Convention Review
Sci-Fi London Film Fest 2024
The 21st physical incarnation of the London film fest
In person 14th September 2024 at the Rich Mix Cinema
and virtually online 14th – 22nd September 2024
Jonathan Cowie reports.
For the first time that I can recall the 2024 Sci-Fi London film fest was a slimmed down affair with jus one day of physicality, and one screen, at the Rich Mix Cinema in Shoreditch, London and a week on-line so that anyone with internet access in Great Britain can stream some rather nifty, recent and rarely seen films.
It was a shame that the physical incarnation was so slimmed down, or even that they could not use the Rich Mix Cinema's second screen (actually there are three but the third is not so big). I had put it down – in my speculative ignorance – that the slimming down this year might due to life the past 18 months having thrown the Fest's organiser, Luis, a few curved balls. This might well have been the case but an additional factor was that the Stratford Picture House was under threat and that while apparently some dates for this year's event (usually held in May) had been set but that cinema was closed by its parent company (a large cinema chain) which was a bit of a blow. The Stratford Picture House as a venue may well have had seen better days, and could have done with a redecorate an behind-the-scenes spruce up, but it suited SFL's purposes rather well.
The Rich Mix Cinema and Community Centre
Having said that, the Rich Mix Cinema is also a community building and while not everything is on the same floor, it does have what SFL needs. OK, so the bar prices are a bit steep (£8 for a medium glass of wine, 2024 prices, that was not even chilled) but there is a Costa coffee across the road for those needing refreshment (which I did halfway through) and there are some eating places including a pizza restaurant on the ground floor next door. Further, the Shoreditch area around Rich Mix has plenty of restaurants and small pop-up street food stalls. Indeed, if you are prepared for a 15 minute walk around the corner to Liverpool Street, there is even more choice: though, while it worth avoiding the Liverpool Street area mid-week (it gets very busy), at weekend London's financial district is quieter and so the trade off for a few minutes walk are guaranteed seats and tables as well as a faster service. In short, there are ample options for refreshment and a bite.
This year's one-day physical event (and remember usually it is five or six days) saw five sessions, of six or seven short films each, grouped into themes.
Time and Space had films that looked at dimensions, including time as well as outer space. Plenty of alternate realities here to sample.
Bleak Futures was all about the end of the world, dystopias and post-apocalypses. I have to say that I really do like the end of the world: one of SF's great tropes. This was one grouping of films I wanted to see and being in the early afternoon I had plenty of time to travel down to town and make it. Its offerings were:
'Apocalypse Later' in which a young Chinese executive from a multinational was scouting for locations (in this case in Germany) to site self-contained apocalyptic shelters. In addition to scouting, she also sought the locals' views on the proposition and those she met included one German prepper.
'Apocalypse Later'
'Endis Ends It All'. Tourist Endis finds herself in an Asian woodland and suddenly everyone has vanished. She eventually comes across some buildings but they are all overgrown and deserted. After a year or so she decides she has had enough and seeks to end it all, but then…
'Golia' sees a high tech urban future in a resource depleted world. The resistance seeks to promulgate their environmental message but the tech multinational, Golia, has other ideas…
'Out of the Grey' is set in a world in which the air is laden with toxic particulates. Those outside the doomed cities struggle to survive. One pregnant woman struggles to get medical help but the city is closing down its services to those outside.
'The Wastelander – Sector 23' concerns survival in a ruined world where automated tech is the enemy for our protagonist who stumbles across a ruined, deserted and yet not quite empty supermarket. This had some great, world-building scenery, and was dark and chilling: more than enough to put anyone off shoplifting.
' The Wastelander – Sector 23'
'The Monolith' was one of my favourites. It is a humorous offering in the vein of Douglas Adams. A survivor in a ruined world comes across two other survivors who are fighting each other for scraps and almost successfully gets them to put down their weapons… Alone once again, a giant monolith appears. It has travelled millions of years to talk to humanity so as to get an idea as to what life is all about. Alas it missed being able to talk to humanity by a few short years.
'Monolith'
The other short film sessions looked at Machine Learning (robots, artificial intelligence [A.I.] and so forth). Having forked out for a day pass (£20) I managed to catch the last three offerings in this batch. 'Sileo' was set in a future in which Earth had been invade by aliens who were transforming the atmosphere to their own ends. The remnants of humanity were in silos with runners carrying messages between them. One such, with a limited air supply, was carrying a message to a Silo across a devastated wasteland with an A. I. and some nifty weaponry for company. This offering had the atmosphere of a 2000AD strip.
'Sincopat' was a brilliant offering from Spain in Catalan, and for the first time one that I had seen at another fest, last year's Festival of Fantastic Films where it won a Delta Award for Best SF Short. It concerns the inventor of a new technology that enables music to be directly fed into the brain. She is testing the technology before its commercial launch in a few days time. What could possibly go wrong? Finally, there was 'Soulmate that concerned an artificial companion.
'Sincopat'
The final two groupings of shorts consisted of one of purely British film-makers (UK Focus) and another, 'Mind Games', that had offerings that played with the nature of reality and perceptions. All good stuff.
