Reality Check: Home Invasions

Alex Fitch interviews the directors of two new British horror films that deal with supernatural home invasions and their consequences. Oliver S. Milburn discusses his debut film The Harsh Light of Day which looks at a home owner’s Faustian deal with a vampire to get revenge on the thieves who murdered his wife, and Pat Holden talks about his new movie When the lights went out, starring Kate Ashfield (Shaun of the Dead), produced by Bil Bungar (Moon), and dramatises the story of the 1966 haunting of a semi-detached house in Pontefract.

Posters for When the lights went out and The harsh light of day

(Expanded podcast of an episode of I’m ready for my close-up, broadcast 19/09/12 on Resonance 104.4 FM)

When the lights went out was released in cinemas on 14th September and The Harsh Light of Day is released on DVD on 1st October. Continue reading →

Reality Check: Home Invasions [ 36:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Reality Check: Trek Nation

Alex Fitch and Dr. Marek Kukula (Public Astronomer, Royal Greenwich Observatory) conduct a Q and A with Eugene ‘Rod’ Roddenberry after a screening of his film Trek Nation, which looks at the legacy of Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek. Recorded in front of an audience at SCI-FI-LONDON, Spring 2012.

Trek Nation poster featuring Eugene ‘Rod’ Roddenberry

For more info about this podcast and a variety of other episodes you can download, please visit the home of this episode at www.sci-fi-london.com

Links: Official Roddenberry and Trek Nation websites
More info on the short film White Room and interview with the director, Greg Aronowitz
More info on SCI-FI-LONDON
Listen to interviews with Star Trek actors George Takei and Brent Spiner
Continue reading →

Reality Check: Trek Nation [ 36:08 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Reality Check: Documentary approaches to SF film

Alex Fitch talks to a pair of film-makers whose experiences outside of cinema have given them unique approaches to the medium. Shezad Dawood is a fine artist who, following a short film about westerns called Feature, is now tackling the SF genre with his movie Piercing Brightness, an extract of which is currently showing at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. Jim Monroe is a novelist and graphic novelist, whose excellent mockumentary Ghosts with shit jobs closed this year’s SCI-FI-LONDON festival and presents the lives of poor North Americans after the economy of the West collapses.

Stills from Piercing Darkness and Ghosts with shit jobs

For more info about this podcast and a variety of other episodes you can download, please visit the home of this episode at www.sci-fi-london.com

Links: Shezad Dawood’s website
Info about the presentation of Piercing Brightness at Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
Info about the filming in Preston

Buy Ghosts with shit jobs from the film’s official website
Review of the film in The Guardian
Jim Monroe’s publishing / multi-media company – No Media Kings

Continue reading →

Reality Check: Documentary approaches to SF film [ 43:49 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Reality Check: Dystopian TV and film

Alex Fitch talks to Ilana Rein (director: We are all Cylons), Andrew Mark Sewell (producer: Blake’s 7 audio) and Ben Aaronovich (writer: Blake’s 7 audio / Doctor Who) about dystopian TV from The Time Tunnel to Battlestar Galactica; and to Elizabeth Karr (producer) and John Alan Simon (writer / director) of Philip K. Dick adaptation Radio Free Albemuth.

Stills from We are all Cylons directed by Ilana Rein / Radio Free Albemuth by John Alan Simon

N.B./ There is an additional screening of Radio Free Albemuth at 2.30pm on Monday 7th May at Apollo Piccadilly Cinema, Lower Regent Street, London

For more info about this podcast and a variety of other episodes you can download, please visit the home of this episode at www.sci-fi-london.com Continue reading →

Reality Check: Dystopian TV and film [ 1:00:03 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download