10-18 November 2021

PRATICAL INFORMATIONS

FANCINE DEDICATES ITS 31st EDITION TO SCIENCE IN A POST PANDEMIC HOMAGE

‘Shrödinger’s Cat’ will be the common thread for the event, which will take place from the 10th to the 18th of November in several locations

The Málaga Fantastic Film Festival has begun preparations for it 31st edicion, with the release of this year’s poster and the theme that will be the backbone of the event’s content, which will take place from the 10th to the 18th of November in different locations of the city. For its next birthday, Fancine has chosen a theme which will not only be the common denominator of the program and its calendar of activities, but will also underline its commitment to current events: science.

In this way, the team behind Fancine, that brings a seleccion of the best genre films of the year, pays homage to science as a key element during the public health crisis that stemmed from Covid-19, an essencial contribution via the scientific advances that are making way to the end of the pandemic.

It also implies a satirical double meaning that plays into the paradox of Shrödinger’s Cat, a mental exercise created by Erwin Schrödinger, an Austrian-Irish physicist in 1935 in order to ilustrate the popular interpretation of quantum mechanics. This theoretical scenario poses a cat trapped in an airtight box next to some poisonous gas that would be released if a radioactive atom were to be decomposed. Fancine is playing into this principle of uncertainty, which implies that the hypothetical cat can be dead and alive at the same time, as it goes into this new edition after a 30th anniversary impacted by restrictions that forced the festival’s organization to restructure their schedule three days before opening in order to comply with the measures set by the Andalucia government in early November.

The restructuring of contents meant having to eliminate every social gathering and reduce the Albéniz screenings to two per day, but it did not prevent the symbolic celebration of the film event, with the appropriate secirity protocols, the only one in Europe organized by a public university, the longest-running consecutive activity run by UMA since its inauguration.

Thus, with this intentional motto, Fancine’s objective will be to present a vision of science within cinematic fiction from a positive and hopeful angle, further from clichés like laboratories and white lab coats that have plagued so many iconic genre films throught history. For this reason, it will trascend the impulse to think only of science fiction tropes like the mad scientist or dystopias with fatal consequences to certain tecnological advances, without avoiding these options entirely, to recognise the bravery and value of scientific descoveries and their contribution to progress.

Like in previous years, the image has been created by the UMA Culture design team, coordinated by Fine Arts teacher Agustín Linares Pedrero, who has designed a poster with 60’s-themed psychodelic influences. Linares was inspired by the works of Gary Grimshaw and Wes Wilson, important references of this artistic trend, to create an identity filled with round edges and diluted shapes of a simple color palate, where black, yellow and white take center stage.

After several editions without it, the maneki-neko, a signature piece of the festival’s identity, is once again the central element of the poster. In this occasion, and tying into the theme of this edition, it resembles a spooky version of Shrödinger’s cat via de life/death duality.

Fancine will be held in its usual locations from the 10th to the 18th of November, with the Albéniz theater as its main stage for screenings, and with other university spaces such as the Contenedor Cultural or the UMA rectorate for the side activities.

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