),and Roger Corman’s re-edits of popular Soviet SF films. (Originally broadcast 15/07/11 on Resonance FM)
Plus, in a Q&A recorded at SCI-FI-LONDON in April 2010, Alex Fitch talks to Polish poster designer Andrzej Klimowski and SF writer/journalist Wojciech Orliński about cinematic adaptations of the work of Stanislaw Lem from Steven Soderbergh and Andrei Tarkovsky’s adaptations of Solaris to more offbeat films such as Edward Zebrowski’s The Hospital of Transfiguration.
Kosmos: A Soviet Space Odyssey runs at BFI Southbank throughout August.
To mark the Kosmos: A Soviet Space Odyssey season at BFI Southbank, Virginie Sélavy talks to Russian scholar Sergei Kapterev, from the Institute of Film Art in Moscow, about Soviet science fiction, including the first Russian SF film, Aelita Queen of Mars (1924), the connection between SF cinema and politics, the impact of the space race and the Cold War period, pioneering filmmaker Pavel Klushantsev, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979), and Roger Corman’s re-edits of popular Soviet sci-fi films.
This programme coincides with our exploration of Andrei Tarkovsky’s work throughout July.
Pumzi is a Kenyan science fiction short film written and directed by Wanuri Kahiu, set in Africa in the future, 35 years after ‘The Water War’. As communities live in underground compounds, scientist Asha is led to investigage the possibility of growing seeds in the seemingly dead world outside. Pumzi was screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and we hope to be able to see it soon in the UK, the trailer really looks amazing! For more information go to the Pumzi website.
Electric Sheep‘s assistant editor Alex Fitch is curating a comics festival as part of the 10th Sci-Fi London Festival in April. He is also the presenter of Panel Borders, the UK’s only weekly broadcast radio show about comics, Thursdays on Resonance 104.4 FM.
The two-day comics festival will celebrate modern British comic creators from the last 30 years. The event will take place at the Apollo Piccadilly Cinema and at BFI Southbank and welcomes guests who have been published for over three decades plus newcomers to the medium.
Featured guests include: David Lloyd, Andy Diggle, V.V. Brown, China Mieville, Denise Mina, Ian Edginton and Yuri Kore as well as Electric Sheep-featured artists Hannah Berry and Karen Rubins.
Sci-Fi London has ensured there are a number of female guests on the comic book panels and members of the small press and manga community are well represented to ensure members of the audience can get advice from creators and professionals working their way into the industry.
Comics at Sci-Fi London takes place at the BFI Southbank on the May Bank Holiday weekend (30 April – 1 May 2011). There will be an additional panel at the Apollo Piccadilly cinema on 23 April about ’25 years of John Constantine: Hellblazer’: Andy Diggle and David Lloyd discuss the character from his first regular appearance in Swamp Thing #37 to the 250th issue of his own title, published last year.
At the BFI, panel discussions will include ‘Poe, Lovecraft and comics’, ‘Manga Jiman’, ‘Comics and moving pictures’ and City of Abacus. Hannah Berry will be previewing her new book Adamtime, the long awaited follow-up to the acclaimed Britten and Brülightly plus children’s workshops run by creators from Solipsistic Pop and a screening of 20 minutes of footage from the new film Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts followed by a discussion of the writer’s work with some of his collaborators.
There will also be a handful of tables at the BFI for creators to sell and sign their work and Sci-Fi London will be inviting small press creators to take part in the festival for free.
Confirmed guests include:
David Allain (City of Abacus, music video director)
Martin Baker (Battle among the Stars)
Hannah Berry (Britten and Brülightly, Adamtine)
V.V. Brown (City of Abacus)
Paul Collicutt (Robot City Adventures)
Huw J. Davies (Freeman, Garth)
Andy Diggle (The Losers, Thunderbolts)
Alice Duke (Self Made Hero: Poe and Lovecraft anthologies)
Ian Edginton (Scarlet Traces, X-Force)
Ilya (Mammoth books of Best New Manga, Ballast)
Yuri Kore (The Boy Who Runs from the Sun, Manga Jiman Winner 2009/2010)
Zarina Liew (The Sun and the Moon, Manga Jiman Runner-up 2009/2010)
David Lloyd (V for Vendetta, Night Raven)
Roger Mason (2000AD, The Mice)
China Mieville (Kraken, Hellblazer)
Denise Mina (Hellblazer, A Sickness in the Family)
Edward Ross (Filmish, Parasites!)
John Spelling (City of Abacus)
Comics at Sci-Fi London is a Sci-Fi London Lab event, which encompasses talks with artists, writers, scientists, filmmakers and critics talking about science-fiction and science-fact.
