Returning for a sixth exciting year, Other Worlds, one of the premier SciFi Film Festivals in the US, features some of the best and unheralded genre films. Beginning on Thursday December 5 at Austin’s Galaxy Highland 10, the four day event includes over 20 feature films, a slew of shorts, a screenwriting workshop, and the Mary Shelley Award. This year also features the return of Under Worlds, which brings the best of indie to Austin.
Not terribly surprising to anyone who regularly follows my writings, I’ll be there.
Here’s what to expect at Other Worlds 2019.
11:15AM AROUND THE SUN (Texas Premiere)
Oliver Krimpas | UK | 78 min
Writer: Jonathan Kiefer
Cast: Cara Theobold, Gethin Anthony
A film location finder is shown around a repossessed, crumbling French château. Over the course of the afternoon, he slowly falls for both the place and the owner’s flirtatious representative, as she recounts the story of a famous book set there. But is their present-day connection for real, or just a projection of the book’s 17th Century characters? As the scene plays over in different variations, the two almost lovers orbit around each other like a binary star system, forever circling but never quite reaching each other.
11:45AM SciFi Shorts 1: Love in the Time of Robots
12PM The Old Dark House
(World Premiere OF NEW SCORE)
James Whale | USA | 73 min | 1932
Writer: J.B. Priestley (from the novel by) (as J.B. Priestly), Benn W. Levy (screenplay)
Cast: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart
A precursor to the genre of renegade young people getting stranded among older (and far more degenerate) adults in a remote location, THE OLD DARK HOUSE is a “pre-code” film and features some language and sexually suggestive material that would be banned from American screens until the 1960s. Boundaries will be crossed, reality will fail, and mayhem will ensue. The family our kids come across, this time, can also be seen as the grandparents of THE ADAMS FAMILY. THE OLD DARK HOUSE, is FRANKENSTEIN director, James Whale’s follow up horror film that also stars the previously unknown Boris Karloff and is a precursor to their final film together, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Like many films of the day, it was released with a “library score,” music not specifically composed for the title. Award-winning composer Jay Woelfel has composed a brand new 52-minute music score, the first ever done for the film.
1:45PM Defender of the Universe conversation with Nicholas Meyer followed by a screening of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Nicholas Meyer | USA | 110 min | 1991
Writer: Leonard Nimoy and Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal (story), Nicholas Meyer & Denny Martin Flinn (script), Gene Roddenberry (creator)
Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Jame Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei
2:15PM The Ascent
Tom Paton | UK | 100 min
Writer: Tom Paton
Cast: Rachel Warren, Simon Meacock, Bentley Kalu
Special ops squad “Hell’s Bastards” are sent to infiltrate a civil war to retrieve intel. The unit soon find themselves trapped on a never-ending stairwell forced to climb or die. To survive, they must revisit their past sins if they ever want to get off.
2:15PM SciFi Shorts 2: Crossing Over to the Future
4:30PM Nicholas Meyer signing The Adventure of The Peculiar Protocols
In Collaboration with Book People and Open to the Public
With the international bestseller The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Nicholas Meyer brought to light a previously unpublished case of Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Dr. John H. Watson. Now Meyer returns with a shocking discovery—an unknown case drawn from a recently unearthed Watson journal. After his Defender of the Universe screening on Sunday, Meyer will sign copies of his new book, which we will have on sale courtesy of Book People. Grab your own copy of the book The Wall Street journal calls “A gem … delightful reading for everyone.”
5PM Alien Addiction
Shae Sterling | New Zealand | 96 min
Writer: Shae Sterling, Melanie Price and Ricky Silvester
Cast: Jimi Jackson, Thomas Sainsbury, Harry Summerfield, Jojo Waaka, Ayham Ghalayini
Riko lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere (well, Waikato, New Zealand). Life is pretty normal, that is until two aliens crash-land near his house. Fortunately for Riko, the aliens like to get high and chill as much as he does and they develop an intergalactic friendship of epic proportions, as well as a strange relationship to human feces. However, unknown to the happy go-lucky visitors, alientologist Peter Mackintosh is hot on their trail and plans to capture them and reveal them to the world.
5:05PM After We Leave (North American Premiere)
Aleem Hossain | USA | 82 min
Writer: Aleem Hossain
Cast: Brian Silverman, Clay Wilcox, Anita Leman Torres, Anslem Richardson
Jack returns to a bleak Los Angeles after abandoning his wife six years ago. There’s only one way to escape this high crime, dystopian world – getting a visa to an off-world colony, but it’s a couples’ visa and Jack needs his wife to use it. Jack dives back into the world of crime that he left behind in search of his wife and a way off the planet. Is Jack back because he wants to make things right or because he needs his wife to use this “lottery ticket” to a better life?
5:10PM Long Shorts: Lingering Visions
7:40PM A Good Woman Is Hard To Find (Texas Premiere)
Abner Pastoll | UK/Belgium/Ireland | 113 min
Writer: Ronan Blaney
Cast: Sarah Bolger, Edward Hogg, Andrew Simpson
Recently widowed mother of two, Sarah, is desperate to know who murdered her husband in front of her young son, rendering him mute. Coerced into helping a low-life drug dealer stash narcotics stolen from the local Mr. Big, she’s forced into taking drastic action to protect her children, evolving from downtrodden submissive to take-charge vigilante.
7:40PM The Final Land
Marcel Barion | Germany | 113 min
Writer: Marcel Barion
Cast: Milan Pešl, Torben Föllmer
A runaway convict and his pursuer escape a prison planet in an old spaceship in search of a new home. As they search for a place to go, their separate paths to this moment become a point ofconflict, as well as the strange history of this derelict ship that they now drive. Then a strange signal gives them hope of a new future. In the grand tradition of 2001 and SOLARIS, THE FINAL LAND plays off the mystery of vastness of space and our still miniscule understanding of our place inside it.
7:45PM The Honeymoon Phase (Texas Premiere)
Phillip G. Carroll Jr. | USA | 88 min
Writer: Phillip G. Carroll Jr
Cast: Chloe Carroll, Jim Schubin, François Chau, Tara Westwood
Struggling young couple Tom and Eve lie about being married so they can enter “The Millennium Project.” Paying $50,000, this 30-day scientific study analyzes couples’ relationships while they reside in futuristic smart homes secluded in the woods. Run by a mysterious researcher and his associate, the experiment finds Eve descending into violent madness, questioning her lover’s trust and whether he is the man she thinks he is.
THE HONEYMOON PHASE caps off the 2019 Other Worlds Program with a love story covered in tension and drama. On top of the thrilling relationship ride, the film will leave the audience with plenty to contemplate and discuss until Other Worlds 2020 begins.