The quickest path to insight is not always a straight accounting of the facts. The Imagine Science Film Festival often moves outside the traditional real/unreal categories formed by scientific documentary and science fiction, and this is doubly true in this hybrid 10th year. This is not to minimize the crucial importance of scientific accuracy, but rather to consider that analyzing a complicated reality may require the complex approaches of docufiction. Here, we'll look beyond simple true/false dichotomies and into fantastical data manifestations, obscure invented field studies, rethought histories, and ambiguous but illuminating narratives. Not confined to this program alone, these concepts will reappear throughout the festival.

As a chance sub-theme, this program will also delve into a terrain of scientific study all-too-rarely explored through creative filmmaking: mineralogy and geology. Personified diamonds, the science fictional stratas that produce opals, and geometrically precise crystal structures all appear here as well.

If seeking a succinct introduction to the worlds of scientific thinking that the festival exists to explore, this is a great place to start.

Tickets are $8 in advance, $12 at the door.

Time and location:

Saturday, October 14, 1:00pm
The New School, UL104
63 5th Ave, New York, 10003

Films (Total Runtime: 83 min)

The Shark in the Park (Fabian Pross, Germany, 3 min)
Where Shapes Come From (Semiconductor, United Kingdom, 11 min)
The Tesla World Light (Matthew Rankin, Canada, 8 min)
The Purple Plain (Kim Albright, United Kingdom, 12 min)
Yellow (Ana Pérez López, United States, 4 min)
Diamanteurs (Chloe Mazlo, France, 11 min)
Mr. Sand (Soetkin Verstegen, Denmark/Belgium, 9 min
Silica (Pia Borg, Australia/United Kingdom, 22 min)
Les Fleurs (Hicham Berrada, France, 2 min)