At TEDxVancouver a few months ago, our region’s best working filmmaker, Neill Blomkamp (now an Academy Award-nominated writer, ya heard?) was featured as a headlining speaker.

Now as if this fact wasn’t enough to get me excited (the newspaper I read about it in was unfortunately printed after the conferences registration deadline; of COURSE print is going to survive…), it was his topic and the way he presented it that left me pretty amazed.

The basic premise of his talk? The aliens in District 9 are nothing like how he believes real aliens are/would be. Fair enough, one would go on to expect 13 minutes about Weta and the impracticalities of non-humanoid creatures in a narrative film. This does not happen.

What he does, rather, is take advantage of the medium of a pre-recorded talk (he was out of town during TEDx) to edit together and narrate a captivating, theoretical science-driven vision of our universe, life on other planets, and the future of human civilization in a way that most of us probably haven’t ever thought of.

I know the man has his passions, but his level of research and knowledge on this topic is still surprising. I can’t help but feel that he might be using at least part of this as his next film, another sci-fi piece that he seems incredibly excited about in other interviews and spaces.

If it isn’t part of his next film, it’s still a fascinating quarter-hour to watch. If it is, however, we’re in for a mind-bending treat once his second film is unleashed in cinemas in the next couple of years.