As festival director Louis Savy said on more than one occasion this evening, when talking about running the 10th Festival over ten days, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Traditionally, this would be the opening night of the festival, where we host the Arthur C Clarke Awards, announce the winner of the 48 Hour film challenge, and show the film premiere. Despite the fact that the festival has already been running for four days of fantastic films and events, we have stuck to our tradition and made the line up like it was opening night.
As the literati of British science fiction gathered in the bar of the Apollo Cinema for some pre-Award drinks before the winner of 25th Arthur C Clarke Award was announced, moviegoers were filing into to see the UK premiere of the Croatian film, THE SHOW MUST GO ON, which one punter described as "the best thing I've seen at SCI-FI-LONDON so far". We're not sure if this meant in our ten-year history, or so far in this festival, but praise nonetheless.
At 7.30 the authors, publishers and their retinue filed into Screen 4, where they were all given Haagen-Dazs ice cream to sustain them before the all-important announcement. Naturally, Award director Tom Hunter gave a long and enthusiastic speech about the future of the Awards, and it is looking good. Chair of Judges Paul Billinger was given a special Clarke Award as he is stepping down after five years. Of course, what everyone really wanted to know was who had won and without very little ado last year's winner China Miéville announced Lauren Buekes' Zoo City as the winner, collecting the coveted engraved bookend and a cheque for £2011.
As the literati were ushered out and the volunteers cleared away the ice-cream tubs and empty glasses, we prepared for what for us is one of the highlights of the festival. Sure we are showing some fantastic feature films, such as RECREATOR that was about to screen, but the 48 Hour Film Challenge is all about discovering, developing and encouraging new sci-fi filmmaking talent, and this year certainly proved there is no shortage of it in the UK. Once everyone was seated, the three finalists NO ESCAPE, SIT IN SILENCE and THE INTENTION OF MILES were screened, for the first time on a big screen, to great applause. Festival director Louis Savy then began the awards ceremony. Firstly the Under 21 prize went to SIT IN SILENCE, which was made by a team of 18 and 19-year-old students from Bath, who are also making their first (non-sci-fi) feature. Third prize went to NO ESCAPE, second prize to SIT IN SILENCE and the winner was the slightly disturbing THE INTENTION OF MILES, who won some filmmaking equipment and most importantly, a feature development deal from Vertigo. All the winning teams also go software bundles from our main sponsors AVID, as well as other goodies. What was even more impressive than the quality of the films that were made in 48 hours, was just how young the three winning teams were. In fact, the SIT IN SILENCE guys were so young we weren't sure they should be allowed to leave the cinema unaccompanied.
Watch all ten shortlisted films on SFLTV.
As soon as the presentation was over teen clone horror comedy RECREATOR was shown. The film was followed by a Q&A with director Gregory Orr, who openly invited comments on the film from the audience, and with the 48 Hour Challenge filmmakers still in the audience he was sure to get some interesting feedback.
As the festival runs on almost no money (and this year especially) we are always impressed and grateful to the filmmakers who come over at their own expense to support their films at our festival, and we have plenty this year. Also our volunteers who manage to sometimes do amazing things for us, such as our smartphone apps. Last night we managed to get video of the Clarke Awards out on Twitter and YouTube as soon as the winner was announced thanks to Billy's iPhone. Meanwhile, Robin was cutting the HD two-camera shoot whilst waiting for the 48 Hour Challenge award to start. He then cut the two camera shoot of that and it was all uploaded before most of us had got home. These are the clips embedded here. Go team and thanks for all your hard work.