Wookies, Klingons, and sentient computer programs, be on alert! This President's Day weekend, there's no better way to get back to the future than to stop by the Somerville Theater in Davis Square.
This weekend marks the annual meeting of the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival, a 24-hour marathon of sci-fi movies, animated shorts, costume contests, and alien mating calls for the superhuman among us.
The festival has been taking place annually since 1976, even before Luke Skywalker became a household name. Thus this year's event marks the 30th anniversary of the marathon.
Every year, an average of 13 feature films are selected to be shown in the festival. This year's line up includes a mix of classic sci-fi and cutting-edge cinema. "Superman" (1978), "The Time Machine" (1960), and "Planet of the Apes" (1968) are all old favorites making a return, and they will be joined by "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" (2004) and "Starship Troopers 2: Heroes of the Federation" (2004).
Festival organizer Garen Daly said that it is often difficult to predict which movies will be a hit with the crowd, and which ones will go the way of the first Death Star.
"Sometimes you've got something that you think is going to be a really big hit and it doesn't work, and sometimes you just throw it in at the last second and it becomes an amazing hit," Daly said. "I usually try to find something a little unique and different, that people haven't seen a lot of before."
Also intermixed are a series of animated shorts, including "Duck Dodgers" (2003), "Mr. Magoo"(1958), and "The Animatrix" (2003).
The festival itself is much like a gigantic sleepover party. The 24-hour marathon runs from noon on Saturday to noon on Sunday, and Daly estimates that 75% to 80% of the attendees will stay all night long.
Some take to the aisles in sleeping bags, some doze in their seats as the showing reaches the wee hours of the morning, and some fight to stay awake all night long for 24 straight hours of science fiction.
"It's the biggest sleepover you could possibly imagine," Daly said. "It's like having friends over, going out and buying a bunch of chips, and just sitting in front of the television with movies all night long."
As the night moves on to the wee hours of the morning, participants can also take part in contests and sponsored events. Marathon staples include a costume contest, a trivia contest, and prizes for the oldest and the youngest attendees, but there are also a few others that play to the audience's extraterrestrial side.
"My favorite contest is the alien mating cry," Daly said. "After about twelve hours, you need something to let people let off a little steam, so the alien mating cry is a contest where the people get their creativity out and try to imagine what two protoplasms on Altair V would do if they were canoodling."
The festival is also being expanded this year to include events other than the 24-hour marathon. For the first time, it will include two separate feature films, both of which were selected by Daly for inclusion in this year's festival.
The program will open Friday evening with a showing of "The Creature from Sunny Side Up Trailer Park" (2004). Directed by Christopher Coppola, the nephew of famed director Francis Ford Coppola and brother of Nicolas Cage, the film tells the story of two brothers who arrive in a small desert town and find themselves tied to a mysterious ancient prophecy.
The showing begins at 7 p.m. on Friday, and will be followed by a question and answer session with the director. Though it is included in the price of the marathon, separate admission is available for non-ticket holders.
The festival will conclude with a screening of two short films created by local independent filmmaker Rex Dean. The first, "The Adventures of Space Baby and Metal Man" (2004), is a locally-produced children's sci-fi film. It will be followed shortly thereafter by the premier of a comedy film noir short, "The Interpretator" (2005).
The Sunday film showing begins at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are available for $10 at the Somerville Theater box office.
According to Daly, invading flying saucers and alien-mating calls aside, what makes the festival really exciting are the people who attend, year after year.
"One of the things that's hard to impart to folks about this event is what a wonderful community this is," Daly said. "There are people who come here who don't see each other except for one day each year and there are all sorts of quirky things that the crowd do. Sometimes you never know if something like that will come out of it.
"And that's really what the fun is, it's really a community coming together and enjoying this particular genre of film. It's kind of special."