In a Q&A recorded live at this year’s Sci-Fi London Oktoberfest, Alex Fitch talks to British director Gareth Edwards about his genre-crossing film Monsters, which features a photo-journalist escorting a spoilt rich girl across Mexico following an alien invasion. Gareth Edwards discusses his use of special effects and the pros and cons of shooting guerrilla-style with a small cast and crew South of the Border.
This interview was broadcast on 3 December 2010 on Resonance 104.4 FM as part of the visual arts show I’m Ready for my Close-Up.
To coincide with the release of the new sci-fi thriller Splice, in which scientists Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley create a dangerous half-human hybrid via genetic manipulation, Alex Fitch talks to director Vincenzo Natali about the film and the other three movies he’s collaborated on with actor David Hewlett – Cypher, Nothing, the cult classic Cube – and his forthcoming adaptation of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer.
An edited version of this interview was broadcast 23/07/10 on Resonance 104.4 FM as an episode of I’m ready for my close-up.
On the Silver Globe is an esoteric Polish sci-fi epic directed by Andrzej Żuławski in 1977 – then lost and believed destroyed by the authorities for a decade before its cinema release. In 2009, the film was screened at Tate Modern as part of a mini-season of films titled ‘Polish New Wave – The History of a Phenomenon that Never Existed’. Looking ahead to the release of this film on DVD in the UK, Alex Fitch talks to Andrzej Żuławski about his struggles in getting the film released and the travails involved in making his horror films The Third Part of the Night (1971) and Possession (1981) under the eyes of a communist regime.
Alex Fitch also talks to Polish poster designer Andrzej Klimowski and his wife Danusia Schejbal (famously depicted as the victim of an assassin’s bullet on Klimowski’s poster for Robert Altman’s Nashville) about working on the fringes of Polish filmmaking in the late 1970s and whether the films of the time could be seen as belonging to an artistic movement.
Andrzej Żuławski will be the focus of a retrospective at this year’s Kinoteka festival which runs from 7-28 April 2016.
Saturday 24 April, Notting Hill Arts Club, 4-8pm : The Last Battle + live rescore by TIME
Electric Sheep Magazine hosts a Rough Trade Shops’ RoTa afternoon of film, music and discussion in the underbelly of Notting Hill.
Main feature: Luc Besson’s fantastic sci-fi movie The Last Battle!
Presented with a new live soundtrack by TIME!
+ Apocalyptic garage punk from Speak and the Spells!
+ Apocalyptic shorts!
+ Resonance FM DJ Robin Warren spins soundtrack tunes!
We are very excited to present an apocalyptic afternoon in collaboration with Sci-Fi London. We will be showing Luc Besson’s stunning first feature The Last Battle, about one man trying to survive in a devastated future world. Starring Jean Reno, it has all of Besson’s stylistic flair but is unlike anything else he has made since. Surreal, blackly funny and visually striking, it is a fascinating addition to the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre.
Sci-Fi London runs from April 28 to May 3 at the Apollo Piccadilly Circus Cinema, London.
The Last Battle will be shown with a live soundtrack by innovative string and synths duo TIME. Frances Morgan (former editor of Plan B Magazine) and Mark Dicker weave a web of sound where warm harmonies slowly mutate into saturated riffs while haunting vocals add a dimension of storytelling.
+ Speak and the Spells play a fast and furious set of garage instrumentals to bring about the end of the world.
+ Apocalyptic short films:
The Last Breath (David Jackson, UK, 2009, 10 min): When the Kelvin family surfaces after scuba diving in a lake, they find that the air has become toxic. With their tanks running low they embark on a race against time to reach the nearby dive hut. Tight and tense, this is a fantastic 10-minute thrill ride! It was produced by VBM Productions.
Die Schneider Krankheit (Javier Chillí³n, Spain, 2008, 10 min): This fantastic short presents itself as a newsreel recounting the rapid spread of a deadly virus after a spaceship containing a chimpanzee crashes in West Germany. The 50s newsreel style is perfectly reproduced, while the reasonable tone of the reporter is brilliantly contrasted with the outlandish events depicted. See more images on Die Schneider Krankheit website.
Choreomania (Louis Paxton, UK, 2009, 9 min): The zombie movie is given a comic and very British twist as a man on his way to work tries to escape the dancing plague that has turned everyone in town into twitchy ravers. Very funny!
In an interview recorded at SCI-FI-LONDON, Virginie Sélavy talks to the makers of sci-fi drama True Love, about a young married couple who find themselves locked in separate sealed rooms and forced to answer questions about how much they trust each other. Writer-producer Fabio Guaglione and director Enrico Clerico Nasino discuss trust and betrayal, using genre to analyse a romantic relationship, and other ‘locked room’ films, including Vincenzo Natali’s Cube (1997). 
