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SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2020

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STUDENT WORKSHOp, PITCHES & WORKS-IN-PROGRESS

ORIGINS

From conception to market. Learn from six case studies.
Science films at various stages of development, production and distribution.

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Science Cinema
in progress

Tracking the developmental process of a scientific film

Join us for our annual pitch session Origins where filmmakers working on science film projects will share their works-in-progress with a panel of funders, distributors, and producers specialized in scientific content. Get the behind the scenes look at what it takes to mold a scientific idea into a film. How and when do we decide on form - documentary, fiction, animation, hybrid and more.

Wendy Ettinger
Chicken & Egg Pictures, Co Founder, Gamechanger Films
John Tintori
Professor of Graduate Film at Tisch & Founder, NYU Production Lab
John Steele
Founder, Nautilus Magazine
Adam D'Arpino
Senior Video Programmer & Producer, AEON Magazine
Wangechi Ngugi
Programming Coordinator, Imagine Science Films & Producer, Monsoons Creative Studio

Below are the six projects that were selected for
ISFF13 Origins 2020

Son of Monarchs<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">Alexis Gambis | <em>Status: Festival Release</em></span></strong>

Son of Monarchs
Alexis Gambis | Status: Festival Release

My feature film SON OF MONARCHS is about to be released at the 2020 Morelia Film Festival. SON OF MONARCHS is a coming-of-age film with touches of magical realism. It straddles two countries - US and Mexico, following the trajectory of the Monarch butterflies. It is the story of a young Mexican scientist living in New York who turns (and transforms into) a Monarch butterfly to cope with childhood traumas and assert his identity in today's world. The film is imbued with political, social and environmental themes and also unites science with spirituality.

Son of Monarchs<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">Alexis Gambis | <em>Status: Festival Release</em></span></strong><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span"><em></em></span></strong>

Son of Monarchs
Alexis Gambis | Status: Festival Release

Alexis Gambis is a French-Venezuelan biologist, filmmaker and a TED 2019 Fellow. He has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, VICE, Nature, Science, Cell, The Village Voice, and WNYC. His films combine documentary and fiction, oftentimes embracing animal perspectives. He has written, directed and produced over a dozen shorts that have played at festivals worldwide. His science/art installations have also been commissioned by galleries and art biennales, including agnès b. - Boutique Galerie, dOCUMENTA (13) and the Nobel Museum. His films and installations explore the intersection between scientific research and culture, celebrating avant-garde and multidisciplinary approaches to science communication. He combines documentary and fiction, with a particular focus on the life of the scientist. His worlds celebrate animal perspectives and explore the relationships between the micro and macro with touches of magical realism.

Son of Monarchs
Alexis Gambis | Status: Festival Release

Why would you benefit from pitching your idea to a panel of distributors and science media experts?
Hybrid science films that are the intersection of fiction and documentary can prove challenging to distribute. I would like to share the project right before its release in festivals and explore new forms of distribution, especially the education market. We're living in unprecedented times and systems are changing in how we get our films to an audience.

Biography of a Bi-national Mountain<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">Nicole Antebi & Victoria Blanco |<em>Status: Development</em></span></strong>

Biography of a Bi-national Mountain
Nicole Antebi & Victoria Blanco |Status: Development

Writer Victoria Blanco and animator/filmmaker Nicole Antebi, are developing an animated film essay about Mt. Cristo Rey, a mountain that sits in the U.S. and Mexico, is an important pilgrimage site for Christians paying homage to the limestone statue signifying religious freedom, and is an archaeological site on which fossilized dinosaur footprints were found. On one side of the mountain are the small adobe homes and motorhome parks of Sunland Park, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. On the other side of the mountain, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is an informal settlement or colonia of cardboard homes. The Anapra neighborhood in Juárez is home to hundreds of migrants from southern Mexico and Central America, many of whom arrived to Ciudad Juárez with the hope of crossing into the U.S. but ended up staying in Juárez as the border became increasingly militarized. The Rio Grande runs beside Mt. Cristo Rey, and during the 1980s and 90s this portion of the border was a crossing point for thousands of people.

