Daniel Abella is eager to explain the Valis Experience. It was early 1974 and the science fiction author Philip K Dick was recovering from a tooth extraction. While in agony he answered the doorbell and a delivery person bringing medication was wearing a fish necklace that reflected the sun, shooting a pink beam into his eyes. Dick felt he was transported to ancient Rome, and the fabric of time-space opened, allowing him to recognize that our perceived universe was a simulation. He spent the rest of his career trying to recapture this instance of clarity.

Abella is the founder of the Philip K Dick science fiction film festival, which celebrates the writer and serves as a wonderful reminder that psychedelic free-thinkers, freaks and weirdos still walk among us, and are willing to come out and roll the dice on unknown movies on a cold January night. He studied physics and works as a recruiter in the tech field in addition to his own film projects, and says his festival tries to remain in the spirit of Dick’s cerebral side of science fiction.

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“It’s our imperative against Hollywood’s homogeny,” he tells me in the lobby of the Village East Cinema, where the festival has a four-day ownership of the theater’s basement screening facilities. In the main auditorium, a gorgeous, converted old Yiddish theater, popcorn munchers watching The Hateful Eight in 70mm were unaware of the experimentation happening below.

A block of short films called Welcome To The Zone kicks things off with topics as freaky as mind control, cloning, alien abduction, the Turing Test and malevolent, sentient bathroom sensors. The quality of film-making varies from professional effects in gorgeous widescreen to YouTube-sufficient. Some of the film-makers who spoke after said their work was part of a larger pitch for a television series or feature film. Many had Kickstarter donors in the thank you credits. One 15-minute film, Thoranna Sigurdardottir’s Zelos, a very Dick-ian tale about mail-order clones to help around the house, has no business showing exclusively at small festivals. It is a remarkable and sly look at the intersection of technology and privacy, and if Sigurdardottir doesn’t soon find herself producing longform work there really is a grand conspiracy out there.

The house was packed, and while many were there to support friends that had some connection to one of the shorts, the percentage was far lower than I expected, based on my previous visits to DIY film festivals. “I’m here ’cause he invited me,” one college-aged kid said, pointing at a friend. “And I’m here ’cause I read something on Twitter.” (The Village East Cinema is just around the corner from New York University and its large, influential film school.) Another young person was there because he had donated on Indiegogo for a film that showed last year, and remained on the mailing list.

Commenting on the first block of shorts, one attendee was beside himself with enthusiasm how one entry showed that “mathematics is the fundamental element of our experienced reality”. Another chuckled: “Agencies and Big Pharma are holding technology back – nobody has to die any more.”

While short films are frequently the better option for microbudget projects on a “what if?” subject, there were some gems in the feature programs, too. El Incidente (The Incident) is a Mexican film that’s been kicking around the festival scene since mid-2014, and is exactly the sort of project that tragically falls through the cracks in a competitive marketplace. It concerns two linked groups caught in time loops, running each permutation in a futile attempt at escape, seemingly kept alive by a malign force. It is a heady, far-out picture difficult to explain rationally but, thanks to director Isaac Ezban’s firm grip on the material, makes perfect sense while you are watching it.

George Moïse’s Counter-Clockwise (not to be confused with Philip K Dick’s Counter-Clock World) is very shaggy time travel mix-up with an attempted Coen brothers vibe. It doesn’t quite gel, and there’s not much surprise it won’t make it to general release, working better as an industry calling card for the first-time film-maker. But in an environment of enthusiasts looking to get their minds scrambled, it’s a winner. Other extreme low-budget features I screened didn’t fare this well.

Among the documentaries, the not-quite-sci-fi Sympathy for the Devil is an extraordinary look at the late 60s/early 70s British religious cult known as The Process Church of the Final Judgment. Somewhere between hippie dropouts and devil worshippers, these very turned-on, tuned-in youngsters (including some wealthy children of influence footing the bill) wandered from Mayfair to Mexico to New Orleans to the liner notes of Funkadelic records to a loose connection to the Manson killings. It’s a fascinating portrait with some wonderful firsthand storytelling. An appearance from some surviving members was planned for the screening.

The brand has already gone global. While this fourth year was the first time at the sizable and well-situated Village East, there have been two trips to Lille, France and one to Łódź, Poland. “We want to hit Germany and California, and maybe Japan too.” Wherever there’s an enthusiasm for strange cinema and a persistence to sift through pablum to find platinum, an audience will be waiting.



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