Vernissage: 18.12.2015, 19h00

Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science and futuristic elements such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception and time and space travel, spacecraft, robots or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition.
Science fiction as the projection of the imaginary possible into the future has been a staple of film since its earliest days, when Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon was first filmed in 1902 as Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. Prior to 1950, contributions to the sci-fi genre were few: Metropolis by Fritz Lang (1925), Frankenstein by James Wahle (1931), King Kong by Merian Cooper (1933), followed by a handful of mad-scientist-in-the-lab derivatives of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or space operas like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers & Superman serials.
Splitting the atom to bear its twin products of progressive & destructive power gave the seed of fact that produced the huge outburst of radioactive cinema in the 1950s, coupled with the growing sense that we as man are not all alone in the universe, that there are likely other beings inhabiting planets in solar systems beyond ours. Thus, it follows, that our imagined visitors from other planets either took the form of superior beings challenging us to deal rightly with the power we'd achieved, or simply attacked us, often without warning, cinematic postures that today still provide story fodder for a huge number of big-budget films that are often highly successful.
1950/1960 is described as the 'classic era of science fiction B-movies'. What we got with the genre's birth in the 50s was mainly a bunch of low budget films about monsters created either by man's wayward intellect or as by-product of his ignorance in messing round with elemental forces whose powers are beyond our capacity to grasp. Much of the production was in a low-budget form targeted at a teenage audience, intended for adolescent box-office trade. Many were formulaic, gimmicky, comic-book style films. They drew upon political themes or public concerns of the day, including depersonalization, infiltration or fear of nuclear weapons. Invasion was a common theme, as were various threats to humanity.
Fear is a stuff that drives box-office adrenaline. Either for our heart's escape or to prove to ourselves that what we fear is fairly insignificant beside the fear of being confronted by..... what? some weird, deadly, unknown creature? We like to be shocked or scared. Perhaps it is because an imaginary or created sensation will inoculate us to "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to".

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