Everyone at Imagine Fantastic Film Festival is mad about genre (right?). For our new interview series Faces of Imagine, our special guests, crew members and volunteers tell us all about the fantastic fiction they love.
This time, it’s Senior Programmer Stanislaw’s turn! He’s responsible for programming features and immersive media works in the VR Exhibition.
Hi Stan! When did you start at Imagine?
‘This is my eighth year at Imagine. I started in 2016.’
What’s your favourite Imagine memory?
‘My favourite memories are related to our shared trips to festival. I really, really love being in Sitges with my fellow programmers, enjoying that fantastic community spirit, meeting genre lovers from all over the world and sharing the love for cinema.’
What’s your Staff Pick for this year?
‘For Imagine 2024 it’s certainly Tulpamancer. I’d advise everyone to catch the opportunity and see it, because we fought really hard to get that piece over here and it’s only shown in a couple of places in the world. We’re probably going to be the last festival it’s going to be shown because it’s a very complicated installation. It’s truly unique. It combines Virtual Reality with Artificial Intelligence, and it creates a very special experience just for you, based on the information you give it. It also summarises what we wanted to say through our Interfaces of Reality theme programme this year.’
Why do you love fantastic fiction?
‘Because it’s the best training for imagination. It’s like a gym for your imagination, it lets you think further, bigger and deeper.’
What’s your favourite genre?
‘I think it has to be fantasy, but this has a lot to do with sentiment towards my childhood. I grew up reading classic fairy tales. After that I got into Lord of the Rings and all the fantasy classics, so that really shaped my imagination. I always wanted to ride a dragon, so I guess this is still the case.’
What’s your favourite scary movie?
‘Batman Returns, because I saw it at the age of six and it made a massive impression on me. I really identified with Penguin, when his parents dropped him in the sewer on Christmas Eve. I guess that was my biggest fear at the time. Another scary movie, that ties into this year’s edition of Imagine because Phil Tippett was here, was Jurassic Park. It was the first film I ever saw in a cinema and I was hiding behind the chair when mother brought me in because I couldn’t stand the look of the T-Rex.’
What’s your favourite fantastic character?
‘My favourite fantastic character is R2-D2. It’s a known theory, of course, but I stand by it very firmly that R2-D2 is actually the hero of the whole Star Wars saga. He’s the big demiurg who sets everything in motion, it’s not Yoda or anyone else that is the wise person. It’s him. With a gentle nudge he’s making that whole universe tick.’
In which fantasy world would you like to live?
‘That one is deep. I would like to explore the fantasy world of The Witcher in person. Most people now know it from the games, but I’m Polish, I grew up in Poland, and the series of books was really important to me as a child. The images I created in my own head related to that world had nothing to do with from the things we see in the games or in the horrible Netflix series. So I guess I’d like to experience that fantasy world in person myself.’
Which fantastic gadget would you like to own, and why?
‘I definitely would like to have a machine that would allow me to pause time. I feel there’s never enough time in the day to do everything I want to do, so having that little thing where I could just pause things for a moment, crawl into a little hole and sleep for a bit, that would be the most incredible invention.’
Would you rather be a super hero or a master villain?
‘In fantastic fiction I would rather be a master villain. I guess it comes from my love for RPG and role playing games, where I always pick a character who’s different from my own personality – or at least I like to think so. It’s the fun of trying out imaginary scenarios that you’d never allow yourself to implement in reality.’
Foto: Jamie Korbee
