SYDNEY SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL NAMES BEST FILM AWARD IN HONOUR OF THE LATE RON COBB

Nov 15

OCTOBER 24, 2020

The Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival will recognise the life and work of science-fiction icon Ron Cobb by naming their Best Film award after the groundbreaking conceptual artist.

Cobb spent over three decades crafting key conceptual elements of such iconic genre works as John Carpenter’s Dark Star (1974); Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981); Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979); John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian (1982); Nick Castle’s The Last Starfighter (1984); Martha Cooloidge’s Real Genius (1985); Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future (1985); Stewart Gordon’s Robot Jox (1986) and Space Truckers (1996); James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989) and True Lies (1994); George P. Cosmatos’ Leviathan (1989); Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall (1990); Don Bluth and Gary Goldman’s Titan A.E. (2000); the Joss Whedon-created TV series, Firefly (2002); and Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (2006).

The American-born Cobb, who passed away on September 21 at the age of 83, had called Sydney home since 1972, when he moved here with his Australian wife, Robyn Love. While demand for his work would often take him to Los Angeles or the U.K., his family life was centred in the Harbour City, where he and Robyn raised their son, Nicky.

“Not only did the science-fiction sector lose a giant figure with the passing of Mr Cobb, but the city of Sydney lost one of its most cherished adopted sons,” says Festival Director Simon Foster. “It is our hope that, by naming our Best Film award in his honour, his contribution to speculative cinematic storytelling and his attachment to the city he called home for 48 years will always be celebrated.”

Cobb’s remarkable work often went uncredited or unrealised. In 1975, at the request of special effects supervisor Dan O’Bannon, he submitted several designs for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, before the project was abandoned; an uncredited Cobb designed several of the alien patrons of the Mos Eisley cantina in George Lucas’ Star Wars (1977); and, he was a major contributor to the futuristic game-show aesthetic of Paul Michael Glaser’s The Running Man (1987), again uncredited.

Producer Steven Spielberg enlisted Cobb to draft a story and direct the alien visitation film, Night Skies (co-written with John Sayles). While that project never came to fruition, the story structure and key narrative components led to it being reworked and filmed as E.T. The Extra-terrestrial (1982), with Spielberg now helming.

Running November 19-21 at the Actors Centre Australia, the Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival will bestow the Ron Cobb Best Film Award on the feature film that exemplifies the vision, values and ambition for which Mr. Cobb was renowned and respected. The festival will screen ten features (films of 40+ minutes) that are eligible for the Ron Cobb Best Film Award.

They are:

MONSTERS OF MAN (Australia, Dir: Mark Toia; 130mins)
DARKNESS (Italy, Dir: Emanuela Rossi; 98 mins)
FONOTUNE: AN ELECTRIC FAIRYTALE (Germany; Dir: FINT, 74 mins)
ANONYMOUS ANIMALS (France, Dir: Baptiste Rouveure; 64 mins)
STRANGEVILLE (Australia, Dir: Steven Osborne; 90 mins)
HIDE & SNIFF (Japan, Dir: Kousuke Hishinuma; 49 mins)
THE QUEEN OF THE LIZARDS (Spain, Dirs: Juan Gonzalez, Nando Martinez; 63 mins)
SCALES (UAE, Dir: Shahad Ameen; 74 mins)
COMA (Russia, Dir: Nikita Argunov; 111 mins)
TUNE INTO THE FUTURE (Luxembourg, Dir: Eric Schockmel; 74 mins)