New Documentary To Explore ‘The Origins Of Alien’

 
 
The poster has just been unveiled for the genre documentary Memory: The Origins of Alien, from Alexandre O. Philippe who also brought us 78/52 and Doc of the Dead. Now Philippe is delving into the origins of our favorite sci-fi horror film, beginning with the film that came before, Memory.
Memory was a script that Dan O’Bannon started in 1971, abruptly hitting a wall at page 29. But after the idea gestated for several years, it ultimately took the form of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Alien.
Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentaries — most recently 78/52, about Hitchcock’s Psycho shower scene — have interrogated cinema’s cultural ripples. If Memory were only a comprehensive account of Alien’s origins — ancient myths, comic books, H.P. Lovecraft, sci-fi movies, and parasitic wasps — it would still be fascinating. But how did Alien lodge itself so indelibly into our cultural imagination? Philippe’s real interest lies in the deep resonance of myths and our collective unconscious. The strange symbiotic collaboration between Alien creators O’Bannon, Scott, and H.R. Giger suggests greater synchronicity across history, art, storytelling, synchronicity that gives us the Furies, creatures of Renaissance painting, and even chest-bursting aliens.