The October Issue (art)ificial is a prelude to and expands into the veins of this year’s Science New Wave Festival XVI presented by Imagine Science Films.
The lens of artificiality surrounds us through the hybrid formations from nature we create and sense, research, and might become consequential results of our actions. From brute-forcing solutions through AI to intervention on land through flower strips or waste, this month’s issue explores our evolving relationship with the artificial and humane technologies that create and destroy us. This month’s issue offers a deep listening to industrial modernity through the (art)ificial gaze.
Don't miss the Science New Wave Festival XVI that runs for 8 days in New York from October 20 to 27 and includes 64 films (see overall selection in our SNW XVI Playlist) from over 30 countries. With the Science New Wave Pass, you will be available to attend the festival both virtually and in-person (NYC).
A filmmaker documents his own subtropical parasitic disease... Twenty years ago, I was in Ecuador documenting a U.S. scientific team's fight against Chagas disease. One of the crew from the C.D.C. had a small camera with the ability to record microscopic image video. Fascinated with its capabilities
Rift is a visual and sonic simultaneous telling of ancient and present-day ecological stories. The film depicts the formation of the Connecticut Rift Valley through geological time by following a modern-day Red maple (Acer rubrum) seedling's experience in this unique terrain. Through sounds of rumbl
Our memories make up the foundation of who we are, but they are constantly changing. Like a living organism with its own personality, memory can be loyal and reliable, sneaky and surprising, or capricious and cruel. Shot primarily in 16mm film, this creature called Memory is made from museum objects
The seemingly extraterrestrial camera eye floats upside down through a palm grove planted in a strictly rectilinear manner. Nature is literally upside down and existing in an artificial order as a business game. Only at the crescendo of the strange, vibrantly smoldering soundtrack by Jung an Tagen d
A young man who is going through depression goes through a psilocybin-assisted therapy revisiting the ups and downs of his own life.
It's 1868, and new factory gal Margaret E. Knight has moved to Boston to give her love of inventing a real shot. However, her city-job is that of "bag folder," a tedious factory position reserved for women workers. Determined to prove her abilities to both men and women alike, Margaret sets out to b
NYC RGB is part of a series of works in which Viktoria Schmid deals with historical color film processes. Using a special technique of color separation through RGB filters, the real temporal dimension can be concentrated on a cinematic triple exposure. The film strip was sent through the camera thre
Algodreams are made by prompting AI systems to imagine the future of life on planet Earth. They dreamt of time machines, memory machines, flamingos that can save the oceans, the AI civilization that destroys humans to protect the planet, and they dreamt of self-driving bicycles that fall in love. Th
Successful scientist hides her breakdowns that manifest as crazy hallucinations in order to maintain her socially perfect image. A charismatic neuroscientist Maria returns home after two months of treatment of anxiety and panic attacks. However, Maria's come back is unexpectedly not without bumps in
A mythical short film that charts the journey of a priestess attempting to cross the threshold between mortal and immortal worlds in search of resources for her ailing world. In this liminal space, she meets a group of deities called Smoke Jumpers, who are custodians of ancestral knowledge who trade
1917, Irene is a brilliant radiographer nurse, barely nineteen years old. She is eager to make herself useful at the front and to use her scientific skills to serve her country. Her encounter with a superstitious stretcher bearer will change her perception of commitment.
Set in the outer space of consciousness, where the surfaces of far-out planetary bodies form the terrain for an exploration of 24/7 capitalism, insomnia, and the disappearance of darkness.
A lone technician's attempt to clone himself using cutting edge technology goes horribly wrong.
A Hemlock forest in Western Massachusetts that is dying due to the Woolly Adelgid beetle infestation tells a larger story about climate collapse and the interconnections between the natural and the built environments.
AI-animated avatars, bots and text-to-speech systems, typically used for corporate training, are spreading to other human-facing scenarios - from primary education and senior care to crowd management and border control. As it becomes possible to generate convincing 'fake persons', who have never exi
Thoughts ripple over the pages of a personal notebook, kept during a stay at different science labs in Zürich. They float from one to another, like a mind map of unfinished ideas on memory, medical imaging, cells, and aging.
Micronauts takes you on a journey into the microcosmos to tell the story of the ancestors of all life on our planet: bacteria. Bacteria shaped the earth's atmosphere 4 billion years ago and kickstarted all other life on our planet, and their invisible hand continues to influence crucial processes wi
Nicolas Autheman is a French author, director and producer born in 1982 in Paris. Author of a dozen documentaries and installations within the framework of museum exhibitions, he founded in 2018 the production company Minimum Moderne with which he develops his own documentary and fictional creation
What does research feel like? How does the place where knowledge is created shape the knowledge itself? And what knowledges remain neglected because we cannot transform them into written words? Academia has become a precarious work environment in which it is difficult to gain a foothold and pursue a
'Red Earth opens up a magic theater of ideas, writ very very large... courageous camerawork mobilizing a zero-gravity matrix of environmental (no-)futures and post-planetary angst... Koszulinski's epic allegory parlays astonishing cinematography, future "testimonials," and resonant tropes from sci-f
Changes are happening in the high Amazon cloud forest, and a snake speaks out.
