Welsh University to host Blade Runner producer for conference celebrating 40 years since the film’s release

One of Blade Runner’s original producers, Ivor Powell will be among the speakers at a conference at Bangor University to discuss the legacy of the film, 40 years after it was released.

Hosted by the Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies at the university, it follows a pre-pandemic conference on 40 years of Alien – a film by the same director, Ridley Scott – in 2019.

Professor Nathan Abrams, who is organising the conference, said that it would be an opportunity to bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to debate Blade Runner’s legacy and consider its position within visual culture.

“40 years since its release, Ridley Scott’s landmark film has left an indelible mark on popular culture,” he said.

“Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? it anticipated with remarkable prescience the world in which we have lived for the past four decades.

“Scott’s breath-taking vision of a futuristic and cosmopolitan metropolis created an aesthetic shock that continues to resonate to this day, not only in cinema but also in literature, art, design, gaming, fashion and even critical theory.”

The highlight will be a discussion in person with one of Blade Runner’s original producers, Ivor Powell. Writer and producer Ivor Powell worked for nearly three years as an assistant for Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey and line produced for Ridley Scott on The Duellists and Alien as well as many other projects since.

There will also be a keynote lecture by Dr. Sherryl Vint (UC Riverside) an acknowledged expert on science fiction in general and Blade Runner in particular.

Both talks will be followed by screenings of Blade Runner and its sequel, Blade Runner 2049, in Pontio Cinema.

The event has been funded by the British Association for American Studies, US Embassy in London and the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.

It will be held on Monday 6 June and Tuesday 7 June at Bangor University, and tickets can be booked here.