Annual Imagine Science Film Festival Announces Film Lineup
- Details
- Category: Entertainment News
- Published on Monday, 03 October 2022 14:21
- Written by A&E Contributing Editor
New York City's Imagine Science Film Festival announced the lineup of films and events for the hybrid presentation of its 15th edition, taking place October 14-21. Screenings will kick off with the Opening Night presentation of Alejandro Loayza Grisi's Utama.
Spotlight Features including a special presentation of Jean-Luc Godard's classic Alphaville: The Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution, Ali Cherri'sThe Dam (Le Barrage), Jacquelyn Mills' Geographies of Solitude, and Signe Baumane's My Love Affair with Marriage.
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This year continues Imagine Science's unique exploration through cinema of the intersection between science and society. This year's theme is Science New Wave, characterized by its rejection of traditional scientific film conventions and stereotypes in favor of experimentation and personal expression. The festival will include 101 films (29 features and 72 short films) from 40 countries.
Imagine Science will also utilize its art/science networking tool, Habitat, as well as the film festival's own streaming platform, Labocine, as the only film festival which has its very own platform (as opposed to a third-party platform). The innovations allow the film festival to bring together art and science communities to spark true collaboration (Habitat) and encourage audiences to view the festival's programming with an eye toward their greater mission to foster that intersection between art and science, like this year's Science New Wave theme. This year's initiative to engage art/science collaborations and a community of scientists and filmmakers beyond the NYC-based film festival itself has over 3000 multidisciplinary people participating on the ambitious project.
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Imagine Science FF Programming Coordinator Natalia Solórzano, said "This year's Imagine Science Film Festival is by far the most ambitious undertaking, worthy of its 15th year of existence. Films coming from corners of the world will accompany us during these 8 days. Spectators will discover the visit of a supernatural presence in a Cosa Rican sci-fi film, Canadian confessions of grim futures, cinematographic archives of a Mexican grandfather, the journey of a climate activist from Ecuador to Switzerland, and the surreal frog downpour in the Philippines, amongst many other horizons, themes, sensitivities, and perspectives. Over 100 films from distinct voices will join our Science New Wave edition."
ISFF Artistic Director and Founder Alexis Gambis, added, "Imagine Science is now a teenager, and looking back at how far we've come, we have survived hurricanes, pandemics, and recessions. Survival of the fittest. It adapts with each swing, blow, or change in its habitat. Experimentation, research, and community-building are part of this organization's DNA. Imagine Science acts as a mirror to show others the many ways we can create and make scientifically enriched narratives. We are all messengers. This year, we continue to celebrate the Science New Wave. This movement (also hybrid organism) draws inspiration from early science cinema and concepts in biological sciences. Personally, La Nouvelle Vague is on my mind these days. It gave courage to an entire generation to experiment with the rules of storytelling and break away from conventions and rules. Godard forever."
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Alejandro Loayza Grisi's Utama will open the film festival, screening at the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) on Friday, October 14. A winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year, and Bolivia's Oscar selection this year, the film follows an elderly Bolivian couple whose life traditions are threatened by the drought and water shortage resulting from climate change.
As part of this year's Science New Wave, Imagine Science FF will pay tribute to the French New Wave with a special presentation of Godard's classic Alphaville: The Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965). Screening on Sunday, October 16 at Cinema Village, the film focuses on a secret agent who is sent to the distant space city of Alphaville where he must find a missing person and free the city from its tyrannical ruler. Along with Breathless, the film established Godard as an influential auteur who truly shook up the world of cinema.
Among the other Spotlight films, Ali Cherri's The Dam (Le Barrage) is about a bricklayer in Darfur, who secretly works on the erection of a structure made of mud, wood, and plastic that begins to take on an almost organic-looking form, until one day it mysteriously disappears. Soon, the man starts to get the uneasy feeling that someone or something is watching him. In Jacqueline Mills' Geographies of Solitude, the director looks at the population of wild horses and the biodiversity of Sable Island off of Nova Scotia as viewed and studied by conservationist Zoe Lucas since the 1970s. Daily trips around the island to observe the local flora and fauna. have made the former art student and self-taught scientist an esteemed expert of the environment there. Signe Baumane's My Love Affair with Marriage is a semi-autobiographical musical exploration of love, sex, romance, and gender as viewed through the lens of neurochemistry. The film's multiple thematic threads follow a woman from childhood to young adulthood and into middle age, through several marriages and across multiple continents, in search of true love.
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Highlights among the other feature films which demonstrate the nearly boundless and borderless scope and variety of this year's Imagine Science film program include Sara Dosa's critically-acclaimed Fire of Love. The documentary tells the one-of-a-kind romance between two scientists and their singular devotion to their study of volcanoes which ultimately took their lives. It is that rare film that equally matches stunning footage with a stunning story. Ham Tran's Maika: The Girl from Another Galaxy is a delightful Vietnamese children's sci-fi adventure about a young boy who finds solace, a friend and adventure following the loss of his mother with an adorable alien girl who needs his help as much as he needs hers. Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman's Neptune Frost delivers a very different type of sci-fi adventure set in an otherworldly e-waste camp made of recycled computer parts. The cyber musical love story about a subversive hacking collective that attempts a takeover of an authoritarian regime is led by an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner who have found each other through cosmic forces. The Year of the Everlasting Storm features seven interconnected stories chronicling the effect of the pandemic by a world class group of filmmakers including Jafar Panâhi, Malik Vitthal, Anthony Chen, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Andreas Horvath's Zoo Lock Down offers a rare look at the zoo in Salzburg, Austria during the time when the zoo was closed off to visitors as the animals continue to live their lives.
Other highlights include Imagine Science's Symbiosis Competition, which brings together filmmakers and scientists to create a science-inspired short film during the week of the film festival, the Science New Wave Works-in-Progress presentation from the NYU Production Lab, and the Labocine Close-Ups that will offer select titles for streaming throughout the Imagine Science Film Festival.
Passes and tickets, including the Science New Wave pass which gives film and science fans access to both the NYC-based screenings and events as well as the streaming titles on Labocine are on sale now. For more information on purchasing and additional details, please visit: https://www.imaginesciencefilms.org/ny15/tickets.
