Over the last four years the festival has run a 48hour Film Challenge and we have had over 380 films made, many of which have gone on to be presented at other film festivals and been broadcast on television.

The rules are simple – get a crew together, scout some locations, prep your cast and turn up at the Apollo cinema where you receive a TITLE of the film, some DIALOGUE, and a list of PROPS that must be seen in the film. This year we also introduced an optional scientific theme chosen by readers of the science section of The Guardian.

The results can be seen on our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/scifilondon).