Add The Bath Film Festival 2012 To Your Diary

Sci-fi is getting its own strand at the west country’s annual festival, reports Sarah Collins

14–25 November 2012, various venues around Bath

Not only is it right on the doorstep of the SFX offices (which makes it pretty cool already) but this year Bath Film Festival has teamed up with the folk at SCI-FI-LONDON to create a new dedicated sci-fi strand. Three films will be shown as part of this, Ghosts With Shit Jobs, Sound Of My Voice and Manborg. The films are about as diverse as they could be, while still being part of the same genre.

Sound Of My Voice is the film debut from director Zal Batmanglij, and is co-written and produced by the promising Brit Marling. Maggie (Marling) wakes up in a bathtub with no clue who she is or how she got there, and is found by Klaus (Richard Wharton) who starts a cult around her, saying that she is from the future. Two investigative journalists manage to infiltrate the cult. The film was shown at last year’s Sundance Festival.

On the other hand, Ghosts With Shit Jobs is a mockumentary, set in the future. America has gone bankrupt and the East is now in control. It follows the lives of four Americans (known by the Chinese as Ghosts) with strange, yet somehow familiar jobs, such as the virtual janitor who walks around blurring out company logos.

Manborg is on completely the other end of sci-fi, with over the top special effects. Cyborg bloke Manborg is fighting Nazi vampires in a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of 1980s straight-to-video sub-Universal Soldier action flicks.

And of course, it’s not just sci-fi at the BFF, the full programme will be announced on 12 October. For more information head to www.bathfilmfestival.org.uk and follow @bathfilm on Twitter and Facebook.

Sarah Collins

Graphic on main page: detail from “8 1/2″ by Matt Needle.