It should come as no surprise that Boston and its neighboring burgs should be a perennial hotbed of science fiction. MIT, for starters, is anyone’s best bet for the nucleus of the eventual robot uprising, and has spawned what could easily be called America’s premiere Mad Science District. Harvard, for its part, was home to the mindbending experiments of Timothy Leary – as well as his pop cultural progeny, doctors Edward Jessup and Walter Bishop. This environment of cutting edge technology and forward-thinking philosophy has been clashing with Boston’s old-world aesthetic since before “steampunk” was even a glimmer in Michael Moorcock’s eye. Pretty much anywhere you look, you might see something just one step shy of a science fiction story in its own right.
Of course, all of these factors would mean precisely bunk without active observers. Fortunately, Boston has also historically been home to an endless parade of thinkers, radicals, and storytellers, who have been more than eager to transform these inspirations into fantastical, sometimes chilling visions. It’s no wonder that Boston is also home to the country’s oldest genre film festival. Now in its 42nd (!) year, the Boston SciFi Film Festival is one of the world’s most renowned showcases of its kind, providing world premieres of features and shorts produced the world over. But the festival has never forgotten its roots, and still dedicates a night of its program to films created in New England (in the interest of both disclosure and braggadocio, I should here note that this year’s SciFi New England program will be promoted by Boston Hassle, and that your humble narrator will be onhand to introduce the night’s offerings).
Cass Marks, whose film Rewind has been selected as part of the fest’s “Locally Whipped” shorts program, described his project on Kickstarter as “A science fiction film made for people already living in the future.” Marks conceived of Rewind while living in Boston’s Chinatown as a student at Emerson. A devotee of Blade Runner, Marks began to realize that his surroundings were every bit as alien and futuristic as anything in Ridley Scott’s heavily production-designed masterpiece. Shot (almost) entirely guerilla style in Chinatown, Rewind is a cyberpunk thriller; though set in the future, the film’s aesthetic is decidedly analog. Most of the props were found as actual garbage, repurposed and recontextualized into the fantastic. “There’s something inspiring and futuristic about the everyday world,” Marks muses. “And anyway, better it wind up here than the landfill.”
Nick Spooner also finds inspiration in the everyday, but of a very different sort. A Harvard graduate, Spooner finds fertile ground in the subgenre of “suburban horror.” Spooner’s first short film, also screening tonight, is directly influenced by his New England upbringing; a native of Providence, Spooner was raised on the spooky mythology of H. P. Lovecraft. The resulting film, The Call of Charlie, finds one of Lovecraft’s elder gods on a contemporary blind date. For Spooner, Charlie serves as a bit of a transitional point: a veteran director of commercials for the past twenty years, Spooner’s next project is slated to be a similarly themed feature film. (A bit of an aside: Lovecraft himself held deep suspicions and fear toward Massachusetts. His fictional cities of Arkham, Innsmouth, and Dunwich are directly inspired by Boston, Newburyport, and Athol, respectively, and Herbert West: Re-Animator is set in Bolton of all places).
While neither currently reside in the region, both Marks and Spooner recognize the influence of their time in New England. Marks, currently based in Atlanta, fondly recalls carrying carts full of props and equipment across town on the T, and credits the hermetic nature of Boston’s various neighborhoods with the inspiration for his film. And despite living in Los Angeles and working all over the world, Spooner is particularly thrilled at having his work screened at the fest. “I saw so many films at the Somerville Theatre,” he reminisces. “Being in the SciFi Fest feels like the Academy Awards to me.”
The Boston SciFi Film Festival, Day 4: SciFi New England
Presented by Boston Hassle!
5:00 – Locally Whipped (shorts program)
7:00 – The Ascendants Anthology
8:45 – The Tomorrow Paradox
Click here for tickets and additional info