Biography of a Bi-national Mountain<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">Nicole Antebi | <em>Status: Development</em></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span"><em></em></span></strong>

Biography of a Bi-national Mountain
Nicole Antebi | Status: Development

Victoria Blanco's debut book of narrative nonfiction, Out of the Sierra, will be published by Coffee House Press. A photo essay based on her field research among the Rarámuri people of Mexico was published in The New York Times' "The Look." An essay published in Catapult Magazine, Why We Cross the Border in El Paso, was anthologized in A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Family, Immigration, and the Meaning of Home. Her essays have also appeared in Literary Hub, Texas Observer, and Bat City Review, among others. Her website is www.victoriaannblanco.com and her Twitter is @V_Blanco1

Nicole Antebi works in non-fiction animation. Recent animated essays include: How I Mapped the Fluid Border Between El Paso and Juárez for CityLab, Light and Magic for Topic Stories, The City I Love is Destroying Itself for Longreads, and a forthcoming animated essay about friendships and international treaties for Texas Monthly. In 2015, Antebi received a Jerome Foundation grant for ongoing work about the border landscapes of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Daily animations and other projects can be seen https://www.instagram.com/ nicoleantebi/ https://nicoleantebi.com/

Biography of a Bi-national Mountain
Nicole Antebi | Status: Development

Why would you benefit from pitching your idea to a panel of distributors and science media experts?
Because we are still in the process of developing this project, I think the opportunity to pitch our idea at this stage could greatly benefit our approach and hopefully shape our thinking about distribution. The project would also benefit greatly from the input of science experts. Especially those working in the field of Geology, Hydrology, and Palentology.

We Are As Gods | The Podcast<br /><strong><span data-redactor-tag="span" style="font-size: 24px;">David Alvarado | <em>Status: Post-Production</em></span></strong><br />

We Are As Gods | The Podcast
David Alvarado | Status: Post-Production

We Are As Gods is an 6 part audio documentary that explores the extraordinary life of radical thinker, environmentalist, and controversial technologist Stewart Brand. Although he has a fascinating past in the early development of self publishing, online social networking, modern environmentalism, and the beginnings of the height ashbury scene in San Francisco, his modern projects are no less interesting: 1) he's building a clock that will last for 10,000 years and 2) he's trying to help resurrect the extinct woolly mammoth in order to fight climate change in a massive bio-geo-engeneering project.

We Are As Gods | The Podcast<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">David Alvarado | <em>Status: Post-Production</em></span></strong>

We Are As Gods | The Podcast
David Alvarado | Status: Post-Production

David Alvarado is a director/cinematographer focusing exclusively on science, health, technology and nature. Structure Films is a New York/ San Francisco production company founded with Jason Sussberg. Together, they directed "The Immortalsts" about the so-called science of eternal youth, "Bill Nye: Science Guy" about a beloved science educator fighting anti-science in America, and a soon to be completed film about counterculture legend and environmental "heretic" Stewart Brand. David's personal interests in this career are aimed at building a better world with artistic, emotional storytelling about science. He also has a personal focus on career sustainability for documentary filmmakers.

Learn more

A Chimps' Stepfamily<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">Halima Ouardiri | <em>Status: Development</em></span></strong>

A Chimps' Stepfamily
Halima Ouardiri | Status: Development

A hybrid film made for and with real chimpanzees. They will be the stars of their own drama created as we go. It is a hybrid fiction and non-fiction, a chimera of the two. They are all from opposite up bringing, - in labs, zoos, or in the wild – and they all have a unique personality. They all have a long and hard life already behind them. I mean some are older than me! Therefore, their behavior is completely different from each other and I will use it in the story being written. Every chimp will become a specific character of the movie with his/her personal arc. I will carefully document their every day life, habits, drama, trauma in a compilation of shots. The work will be strictly non-invasive, observational, and will adhere to the guidelines that parallel those set for the protection of human research subjects.

A Chimps' Stepfamily
Halima Ouardiri | Status: Development

Canadian-Swiss-Moroccan writer / director Halima Ouardiri is a graduate of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Montreal. Her first film, Mokhtar, was acclaimed in more than 100 international festivals has won numerous awards. Clebs, her new documentary-short, won the Crystal Bear and the Special Jury Prize at the Berlinale 2020. It continues its career in international festivals. The Camel Driving School, produced by Indie Prod and Art & Essai, is her first feature film.

A Chimps' Stepfamily
Halima Ouardiri | Status: Development

Why would you benefit from pitching your idea to a panel of distributors and science media experts?
Pitching this idea at a very early stage – even if I have been thinking about the film for a while now – is a good way to receive constructive feedback from film and science professionals at once. It will tremendously help boost the creative process and I'm ready to fully take advantage of this great opportunity.

