Special Report: Imagine Science Film Festival

Science film superstars— and luminous unknowns— from New York to Abu Dhabi

One of the enduring images of this year’s Imagine Science Film Festival was of a girl in a black abeyya lugging a giant white telescope up a hill, escaping her harsh Iranian life to lose herself in the stars, in the film “Sepideh.”

Another enduring image: the long stare of almost amused incomprehension on a young woman’s face when told she indeed had the gene for the horrific disease she always feared she had-- Huntington’s— in “The Lions Mouth Opens."

But the most haunting image of the festival was the look of agony on an infant’s face as he struggled to respond to his mother’s weeping— but couldn’t utter a sound, due to the permanent tracheostomy hole in his throat, which was fitted for the lifelong ventilator she was crying over, in “Our Curse.”

Science lifts the heart; science shatters the heart. These were two of the lasting messages of this October's Seventh Annual New York Imagine Science Film Festival.

There were more.

The scientific/artistic processes

Festival founder, geneticist, and filmmaker Alexis Gambis said Imagine, a series of global festivals, is designed not as a “new age-type celebration, but a thoughtful reflection on both the scientific and artistic process.”

“There is much they share. And there is a lot unexplored between science and film, as film festivals about science can be didactic, message-driven,” he said. “The goal with Imagine Science is to really explore the process, and generate a discussion about what it means to communicate science. How science is integrated into our cultures, our everyday lives.”

The festival now has powerful sponsors— from Nature to Google— and involves both gifted unknowns and science superstars like DNA-discoverer Jim Watson, who was a film judge. But the festival began out of a simple “frustration about how scientists were portrayed, and the lack of a bridge between the young scientific community and the public,” Gambis told Bioscience Technology.

“Also, I have always been a strong advocate for basic research (studying the patterns of wing coloring, development, etc.) without the need for immediate applications. Film is just one way to shed light on the wonders of research in model organisms, for example."

Examples of Imagine films different from those in other festivals, Gambis said, include films “that bring together personal narratives with basic research.”

“We've had films in the past about beetle collectors [and] collectors of elements of the periodic table…Last year ‘“Other Voices’ was a favorite: the enigmatic life of plants and the people who love them,” he said. “I also love films that are meditations on science like last year’s ‘Into Noise’ and ‘Hypochondria in the Heart.’ Films like these reveal how science permeates our everyday lives.”

Year of the woman

This year, he said, was the year of the woman. “Women played a much larger role. Over a third of the films were directed by women. There was a strong presence of women in films, from “Sepideh” to “Focus on Infinity,” and on our opening night panel, [which included] scientist/designer Fernanda Viegas and science photographer Rachel Sussman. In the films, [on the] jury, and among the actors, there was a much stronger representation of women.”

Wendy Ettinger, the Chicken and Egg producer of “Sepideh” and “The Lion’s Mouth Opens"-- which was short-listed for an Oscar--recently joined the board at Imagine Science, Gambis said, “to inspire more women in science and film.”

“We have [also] been collaborating for a year with the Marina Abramovic Institute on Performance & Science projects,” he said.

He also noted “Imagine Science is entirely run by women— including director of operations Nona Griffin— except for myself and our programmer Nate Dorr. It is exciting to have such an amazing team. This has been the biggest and boldest festival to date, with a collaboration in New York with another major science film outlet: the Margaret Mead Film Festival. The goal is to form a larger network, and fit into the larger festival circuit, to encourage more daring collaborations between scientists, filmmakers and artists.”

Imagine Science has reached that goal, with partnerships including the Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Institute and festivals worldwide, such as the Pariscience film festival.

“I consider Imagine Science as a bit of an organism that is slowly evolving, and adapting to its current environments,” Gambis said.

Gambis is now heading to the Imagine Science Berlin Festival. Afterward, he plans the boldest satellite festival yet— the first science film festival in the Middle East in Abu Dhabi. It will “use science as a language/portal to discuss larger societal, political and cultural issues,” he said.

The winners

Beyond the screenings--and a party featuring “beer on Google’s roof with Jim Watson”— the festival offered $22,000 in prizes, Imagine programmer Dorr told Bioscience Technology.

“‘Neural Basis of the Dynamic Unconcious’ was the winner of our 48 Hour Film Competition, which paired filmmakers with scientists and challenged them to make a film about the filmmakers’ work in two days,” he said. “Filmmaker Jonathan Minard received $15,000 in Panavision rentals, and scientist Heather Berlin got the $2,000 prize. The film can be viewed online. It's an inventive science fiction about a botanist exploring communication with her experimental subjects, based on Berlin's own research into consciousness, and real studies in plant cognition and emotion that took place mostly in the ‘70s. That they managed to make something so intriguing and visually memorable in 48 hours is a real testament to the skills and creativity of all involved.”

Then there was "Afronauts,” based on the real Senagalese space program of the 1970s, focused on experiences of a prospective astronaut “and shot nearly without dialogue in expressionist black and white,” said Dorr. “We're delighted to give our [$500] Scientist Award to the film— directed by Frances Bodomo— which, although fictional, depicts the significant scientific aspirations of a part of the world ordinarily passed over by scientific conversation.”

There were many variations on timelapse film (the official theme of the festival was "time"), but, Dorr said, “few can approach the unearthly beauty of the corals in Daniel Stoupin's “Slow Life,” which was also notable for capturing otherwise unseen motions of an organism considered to have a static existence.” That film won the $1,000 Visual Science Award.

“Secrets of the Hummingbird's Tongue,” is “a relatively conventional documentary, was winner of the $1,000 People’s Choice Award for its significant home scientific research,” said Dorr. “Working painstakingly in their backyard, Don and Noriko Carroll captured the best footage ever of the drinking action of the hummingbird's tongue, helping to elucidate a long misunderstood mechanism, and fusing experimental work with photographers’ aesthetics.”

“Sepideh” by director Berit Madsen “is a wonderful film, but features were not in competition,” Dorr said. It did, however, make Sundance. Tomasz Sliwinski’s “Our Curse,” about the above-mentioned baby on a ventilator, won the $2,500 Scientific Merit Award.

Festival founder Gambis’ own recent film, “The Fly Room," is an official selection of the 2014 Woodstock Film Festival.

All told, the festival contained 84 short films, five features, and a program of vintage science films on 16mm. “This is a significant increase from around 65 total films last year,” said Dorr.