Memory – The Origins of Alien

Ridley Scott’s Alien is a pretty cool film as well as being a central part of pop mythology that has not lost any of its impact four decades after its premiere. Yet in Memory – The Origins of Alien, the exceptional documentary filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe is not so much interested in how this classic was made in the sense of a making-of, but rather in the development of its concept per se. Sci-fi films from the 1950s, EC comics, Lovecraft, Kubrick and a painting by Francis Bacon are all only small parts of the mosaic that inspired especially the script writer of Alien Dan O’Bannon to craft this iconic story that in earlier versions actually was entitled Memory. Enlightening!