Issue

La Movida Científica

February 2021

La Movida was a countercultural movement that took place mainly in Madrid during the Spanish transition after post-Franco's death in 1975. Here we explore science films that emerged in this period inspired by this the movement that coincided with economic growth and scientific progress. The issue celebrates the emergence of a Spanish-speaking identities and shakes up conventions in scientific cinema and reinvent the art and science en español.

Tramuntana (2013)

FILM Spain, France 2013
César Pesquera

The film transports us to a Catalonian fishing village (north of Spain) to discuss the wind with its inhabitants and explore the land's complex geology. The film features a blend of ethereal expositional footage and surrealist imagery, the result of which is part documentary, part surrealist manifes

Ciudad Maya

FILM Mexico, France 2016
Andrés Padilla Domene

In the city of Merida, Mexico, a group of young urban Maya operate mysterious technological instruments to carry out a kind of archaeological survey of a ruined site. The film prowls the outer limits of science fiction and documentary to deconstruct the imaginary around Mayan culture and identity to

Einstein-Rosen

FILM Spain 2017
Olga Osorio

Summer of 1982. Teo claims he has found a wormhole. His brother Óscar does not believe him - at least not for now. Short Director Olga Osorio Screenplay Olga Osorio Producer Juan Galiñanes, Olga Osorio Produced by: Miss Movies Music: Sergio Moure de Oteyza Cinematography: Suso Bello (A

Metatrón (2018)

FILM Cuba 2018
Alejandro Alonso Estrella

Confronted with the evidence that the Earth is not eternal, Ernesto is inspired by the Metatron´s shape to design his own alternative universe. Obsessed by how he and his project will be recorded, he has the certainty that only the ideas and not the creator should transcend.

Santa Ana

FILM Spain 2017
César Pesquera

This devilish horror art-doc elucidates the mysterious link between evil and the infamous Santa Ana Winds through a collection of visual allegories and testimonials from denizens of the deserts. The "Red Wind" originates inland and blows through the coastal Southern California. Legend has it that th

Altiplano

FILM Chile / Argentina / Canada 2018
Malena Szlam

Filmed in the Andean Mountains in the traditional lands of the Atacameño, Aymara, and Calchaquí-Diaguita in Northern Chile and Northwest Argentina, ALTIPLANO takes place within a geological universe of ancestral salt flats, volcanic deserts, and coloured lakes. Fusing earth with sky, d

El Proyecto (The Project)

FILM Cuba 2017
Alejandro Alonso Estrella

We are roaming around a futuristic, geometric construction whose structure emerges in a milky white. But a matter eroded by time is what now appears, lit up by torchlight, like the remains of a lost civilisation that these men dressed in yellow suits are collecting, beneath the gaze of a child conce

Homo botanicus

FILM Colombia, France 2018
Guillermo Quintero

Botanist Julio Betancur and his disciple, young Cristian Castro, return to Colombia's tropical forests to explore once again their passion for nature. Through the lens of Director Guillermo Quintero, former student of Julio, we will travel in the middle of a delirious expedition that will lead us to

Exilio (2019)

FILM Cuba 2019
Maria Espinoza Stransky

Exploration between the characters and the filmmaker. A quest into a universal existential problem, how to inhabit the world. Members of a family leave their home and in the middle of the Cuban Sierra Maestra struggle to find a new one. During this process, they inhabit scenes of routine life in the

Os Olhos na mata e o gosto na água (The Eyes in the Woods and the Taste in the Water)

FILM Brazil 2020
Luciana Mazeto Vinícius Lopes

In Brazil, the inhabitants of Teewald, a German colony founded at the end of the 19th century, are still proud of their Germanic roots. Starting with the text of German-Turkish researcher Ilhami Paker, which uses irony to analyse different migratory movements, the film questions the complex process

Sanctuary

FILM United Kingdom 2019
Alvaro Longoria

SANCTUARY is the story of a scientific, political and media campaign dedicated to preserving the last virgin expanse on the planet. The arrival of the 21st century has brought with it a constant barrage of media. Social networks and the Internet have forever changed the way we communicate. Greenpeac

Gloria Victoria

FILM Canada 2012
Theodore Ushev

Recycling elements of surrealism and cubism, this animated short by Theodore Ushev focuses on the relationship between art and war. Propelled by the exalting "invasion" theme from Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony (No. 7) , the film presents imagery of combat fronts and massacres, leading us from Dr

Murmurations (2020)

FILM Spain 2020
Xavi Bou

In winter, starlings join in flocks of thousands of individuals to try to confuse the hawks that attack them, doing a mesmerizing dance. This film it's part of the Ornitographies photographic project. This project focuses on birds in order to capture in a single time frame, the shapes that generates

La muerte del maestro

FILM Ecuador 2018
José María Avilés

Maestro is dead. Devoted to taking care of the garden, he didn't feel the earthquake that shook the coasts of the country. Hidden and protected from the outside world by the garden, the forces unleashed arrive like distant echoes. The days of the maestro, ordered until then by the routine of his wor

Madrid 2120

FILM España 2019
José Luis Quirós Paco Sáez

Madrid 2120. Life in the big city has become a class struggle: up or down, that is now the difference. Nitrogreen, a highly unstable liquid capable of generating instant vegetation, is the most valuable contraband merchandise. In a failed distribution of the liquid a taxi driver is involved in the m

Pajeú

FILM Brazil 2020
Pedro Diógenes

Maristela is being tormented by a constant dream: a creature emerging from the waters of Pajeú Creek. The strangeness and insistence of the nightmare start to disturb the sleep and the daily life of Maristela who, looking for a solution to her problem, starts a research about the creek, its h

Laguna Negra (Black Lagoon)

FILM Peru, France 2020
Felipe Esparza Pérez

To their faithful inhabitants, Peru's mountains are a sacred space full of mystery. Nature is the focus, from juicy greenery to shiny mud, from biting winds to silent mist. In their midst, a healer who recommends not letting unimportant, worthless things distract you. A girl holds a sword in her han

Ínsula

FILM Argentina 2018
María Onis Laura Amdan

A young couple is working on a documentary about the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of a Wichí community in the North of Argentina. She is an anthropology student and her boyfriend studies film. As they edit the footage, troubles arise regarding the conceptual framework and significance of the doc

Las facultades (The Faculties)

FILM Argentina 2017
Eloísa Solaas

Students of different careers prepare to take final exams. Botany, anatomy, sociology, medieval philosophy, criminal law, morphology, theoretical physics and piano. Each one uses their own abilities to cope with the situation of oral exposure, the most common evaluative practice in the National Univ

Oh mariposa ¿qué sueñas cuando agitas tus alas? (Oh butterfly what do you dream of when you flap your wings?)

FILM México 2020
Valeria Díaz

Taxonomists have the delightful task of naming and describing all the species of plants and animals discovered on the planet. Through five experimental sequences we will immerse ourselves in the discovery of the flashes of beauty, narratives and sensations hidden in the work of these biologists, exp