Each year SCI-FI-LONDON looks at a different country and explores its contribution to the science fiction genre. This year we are delighted to screen science fiction cinema from Poland with a specific focus on Stanislaw Lem. We also present a Q&A session with the graphic novelist and film poster designer, Andrzej Klimowski.

We are indebted to the Polish Cultural Institute in London for their guidance with this festival highlight. During our research,we kept returning to the idea of bringing the author, Stanislaw Lem, to the attention of a broader public. If he is known at all it is for the story that became SOLARIS.

We are thrilled to present this film selection and, alongside it, the new book, ‘Lemistry’ commissioned and created by the Polish Cultural Institute in London and published by NewCon. Stanislaw Lem is a writer of provocative, beautiful science fiction and we felt that his oeuvre could provide the springboard for a collection of newly commissioned pieces. This film mini-season is a companion piece to the book.

Q&A with Andrzej Klimowski

Klimowski is a world-renowned film poster designer and graphic novelist. In the UK his visual style proved too controversial when his poster for Luis Buñuel’s The Phantom of Liberty was banned by the London Underground. As a writer and artist, he has authored three graphic novels, The Secret, The Depository and Horace Dorlan.

With his wife, Danusia Schebal he has adapted Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde and The Master and Margarita to comic book format. Andrzej and Danusia were active participants in the Warsaw film scene in the late 1970s and Professor Klimowski is interested to see how genre films from that period stand up today.