Look Like<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">Jenna Caravello | <em>Status: Development</em></span></strong>

Look Like
Jenna Caravello | Status: Development

Look Like is an animated film that engages structurally and philosophically with epigenetics—specifically, the idea that trauma can be inherited on a genetic level. Caravello, who inherited a different kind of genetic mutation, attempts to bridge the conceptual gaps between cataclysmic changes in DNA methylation and the feeling of mourning, deleted gene exons and perceived self-identity. In the film, ghostly white hands are a symbolic motif—they are the helpful hands of doctors and the invisible forces of time andlineage. They are also the filmmaker's own motion-captured hands, which interfere unpredictably with CG physics-simulations that represent epigenetic mechanisms. Over time, the likeness of an abstracted person is revealed, whose body has served as the maze-like stage for each preceding event.

Look Like
Jenna Caravello | Status: Development

Jenna Caravello (she/her) is a Los Angeles-based artist working with animation, VR, motion capture, and video game platforms. Her single-channel and interactive works explore the role of narrative in personal, collective, and digital memory. Jenna holds an M.F.A from the California Institute of the Arts in Experimental Animation.Her films have screened at venues and film festivals internationally, including the Melbourne International Animation Festival, the National Taiwan Arts Education Center, the Raindance Film Festival, the GIRAF International Animation Festival, and Slamdance. She is the recipient of a 2018 Princess Grace Award in Film. Jenna is currently an assistant professor in the Design Media Arts department at UCLA.

Path 99<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">Grayson Cooke | <em>Status: Production / Post-Production</em></span></strong>

Path 99
Grayson Cooke | Status: Production / Post-Production

"Path 99" is an art-science project designed for fulldome planetarium projection. Produced by media artist Grayson Cooke and sound artist Dugal McKinnon, this project uses satellite images of clouds to explore the weather and landscape of Path 99, an orbit of the Landsat 8 satellite that passes directly down the centre of Australia. The images used in the project show us the changing fortunes of the country across arid and tropical zones, the coming and going of cloud, storm and rain, periods of drought and of deluge. And, using infrared light to render clouds in a surreal and startling way, the project is also simply about the astounding beauty of clouds. Combining the visual immersion of fulldome planetarium projection with a multi-channel electronic soundtrack, this project is a unique combination art, science and the Earth.

Path 99<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span"><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">Grayson Cooke | <em>Status: Production / Post-Production</em></span></strong><em></em></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span"><em></em></span></strong>

Path 99
Grayson Cooke | Status: Production / Post-Production

Born in New Zealand and based in Australia, Grayson Cooke is an interdisciplinary scholar and media artist, Associate Professor of Media, Deputy Dean and Research Director in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University. Grayson has presented media art and live audio-visual performance works in Australia and internationally, having exhibited and performed in major international festivals such as the Japan Media Arts Festival, the WRO Media Art Biennale, the Imagine Science Film Festival in New York, VIDEOFORMES in France and the Currents New Media festival in Santa Fe. As a scholar he has published widely in academic journals, and he is also an associate editor for the scholarly journal "Transformations." He holds an interdisciplinary PhD from Concordia University in Montreal.

Path 99<br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span"><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span"><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span">Grayson Cooke | <em>Status: Production / Post-Production</em></span></strong></span></strong><em></em></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size: 24px;" data-redactor-tag="span"><em></em></span></strong>

Path 99
Grayson Cooke | Status: Production / Post-Production

Why would you benefit from pitching your idea to a panel of distributors and science media experts?
I would like to road-test the idea behind this project to an international audience. I wish to distribute this project internationally when complete, so gaining feedback from people attached to a respected forum like Imagine Science, would be a great benefit to me.

Do you have a science film project in any stage of production? Would you like to share it with us for next year? Send it to us by filling out this form.

Imagine Science Films & BioBus team up!

High-school students Pitch Their Ideas!

This year, with BioBus, Imagine Science will showcase and elevate student voices.

Any and all ideas welcome! Send us a one minute video (filmed horizontally) or a 2-3 sentence pitch for a visual science-art project you've imagined around the festival theme of MIGRATION to hi@imaginescience.org. Any student who applies will be entered in a raffle for a free pass to the Imagine Science Film Festival! The six students selected for the Workshop will have a chance at a cash prize and a spot in next year's festival line-up.

Animating a biologically accurate plucky carrier pigeon adventure story?
Staging a fiction pandemic-era film where everyone lives indoors but travels in time?
Documenting a natural migratory phenomenon in your neighborhood?
Creating multimedia interactive maps of internet traffic during quarantine? ...We can't wait to read about and see your ideas!