By Philip Raphael / Richmond News

Keith Langergraber’s upcoming, sci-fi themed exhibit at the Richmond Art Gallery includes the scupltures titled You Cannot Go Home Again. The show runs from Feb. 8 to April 6.  Photograph by: Allan Kosmajac

Are you the next George Lucas, or a budding James Cameron?

Well, the Richmond Art Gallery may just stumble across one or two after inviting science fiction film fans to send in their short films to compliment the exhibition of Keith Langergraber’s Theatre of the Exploding Sun, which runs Feb. 8 to April 6.

Langergraber’s exhibition focuses on a three-part film, Time Traveller Trilogy, completed in 2013, and also includes seven sculptures and two suites of drawings.

According to the gallery, the work is situated in sci-fi culture and Langergraber’s film mimics the form of sci-fi fan films with a complicated story that weaves throughout the trilogy, with scenes shot in such varied locales as the Cayman Islands, the Yukon, Great Salt Lake in Utah, Lake Okanagan, Mono Lake in California, and Pavilion Lake near Cache Creek.

Langergraber told the News Pavilion Lake is an intriguing site since NASA is examining it as part of its possible future exploration of Mars. Pavilion could help explain the development of fresh water coral reefs that may have at some time appeared on the red planet.

A long-time science fiction film fan — he remembers Star Wars as the first film that wowed him — Langergraber said he is mainly inspired by landscapes. But that fits in well with his love for the silver screen genre and B.C.’s topography, which has been skillfully manipulated by the film industry to be taken for many other-worldly destinations.

“The industry has carried on the Canadian tradition of looking at landscapes and taking another slant and making it something else,” he said.

And sci-fi fans simply love that, he said, adding there are still some devotees who make pilgrimages to sites across B.C. where the TV series The X-Files was shot.

As for the show’s invitation for sci-fi fan-shot films, Langergraber said it presents an interesting shift as “consumers become producers.”

Along with Cinevolution Media Arts, the gallery is looking for short films, plus spoken word readings for a Sci-Fi Fan Fiction Film Screening and Open Mic event April 4 at the Richmond Cultural Centre. Cinevolution Media Arts Society will be helping judge the entries.

Selected films will be presented on the Richmond Cultural Centre’s screen in the new state-of-the-art Performance Hall.

Selected authors will be given the opportunity to read their stories to a receptive crowd of sci-fi enthusiasts.

Submissions are only being accepted by email. Film/video entries are to include a YouTube link, while fiction entrants are asked to attach their text as a pdf document, as an excerpt of 250-500 words from an original manuscript.

Entries can be sent to [email protected]. Deadline for submissions is Feb. 10.

For more on this story go to:

http://www.richmond-news.com/sci-fi-art-lands-at-richmond-art-gallery-1.800989