1st Ballardian Festival of Home Movies

Simon Sellars, proprietor of the endlessly fascinating Ballardian, has organised a ‘Festival of Home Movies’, inviting mobile phone videos on the ‘Ballardian’ theme, including but not limited to “dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes & the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments”:

In 1984 J.G. Ballard called for a ‘Festival of Home Movies’ and 24 years on we’re happy to oblige: announcing our latest competition, to promote JGB’s forthcoming autobiography, Miracles of Life.
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Closing date for submissions: February 20.
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Selected entries will be hosted on the site and the winner will receive a copy of Miracles of Life along with the forthcoming HarperCollins reissues of Ballard’s Millennium People, The Drought, The Crystal World, The Drowned World and The Unlimited Dream Company.

I’ve been reading Miracles of Life over the last few days, though not in a strictly chronological order (rather, like The Atrocity Exhbition, opening it, finding a paragraph that catches the eye, and continuing in that way). It’s quite poignant, given JGB’s current illness, but somehow very inspiring.