Separate for the session of independent short films was the 48-Hour Challenge top ten. The 48-Hour Challenge actually took place four months earlier back in April in which teams of amateur film makers were given a film title (a different one each), an easy-to-get prop (for example it might be an umbrella, or a sandwich) and each a different line of dialogue. These had to be included in the film to ensure that it had been made in two days time. Then 48-hours later the completed films are uploaded to the competition's website (actually they use a cinematic third party for this bit).
So, that's the challenge and while not every year to punters get to see the best of the entries, some years they do. I remember one year, Sci-Fi London's 2010 incarnation, and a young film maker, Gareth Edwards, won. That year there was a judge on the jury who was a Hollywood producer and he managed to get a small budget for Gareth to produce a feature film. The result was Monsters. It was made on the dirt-cheap saving all the limited budget for the huge, gaseous balloon like, whale sounding aliens. When making it, director Gareth would ask a Mexican police guard at a bridge to play a Mexican police guard at a bridge who was reluctant to let two American tourists to pass… Anyway, low-budget may be but the film actually had sufficient box office success to outstrip the studio's investment giving them a respectable return. Gareth was then offered the chance to make Star Wars: Rogue One (trailer here) , one of the best Star Wars films following the original trilogy. He then went on to make The Creator (2023) (trailer here) which had a really lavish budget but had the look of a film with a truly humungous budget… So, suffice to say that the 48 Hour Challenge can really impact of budding film makers' careers.
This year, the Sci-Fi London version of the 48-Hour Challenge (a few other film fest run similar) had 48 entries (so making it easy for your con-reporter of little brain easy to remember). The session at this year's Sci-Fi London screened the top 10. As each was roughly five minutes long, this took about an hour.
Coming third was 'A Small Detour' by team Big Event. Coming second was 'Rapier's Folly' by team Cobra Wolf. This concerned a person who decided to soup up their A.I. by feeding it the entire internet… Much later he asks the A.I. what it had learned? Well, it liked cats… and K-pop… Sadly, the winning team was not at the finalists' screenings as they were New Zealand-based, but then that's the thing; film-makers from anywhere in the world can participate in the Challenge.
The winning team was team Pingus and their offering 'Parallel'. It concerned a young man giving a programmed clone of his partner to his partner… And at this point I should reveal that this was a gay musical with three short songs and made with a sense of fun. And yes, even if you are American, you can have a clone with a British accent.
And that really was it for the one-day, in person event.
As for next year, well, we know that they are already planning another 48-Hour Challenge, so that's good news. Hopefully they are planning for a return to a full week-long fest. Let's hope so. The Rich Mix does have three cinema screens and so it should be possible to have two films aired at once but with greatly staggered start and end times so that the lobby does not get choked.
Yes, I know that some independent film makers tend to be cautious before committing, feeling that if they hold out a good distribution deal will miraculously come their way: some chance as the competition with the big studios is so fierce. So if the organisers are finding it difficult to fill all the slots in a timely way then why not repeat a few films at different time of the day: remember, those travelling from out of town cannot make early or late screenings so it is possible to make the early and late screenings a little cheaper and the day-time ones a couple of pounds more expensive. And, if films are hard to finalise, then why not bring back some of the stonkingly good ones from previous years?
The other thing is, is that the Rich Mix has a separate exhibition cum talk hall with bar and as Sci-Fi London (SFL) has done some years it is possible to have panels and talks as well as exhibits. So there is potential providing the Rich Mix can offer reasonable hire rates.
Separate to the physical event, there was the online component to this year's Fest. This is undoubtedly welcome, but alas I cannot report on it. SFL is a brilliant creation but it has a longstanding major weakness in that in recent years its website is extremely opaque and hard to navigate. This year I had to get a friend of the Fests to e-mail me the session screening times. Last year, a dozen of our local SF group spent half an hour at one of our meetings trying to find out what, where and when everything was going on. We just about managed it and that year several of us went for a day. Meanwhile, back at this year, from their website I could not get to see what films were being offered on-line: the system seemed to want me to pay £10 to register first!
Here, the thing is that while the organiser might have intimate knowledge of what is being planned, we – the average punter – do not, and need the information (what is happening, where, when, and at what cost) in one place. Simple, accessible/downloadable one-page per day of Fest sheets/web pages should do it. And if on it there are title links to trailers then so much the better. Of course, there is an argument for keeping the information on the Sci-Fi London website sparse, and the navigation difficult, in that it provides a solid Darwin filter ensuring that only the fittest, die-hard SF film aficionados get to participate.
Finally, this year, for some reason, Sci-Fi London did not use their YouTube Channel, which over the years had been a resource I checked out a few times a year. But, there you go. What do I know?
Nonetheless, with the very fixable, website bugbear notwithstanding, this year's event made for a grand day out (there could be a short, SF film title in there somewhere). Next year, Sci-Fi London is worth noting in your diary once they've fixed dates.
And so, all too soon it will be time once again to do it all over. Let's tread boldly…
Jonathan Cowie
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