Ballardian

I received an email from Thomas, the French filmmaker making a film about Ballard (which I posted about earlier)…he’s filled me in on the details…

He writes: “We’re producing the movie “Shepperton’s Oracle” with a team of French web designers (www.panoplie.org). The project is first an interactive website with a chat bot around the universe of J.G Ballard for the French TV website Arte.tv (it’s like Channel Four in England). The website will be online by the end of 2006.

With the website we’re producing a documentary also titled “Shepperton’s Oracle”. The movie is like a biographical journey into the life and works of J.G Ballard in the 20th Century. We use movie materials from the public domain, shoots of Shepperton, and we have interviews with Sheppertonians. We’re using an interview with J.G Ballard that I’ve done for a French magazine as the oracle’s voice-over. The end of the movie will be fictional and will be shot in Dubaï.

With a website and a movie we would like to propose two different but complementary visions of the work of J.G Ballard.

Two years ago I realised for French TV another documentary about a writer that you know: Philip K.Dick (”Adickted: PKD from Blade Runner to Minority Report”). Making a movie about JG Ballard is something pretty logical for me. I have also in production this year another movie — about Space Tourism…”

I’m looking forward to the “chat bot”…it’s also good to see people delving into the psychogeography of Shepperton (if indeed there is such a thing). Thomas has expressed interest in doing something on this site when the film is completed.