Issue

Invisible Light

September 2016

LIGHT is the overarching theme of the 9th Imagine Science Film Festival this month, but its significance extends far beyond any one festival or month of programming, since it lies at the heart of both film-making and scientific observation. But the meanings of light multiply far beyond even these. These films deal with visual reception by eyes and cameras, with the blinding flashes of nuclear tests and weapons, with the life-giving process of photosynthesis and the destructive effects of too much light in coral bleaching. It can equally serve as metaphor for religion or wisdom. And of course light suffuses the history of science, here informing both real and imagined breakthroughs. It is, of course, no coincidence that sudden understanding may be described as "illumination".

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Emergency Calls

FILM Finland 2013
Hannes Vartiainen Pekka Veikkolainen

Being human is a fragile and fleeting opportunity to experience life and the universe around us. In the face of overwhelming darkness all we can do is to rely on and find solace in one another. This film is based on authentic emergency calls and radio traffic.

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Les Outils (Tools)

FILM Canada 2009
Simon Laganiere

Seeing his faithful friend quietly losing the battle against the disease, Jean- Pierre doesn't let things go. Knowing that his friend is a true believer of the Catholic religion, he decides to invent an appearance of the Virgin Mary.

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An All-Encompassing Light

FILM Japan 2014
Chloe White

A 20 minute documentary which details the experience of Lee, now in his 80s, when the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The film is told through Lee's eyes as he remembers where he was, and how it affected him afterwards. The film uses archive footage against modern day shots of Hiroshima to

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Flowering Plants - The Right Timing

FILM Germany 2014
Anna Massih

Crops are the basis of our diet. Good harvests are therefore crucial to the survival of us all. In order for a rich harvest to grow, plants must flower at the right time. But how does a plant know when it should bloom? Only those who understand these mechanisms in plants can get involved in the deve

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Cultures

FILM France 2011
Lia Giraud

Outside of the Petri Dish, the "algae-graphy" acquire its own life et becomes an ideal environments for manifestations of the living (contanimation, degradation). Ephemeral cultures with no sense of control, grabbing the image of an critical and uncertain era, the algae-graphies retrace the impossib

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Beyond Expression Bright

FILM USA 2012
Erin Espelie

Our imagination is equally confounded, said the 18th-century Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet (best known for his work on visual hallucinations), by the infinitely great as by the infinitely small. Confounding, too, can be the instruments and empirical mechanisms we have to gauge the immensity, parti

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Coral Bleaching

FILM USA 2015
Fabian de Kok-Mercado

Corals get their energy in part from microscopic symbiotic algae that live inside their cells. These algae, called zooxanthellae, produce sugar and other nutrients through photosynthesis. When ocean temperatures rise beyond a certain threshold, the symbiont's photosynthetic machinery may be damaged

In Waking Hours

FILM Belgium 2015
Sarah Vanagt Katrien Vanagt

With the publication of the Ophthalmographia in 1632, the Amsterdam physician Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius sheds new light on the age-old question of how seeing works. His answer is an invitation to experiment: Enter with me into a darkened room and prepare the eye of a freshly slaughtered cow. He e

(in)visible (2009)

FILM Austria 2009
Sonja Baeumel

A vision of the four layers of the (in)visible membrane: already existing skin bacteria, a communication layer, a slime mould and plants, and how theoretically this clothing could transmute into different forms, colours and functions related to environmental changes.

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Microscopic Leaps

FILM UK 2014
Markos Kay

Conceptual visualisations based on Eric Betzig's Nobel-winning work for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy. This tomographic technique uses light-sheets to provide a highly detailed, three-dimensional, animated view of the microscopic world revealing a groundbreaking picture o