UF’s annual Creative B summer film series is running again this July! Check out great, classic science fiction films with the Florida Museum of Natural History and others from around campus and beyond! The films are great fun, and for folks new to UF, this will be a fabulous introduction to the great work of UF’s Science Fiction Working Group, which has many events scheduled for the coming year. Check out more the UF Science Fiction Working Group website for more.
All “Creative B” events are free and open to the public.
UF Creative B Summer Film Series
7/10/2015
“Them! @ FLMNH”
7 PM, Florida Museum of Natural History
The Florida Museum of Natural History will resume its annual “Creative B” summer film series, featuring entertaining science fiction films and roundtable discussions by scholars, scientists, and artists. This summer’s series will kick off on July 10, beginning at 7 PM, with Them!, Gordon Douglas’s 1954 film about giant ants attacking Los Angeles. One of the first nuclear monster films – Ishir? Honda’s Gojira (Godzilla) was released the same year – Them! is the first and best of the “giant insect” films of the 1950s. It features a strong American cast (James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, and James Arness), a famously unnerving soundtrack, and then state-of-the-art practical effects. Widely considered one of the best sf films of the era, Them! continues to influence sf film today.
The screening will be preceded and followed by a roundtable discussion featuring: American sculptor Susan P. Cochran; Ian Breheny, Museum Operations Specialist at the FLMNH, and co-founder of the film series; Terry Harpold, Associate Professor of English, Film & Media Studies at UF; Tim Lawrence, a Jacksonville-based graphic artist and effects designer with a long history of SFX work in television and major motion pictures; and Andrea Lucky, Assistant Scientist, Department of Entomology and Nematology, UF, and founder of “The School of Ants” project, a citizen-scientist driven study of the ants that live in urban areas. Them! is unrated. Some scenes may be too intense for children. All “Creative B” events are free and open to the public. See the Science Fiction Working Group WWW site <sciencefiction.group.ufl.edu> for more information.
7/15/2015
“Wanderers – An Evening of Short Science Fiction Films”
7–8:30 PM
Digital Worlds Institute
Norman Gym, 624 SW 12th Street
The most innovative and perhaps the most influential genres of science fiction film today are not the big-budget Hollywood spectacles playing on the screens of your local Googleplex, but the countless thousands of short films created and distributed on the World Wide Web by small, independent, sometimes one-person, film studios. The capabilities of new, relatively inexpensive desktop animation and film editing software have unleashed the talents of independent sf filmmakers worldwide, and produced original, visually and narratively complex works of arresting beauty and historical significance. The selection of short films we will view were created by teams of filmmakers from nearly a dozen nations. Most were released within the last five years. They are only the edge of an advancing vanguard and represent some of the best work in contemporary sf film.
“Wanderers” is curated and presented by Terry Harpold. All films included in the event are suitable for a general audience. Some films may be too intense for young children. All “Creative B” events are free and open to the public. See the Science Fiction Working Group WWW site <sciencefiction.group.ufl.edu> for more information.
7/24/2015
“One Million Years B.C. @ FLMNH”
7 PM, Florida Museum of Natural History
The Florida Museum of Natural History’s “Creative B” summer film series continues in an sf vein, with Don Chaffey’s 1966 dinosaur and cavegirl epic One Million Years B.C. Chaffey’s film, a joint production of Hammer Film Productions and Seven Arts, is celebrated for its stop-motion dinosaurs by legendary animator Ray Harryhausen, in sequences that are still considered among the best practical effects of this kind. Also prominently featured is Welch’s famous fur-trimmed bikini. A publicity still for the film showing Welch in the outfit became one of the most popular pinup posters of the mid-20th century. The event begins at 7 PM. The screening will be preceded and followed by a roundtable discussion featuring Ian Breheny, Museum Operations Specialist at the FLMNH, and co-founder of the film series; Terry Harpold, Associate Professor of English, Film & Media Studies at UF; and Tim Lawrence, a Jacksonville-based graphic artist and effects designer with a long history of SFX work in television and major motion pictures. One Million Years B.C. is unrated. Some scenes may be too intense for young children. All “Creative B” events are free and open to the public. See the Science Fiction Working Group WWW site <sciencefiction.group.ufl.edu> for more information.