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PROXIMA

(Film, 116 min., 2007)

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Winner Award to Culture and Arts 2007

(University of Huelva's 3 de Marzo Association)

 

Nominated for Icon Award

to the Best Feature Film

at Icon International Fantasy Film Festival

(Tel Aviv, 2007)

 

Nominated for Ignotus Award

to the 2007 Best Spanish Film

(Spanish Science Fiction Association, AEFCFT) 

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ALSO officially selected at:

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Fantasporto International Film Festival (Porto, 2007)

International Festival of Sci-Fi and Fantastic Film (London, 2007)

 

Planet Ant Film & Video Festival (Detroit, 2008)

 

BARS Festival Internacional de Cine Fantástico (Buenos Aires, 2007)

 

Montevideo Fantástico Film Festival (2007)

 

Muestra Internacional de Cine Independiente (Morelia, 2007)

 

EUROCON European Sci-Fi Convention (Copenhagen, 2007)

 

IV Muestra del Audiovisual Andaluz (Sevilla, 2009)

Written and directed by Carlos Atanes.

Cast: Oriol Aubets, Anthony Blake, Manuel Masera, Abel Folk, Manuel Solàs, Karen Owens, Joan Frank Caransonnet, Arantxa Peña, Hans Richter.

Music by Xavier Tort and Thee Maldoror Kollective.


A renowned SF writer is at a local convention to talk about his work. As he takes the podium he renounces his work as utter fictional rubbish and declares that he has found a portal to another world, orbiting the star Proxima Centauri. "Simply listen to my new book-on-CD and be delivered", he proclaims. Unsurprisingly, this bizarre announcement is not well received by his fans. But Tony, the owner of a specialist DVD and video store is attending the conference, and being an open-minded dreamer buys the disc to try it out. Are the strange visions he starts to experience real? Have a selected group of humans really found a shortcut to Proxima Centauri system? Could there really exist a conspiracy on Earth to aid an invasion by an alien fleet? And is the super-strong armour he's made to wear really "invisible" or is he simply an emperor parading round in new underpants?

 

A visionary movie. A "dickian" science fiction trip to the stars.

Nominated for Ignotus Award to the 2007 Best Spanish Film (Spanish Science Fiction Association, AEFCFT). Nominated for Icon Award to the Best Feature Film at Tel Aviv International Fantasy Film Festival (Israel, 2007).

 

"A film this intelligent is rare, and sadlysuch intelligence is even more rare in modern sci-fi films" (Film Fanaddict). "In the vein of Solaris, K-PAX and The Man Who Fell to Earth, PROXIMA is a refreshing film full of wonder" (London Sci Fi Festival). "In the age of loud and bombastic, it is a tremendous breath of fresh air to find an SF movie that dares to be quirky, intelligent and defiantly its own beast. Perhaps the best Phillip K. Dick movie that has nothing to do with PKD, you might get a hint of what it's like if you think Primer by way of Alejandro Jodorowski, with bursts of Repo Man absurdity, a hint of Tarkovsky's Stalker, and a truckload of cheap sci fi tropes. If a foreign language art film with secret powers, black clad commandos, weird cults, deprogrammers, tons of nerdy SF geek references and, yes, even spaceships, sounds like your thing, then give PROXIMA a try" (M.T.C.).

 

TRIVIA

 

  • In 2016 (ten years after the filming) astronomers from the Queen Mary University of London found clear evidence of a planet orbiting  Proxima Centauri. The planet, a little more massive than the Earth, has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. It coincides both in location and characteristics to the planet featured and visited in this movie.

  • Komarov, the old Russian astronaut, is based on Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov, an Air Soviet Colonel who died inside the capsule Soyuz 1 when it crashed on Earth, due to an error in the parachute opening system.

  • The first and only movie ever made with a sequence filmed in the Corta Atalaya depth (Rio Tinto, Spain), one of the biggest open cast mines in the world (1,200 m. long, 906 m. wide and 325 m. deep).

  • The character of Felix Cadecq (played by 'Manuel Solàs') is a tribute to the real science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, and his lecture at the Sci-Fi Congress is based on the famous lecture K. Dick did in Metz (France), 1977.

  • Alfonso Merelo, who plays the master of ceremonies at the science fiction conference is a science fiction conventions organizer in true life.

  • WARP factor is the unity for Curvature Speed used in the Star Trek's fictional world, where WARP 1 factor equals light speed and 9,975 WARP factor, means 902.519 times light speed. Supposedly, WARP 10 is unattainable, and that's the main argument between the Sci-Fi lovers at the DVD-Video store sequence.

  • Goknur, the Cappadocian, practices the dervishes' turning, characteristic in Mevlevis', or Whirling Turkish Dervishes, who use this physical method in order to get in trance and reach religious ecstasy.

  • Tony's commentary about the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, developed by Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, refers to the known motor VASIMIR, invented by a homonym American astronaut and which was capable of surpassing current spacecrafts speed.

FILM REVIEWS

 

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