Issue

Resurgence

November 2018

Last month, in parallel with our Survival-themed 11th Imagine Science Film Festival, we explored various challenges, crises, threats, and disasters -- to humans, to the planet, to all that we share the biosphere with. But what comes after the struggle of survival? Rebirth, regrowth, renewal, recovery. Even if in unexpected or antithetical ways ways. New shoots spring from barren ground. Vibrant nature overtakes post-human landscapes. Surprising symbiotic allegiances are formed. And the forces of restoration may come from the unlikeliest sources.

ReBuild

FILM Japan 2012
Takeshi Nagata Kazue Monno

Japan has been hard-hit by dreadful catastrophes in the past years: the earthquake, the tsunami and Fukushima nuclear central disaster. The filmmakers try to bring some harmony and levity in various places of the Country, supported by a copious group of people participating in a workshop, and taking

Metamorphosis of Plants

FILM Poland 2016
Urszula Zajączkowska

I am a botanist. It took me two years to complete this video. Two years of watching and analysing mesmerizing movements and metamorphoses of plants. We can describe them using the language of biology, mathematics, or physics, but I now know there might be another way too...

The Beast

FILM Croatia, Finland 2015
Daina O.Pusić

A hundred year old woman called Nada and her 75-year old daughter Vera have a tense but familiar relationship. The childlike Vera takes care of her frail, mute though at times cruel, mother until one evening a bat flies into Nada's room and starts hibernating underneath her bed. The animal's presenc

Homo Sapiens

FILM France 2016
Nikolaus Geyrhalter

HOMO SAPIENS is a film about the finiteness and fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being. What will remain of our lives after we're gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we c

Kuckuck

FILM Switzerland 2017
Aline Höchli

The skinny, young girl spends her time alone feeding pigeons in the park. But even they fly away from her. Suddenly, company turns up. But the beanpole feels uneasy about the new companionship, so she sets about going to a specialist for parasites.

See Weeds (2017)

FILM Canada 2017
Dawn George

An examination of three weeds - coltsfoot, dandelion, and goldenrod and each weed's direct effects on film stock via hand-processing with eco-processing techniques. The film reveals not only the visual characteristic of each plant but also of filmic qualities that each plant imparts on the film stoc

Becoming (2017)

FILM Netherlands 2017
Jan van IJken

Becoming is a short film about the miraculous genesis of animal life. In great microscopic detail, we see the 'making of' an Alpine Newt in its transparent egg from the first cell division to hatching. A single cell is transformed into a complete, complex living organism with a beating heart and run

Nex

FILM Austria 2016
Philipp Buschauer Michael Lokthaler Marlene Raml

A visually stunning film illuminating the minute battles of nature from the micro to macro scale as a rhinoceros beetle, attacked by a fungus, struggles between life and death. Even the tiniest things can have a huge impact.

Frozen May

FILM Hungary 2016
Péter Lichter

1990, after the fall. A man struggles to survive in the forest, living alone in a small cabin. One day he spots a mysterious child in an abandoned summer camp.

Proxima B

FILM France 2017
Giulia Grossmann

A meditative exploration in a desolate natural environment that appears to emerge from a new world, this film confronts the landscape with music and poetry. We travel through the glaciers and lava fields of a forming world unspoiled by human activity.

Genesis (2016)

FILM Turkey 2016
Onur Senturk

GENESIS is a short film about death and re-birth. Film explores how both concepts are connected with one another and it portrays inevitable transformation in small and large scale. After watching many sci-fi films over the years, I felt a feeling of making small film. Paying homage to masters that i

Ginevra

FILM United States, Netherlands 2017
Tess Martin

Based on Percy Shelley's poem "The Dirge", Ginevra depicts the aftermath of the murder of a young woman. As her distraught mother looks on, she learns that life after death involves a transition she never could have imagined. Director | Tess Martin Producer | Max Rothman Composer & Sound Designer |

Human Development: Day 6 to 14

FILM United States 2016
Gist Croft

Movie demonstrates the uniquely human features of the human blastocyst stage embryo compared to to mouse. Day6 : Blastocyst stage Human blastocysts are used to study lineage specification and self-organization, which show species-specific features (Nature 2016, Deglincerti and Croft et al) relevant

Rhacophorus

FILM Netherlands 2016
Laura Verlinden

A contemplative journey through nature and its various facets, guides by a mysterious being. The voyage puts into question our place in the universe and makes us reflects on the elements that surround us.

Honey, Rain & Dust

FILM United Arab Emirates 2016
Nujoom Alghanem

Aisha, Fatima and Ghareeb are amongst the best known honey specialists in the northern parts of the UAE. Ghareeb is also considered a beekeeper because he established a sanctuary at the top of the mountains, where he can be in control of the surrounding environment and protect his honeybees. Fatima

A Careful Resurrection

FILM USA 2016
Jeannette Louie

Sometimes the everyday is overshadowed by a feeling of disquiet. Tucked into the synaptic forests of our minds are memories that have never been properly encoded. They lurk in the cognitive purgatory of consciousness and oftentimes, appear alongside ordinary recollections. A Careful Resurrection beg

Hunger

FILM Croatia 2015
Petra Zlonoga

Everything that is alive is hungry. A seed is hungry for light, a bird is hungry for flight, man is hungry for the touch of another. The seed of longing grows into what feeds us.

Return to the Sea (2014)

FILM UAE 2014
Alexis Gambis

After so many years in a dormant state, a young man sets off on a long, perilous yet healing journey from the mountain to the sea where he conducts his most ambitious symphony piece ever undertaken. This is the journey through the young man's brain waking up and recovering the ability to detect moti