Holly Márie Parnell's film Cabbage (2023) examines the complexities of bodily autonomy within an ableist paradigm. Parnell focuses on her brother, David, particularly his texts written with the assistance of eye-tracking technology – he comments his "eyes are his voice," which is made v
(16mm > 35mm, 16 minutes, sound, color, Brazil, USA, UK) The great voyages to the "New World" were seen as expanding the frontiers of the visible and displacing those of the invisible, therefore, maps from that time render the real and imaginary. The film follows a voyage of the Brazilian Militar
During the inexplicable state of emergency in Moscow, a lonely young man is trying to find his missing dog and to figure out what is truly going on. Eventually, he finds himself in a parallel world where the dead and the living are inseparable, but the word "death" is strictly prohibited.
As a young and brilliant scientist, Cécile is invited by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Schnidz to close a famous particle physics conference. It is the promise of a great career for her. But in the audience of this historical room, there is Enzo, her crackpot brother. And he is not here to congra
Falsely objective thinking has imposed the idea that certain sexual, gender or family behaviours are "unnatural". Fortunately, this idea is finally being shaken up, thanks to new scientific publications, which demonstrate its absurdity and make previous assertions seem plausible. Nature is far more
An encounter between science, art and fiction threaded through technology, our belief systems and stories. Eric J. Mota shares his experiences as a science fiction writer. He brings us down the road of the past, to feel the present and think about the future of possibilities. Un encuentro entre la c
What is intuition? And how can gut feelings influence science? Known for her extensive research in adolescent brain development, neuroscientist Eveline Crone proposes that intuition is an aspect of the mind worth studying and embracing. In her scientific career, her own gut feelings have often led t
Airborne is a surreal animation that connects the world of flying machines with the kingdom of flora and fauna. Engrossed in the fight, pilot loses his target which leads to tragedy. The plane crashes into the crown of a tree. The tragedy that seems to be the end opens a new stage in history. In the
Field journal entries, both mine and of others, are ground together to explore what is filtered and what remains as families of fauna and flora move from one environment to another.
Faced with precarious access to electricity, one historic village in Lebanon harnesses the power of solar energy in a nation that receives abundant sunlight. Through the lens of an opera singer, a tailor and an environmental activist, we witness how community members seize this opportunity to become
A New York scientist's experiment to revive a hybrid goes horribly right. This film was made as part of the 2023 Symbiosis initiative presented at the Science New Wave Festival XVI (Imagine Science Films) and supported by the Simons Foundation
Three women's experiences of hormonal birth control are weaved into one collective piece, exploring the radical effects that hormones have on the brain and body. At a young age, many women begin to take hormonal birth control. Although their benefits are widely discussed, we rarely hear about the si
To the Earthen Red is an experimental, ontological reflection on the nature and narratives of clay extraction that traces out the relation of landscape, object, and the senses. An epic poem meets pottery meets thermography meets the transformation of matter.
An experimental microscopic exploration of the impact of the artist as proxy for Industry and humanity at large on the structure of widely-used chemical substances. Parsons narrates her rudimentary manipulation of responsive materials that human use to make technology, products, even our coffee. Pha
Female masturbation - essential experience, subject of scientific research, and a multibillion-dollar industry. "Pinky NAcc" explores the absence of faces, voices, and rodents that are at the center of the quest to understand the importance of self-pleasure in our brains, bodies, and beliefs. Direct
Amnion (the innermost membrane enclosing an embryo) is an experimental short film on the essence of waste. Landfills on the fringes of cities function as complex and hidden anthropological archives, revealing everything about our culture, habits, fears and dreams. They brim with outdated fashion, le
Nature is dying out, as an ecological catastrophe is continuing. In a secret military center, somewhere at the Polish seaside, research is being carried out on a technology of transforming recidivists with life sentences into animals - species rejuvenators. A young employee of the center makes an at
How do we influence the world around us? A flow analysis tool ordinarily used in the laboratory offers new interpretations of human interaction and our place in the world. This film was made as part of the 2023 Symbiosis initiative presented at the Science New Wave Festival XVI (Imagine Science Film
An ethereal daydream of a larvae's home - boiled, untangled, and spit through rickety expressions of human ingenuity - to make silk. Featuring Mulberries Organic Silk Farm, Xieng Khouang, Laos Concept, Shot, Edited and Animated by Madison McClintock Original Soundtrack Nic Jenkins
Deep in the boreal forest, a mature pine tree and a seedling begin a conversation. As the years pass, they observe the ever-present wind and the many ways it affects them. A quiet story about the circle of life. Adapted from the Governor General's Award nominated children's book of the same name. Il
This movie shows some of the research that is shaping modern medicine. Research that contributes to a better understanding of our bodies in health and disease and to advance towards a future where human digital twins help us live healthier and longer lives.
Rising sea levels and extreme weather events threaten the long term resilience of New York City's residents and the wellbeing of its waterways. Altitudes is an expository short documentary that observes New Yorkers attempting to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis on their city.
Filmmakers Paul Shemisi and Nizar Saleh travel from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Germany for the screening of their new film. During a layover in Angola, they're stopped at the airport because the airline doesn't trust their documents to be real. While Paul and Nizar think they are being led
Increased by climatic change, drought will force urban plants to adapt. Which ones will survive hydric stress ? An enquiry lead by the very young, Nature TV, reporters.
In a world without food and overgrown with plastic, Zigle Clinic tests a new food re-education Method, which is coveted by many but granted to few. Giulia is one of the patients chosen by the Clinic. Even if she is fearful at first, she gets increasingly involved and joins the group sessions under t
An androgynous scientist lives confined to the ice of Antarctica, taking care of a closed artificial ecosystem for space colonization. Virtual relationships, artificial suns, and nutrients dissolved in the air are the core of a crystallised world pervaded by the emotional temperature of extreme isol