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Film Archive

Memory - The Origins of Alien

Out of the Past 2019 / Memory - The Origins of Alien / USA 2019

H. P. Lovecraft, ancient mythology, comics, and the latest findings from the world of parasitology. This documentary on the making of the ground-breaking Alien takes a look at the initial inspirations for the film, the complicated process of its creation, and its enduring influence on the genres of sci-fi and horror.

Memory - The Origins of Alien Memory - The Origins of Alien

Synopsis

Upon its release, Alien presented a radically different take on what a possible encounter with an alien civilization might look like. The movie ditched the antiseptic environment of clean, brightly lit spaceships for dark corridors full of hissing steam, blood, and slime, while replacing utopian visions of intelligent beings with a gory morality tale of a corporate future. But Scott’s synthetic industrial Gothic didn’t just spring out of thin air. Its inspirations were many, from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Francis Bacon to laboratory experiments on parasitic organisms and forgotten genre films of the 1950s and 1960s, excerpts of which are included in the documentary. This intriguing cinematic essay also presents previously unseen materials from the family archives of screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and artist H. R. Giger.

Nikola Paggio

About the film

93 min / Color, DCP

Director Alexandre O. Philippe / Screenplay Alexandre O. Philippe / Dir. of Photography Robert Muratore / Music Jon Hegel / Editor Chad Herschberger / Producer Kerry Deignan Roy / Production Exhibit A Pictures / Coproduction Screen Division, Milkhauss / Sales Indie Sales

About the director

Alexandre O. Philippe

Alexandre O. Philippe (Geneva, Switzerland). Selected filmography: Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water (2004, doc.), The People vs. George Lucas (2010, doc.), Doc of the Dead (2014, doc.), 78/52 (2017, doc.), Memory – The Origins of Alien (2019, doc.)

Contacts

Indie Sales
32, Rue Washington, 75008, Paris
France
Phone: +33 144 830 227
E-mail: [email protected]

Guests

Martin Gondre
Sales Agent

Alexandre O. Philippe
Film Director

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