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The theme is SURVIVAL.
Crisis. Entropy. Extinction. This year we look at the high stakes for all life on Earth and beyond. Between nuclear proliferation, species loss and dwindling resources, existence itself is not assured. But for every dystopia, a corresponding utopia may be within reach. It may be a struggle, but the record of all life is that of an eon-spanning fight to stay alive. We'll feature tumultuous natural history and startling feats of adaptation. Apoptosis versus immortal cell lines. Half-lives and radical life extension. The deaths of stars and extraordinary paths to SURVIVAL.
The award winners from #ISFF11
have been announced!
See all of our winners here.
FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
Friday Oct 12, 7 PM | 22 Boerum Place

The universe is a vast experimental space whose rules become more cryptic the closer we look. Questions of survival loom large.
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Saturday Oct 13, 1 PM | The New School

New bids for eternity: cryonics, transhumanism, genetic archives. What future existences lie at the edges of our own mortality?
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Saturday Oct 13, 3 PM | The New School

In surveying our physical and mental well-being, we move from the birth of a vaccine in 1885 through our ongoing medical struggles and into more speculative territories.
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Saturday Oct 13, 2 PM | NY Hall of Science

Our annual kids program: New classics taking viewers from prehistoric Earth to outer space and beyond.
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Saturday Oct 13, 7:00 PM | Littlefield

Opening with the loss of the job as a concept and closing with a feverish essay on internet memory, this is an exploration of all consuming tech. Algorithms, automation, futurism, and dystopia. The future already permeates us. (Note: No presale tickets available)
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Sunday Oct 14, 1 PM | The New School

Melting ice caps, ocean acidification, drought, massive dust storms. This was the one program we absolutely had to have this year., even before we'd begun to receive all the essential films that make it up.
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Sunday Oct 14, 3 PM | The New School

This program is a love song to nature, to all that we are losing or have lost to extinction, and to the surprising ties existing between us all.
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Monday Oct 15, 8:30 PM | Bowery Poetry Club

Join six working scientists and six professional filmmakers as they compete to create new, genre bending works in science filmmaking on the theme survival. Hear from all of the competitors, view works in progress, observe film mentor-ship and lend your own voice to the conversation!
Tuesday Oct 16, 7:30 PM | Spectacle Theater

Glitched-out cats, phone sex with aliens, crystal healing, the mysterious universe. Each year, we reserve some of the wildest and most outre takes on scientific filmmaking for Spectacle Theater. Not so incidentally, many become favorites.
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Tuesday Oct 16, 10:00 PM |
Spectacle Theatre

A unique love story unfolding under omnipresent crisis and totalitarian oversight, crossing between collapsing near future and Soviet history.
Wednesday Oct 17, 7 PM | Rubin Museum

A subversive nature film in which we pique our senses to witness the so-called natural world.
Thursday Oct 18, 8:00 PM | Wythe Screening Room

Where will you be when the world ends? Bringing together many of this year's threads of survival, our final short film program examines present and future disaster.
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Friday Oct 19, 4 PM | American Museum of Natural History

From the Mongolian steppes to the diplomatic circles of Tokyo, Asia has seen rapid economic and social transformation in the last century. Narration drawn from the writings of a late-19th-century linguist create a provocative sense of contrast against scenes of contemporary life.
Friday Oct 19, 6:30 PM | Caveat

Close out the Imagine Science Film Festival with us during a multi-part night on the topic of SURVIVAL. The night opens with an audiovisual performance which travels far into a simulated future where formidable storms ravage the Earth. Next, we're premiering the six new symbiosis films. And finally, our awards ceremony!
7 World Premieres, 8 North American Premieres , 9 U.S. Premieres,
9 East Coast Premieres, 12 New York Premieres.

Complete film line-up here.
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Image: Solar Walk, Reka Busci

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