The minds behind the Spasm film festival have made their name on the local scene with two fests’ worth of horror shorts, the highlights of which they’ve released on DVD. Their latest comp puts the spotlight on the science fiction genre; the proudly “100% Québécois” disc features 13 films spanning all varieties of the form, from the space-operatic to the post-apocalyptic.

Some of the stronger material has a good-hearted laugh at the sci-fi world. Mathieu Fontaine’s Terreur au 3918 is a space-travel parody featuring cast members from the Radio-Canada hit Les Invincibles. Tom et ses chums 8: La bataille de Farador, from a Quebec City-based director by the name of Eddie69, is a pisstake on the admittedly easy target of the role-playing community, but full of good spirit and likeable characters. Among the more serious entries, highlights include Éric Bilodeau’s spiritual allegory Passage and Sébastien Elias’s dark, dystopian Les Voleurs d’eau.

The comp includes nine live-action shorts and four animated films, including the quite impressive Les Humains, a collectively authored digital collage scored with the mashed and remixed words of legendary Quebec crank Pierre Falardeau. The filmmakers all make up for in enthusiasm what some of them lack in budget or technical chops, and the best among them may be names to watch out for in, as Rocket Robin Hood would say, the fascinating years to come.

by MALCOLM FRASER