15th Anniversary Highlights
We're a bunch of scientists running a film festival, so let's run some stats... and symbols
8 days / 43 programs / 101 films / 29 features / 72 shorts / 46 countries / 8 World Premieres / 7 International Premieres / 32 US Premieres / 8 East Coast Premieres/ 21 New York Premieres.
If the pandemic wasn't enough, we are dealing with an increasing feeling of helplessness when watching a world in peril (sorry for the pessimism) on our small screens and feeds. Global warming, extinction, inequality, pandemics - have we said enough? We're constantly asked to speak up, disseminate, fight. But at times, it is also soothing to turn inwards and share our personal stories, parsing through how our habitats are intertwined with our identities. These days, environmental crisis has become synonymous with existential crisis, where reality feels far too often like science fiction.
For this year's opening film at the
Museum of the Moving, we present on the big screen Alejandro Loayza Grisi's powerful first feature,
Utama. This journey to the Bolivian highlands explores the connection between the environments that we are embedded in and our struggle for survival. A couple's life herding llamas is threatened by a severe drought, and their grandson tries to convince them to move to the city.
Our Saturday, October 15, at 5pm, we celebrate microbes with the US Premiere of
The Invisible Extinction. Directors and scientists will join us to share their heroic journey on how to save our vanishing microbes before it's too late.
On Sunday (10/16, 9pm) evening, we travel to the past/future to the distant space city of
Alphaville where a US secret agent is on a mission to find a missing person and free the city from its tyrannical rule - our
Godard tribute!
In
Letter from Yene (US Premiere, 10/17, 7pm), filmmaker
Manthia Diawara (in attendance) shares his free thoughts about his new found family in the seaside town of Yene, Senegal. His voice-over shows the fragility in the precious town he calls home when faced with impending changes. Documentary filmmaker Ross Kauffman (Born into Brothels, 2004) chronicles in
Of Medicine and Miracles the monumental task of curing cancer as seen through the harrowing experiences of one young girl, her family, and a doctor on a mission.
Visual artist
Ali Cherri is back after winning with The Digger a few years. Right off the press from the
60th New York Film Festival, he brings to Imagine Science his first feature
The Dam (10/20, 7pm), an esoteric affair that documents a brick worker who in his spare time builds a talking mud monster in northern Sudan.
Don't miss our highly avant-garde short films that are at the heart of what Imagine Science represents. The Short Film programs in competition represent the importance of experimentation not only in science but also in scientific filmmaking. Puppets perform based off what is written by an artificial neural network in
Diteggiatura. Between the microscopic and the macroscopic, the most remote past and the future,
Como Miramos (As We See) investigates the observation practices of scientists. Join us for the last day of the world. In
It's Raining Frogs Outside, Maya is forced to go home to the province of Zambales. There, she confronts her childhood house that terrorizes her as frogs rain outside.
Peter Galison presents a work-in-progress cut of his most personal film yet:
Dream of a Shadow. The film is an experimental back and forth between the innermost personal and the astronomical, where shadows and consolation cross.
Our 72 shorts are split into 10 programs
as well as the
Science New Wave evening (Sat, Oct 15). Along with the film programs, we will provide more information about our conversations and in-person events.
Our initiatives
The
2022 Symbiosis competition, presented by
Science Sandbox, will kick off on the first night and run alongside our festival. Join us on Monday (Oct 18, 7pm) at
CAVEAT to see the works-in-progress and join us virtually or in person (
Wythe Hotel) on Friday, Oct 21 at 7pm for the world premiere of the 6 films created this year by our pairs of scientists and filmmakers.
With the support of
WarnerMedia OneFifty, we're launching the
Science New Wave Development Fund to elevate daring projects and bring scientists and filmmakers together. This official launch date will be on the
Science New Wave Evening at
NYU Production Lab on Saturday, October 16.
This year, we're introducing the new sharing feature on
Habitat to facilitate exchange of ideas and research with our members across the platform and broader community. Create your profile today and plug into the ecosystem of beautiful art/science misfits.