We're currently living in a time where resistance seems to be part of our everyday life. The act of swimming against the current - not for futile reasons but to spark change and awareness. For our 14th annual festival, we will be exploring the act of resisting from both a micro and macro perspective. How does one withstand opposing forces that sometimes feel overwhelming? How does resistance measure a material's ability to resist the flow of electrons through it? How do organisms resist harmful influences such as disease, toxic agents or infection? How do we all express our resistance, either internally or externally?
Symbiotic Earth explores the life and ideas of Lynn Margulis, a brilliant and radical scientist, whose unconventional theories challenged the male-dominated scientific community and are today fundamentally changing how we look at our selves, evolution, and the environment. As a young scientist in th
Brought to life with lush animation and narrated through an ancient Hawaiian dialect, a tale unfolds of four mysterious stones on Waikiki Beach, their healing powers, and the male and female spirits living within them.
The Siberian permafrost is melting, ancient bones rise up from the ground and wild animals seem to have disappeared. Holgut is a contemporary tale based on historical, mythological and current stories. Two brothers and a scientist venture into the vast Yakutian wilderness on two quests. Roman and Ky
Mount Malabar in West Java, Indonesia, shows us a spectrum of human-nature relationships: the Dutch colonial government saw the mountain as a suitable spot for an antenna for radio transmission; for indigenous communities, the mountain itself is a partner for spiritual communication. In Riar Rizaldi
Constructed during a three-year-long research period that involved visits to more than 20 centers and laboratories dedicated to the advanced research of outer space, The Quintessence considers the scientific study of outer space as a narrative, and analyses the hidden dreams and expectations of thos
In the Galapagos Islands, a group of scientists works to understand the movements of the world's largest fish - the whale shark. Without understanding their breeding and migrations, we cannot hope to protect them. The scientists of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project head north to Darwin Island to unc
Carolina returns to Costa Rica to try to rebuild the relationship with her father. After a few months, her father is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. At that moment, Carolina meets Ifigenia, an archaeologist expert in the stone spheres found in the south of Costa Rica; the country's great enigma. S
180 million years ago, through a chance horizontal gene transfer, ferns acquired a much needed light sensor (neochrome) that allowed them to modify and survive in low light environments. We should all be so lucky.
Natural selection says that only those who adapt will survive. What if humans have become stupid?
Horizon is an intimate story about the sea in the midst of an ecological crisis. In the collective imagination, the open sea and its isolated islands have always been a place of longing, contemplation, escape, even salvation. But, can these places still provide an escape in a time of global warming
Could biological transmissions over vast astronomical distances be the preferred mode of communication between advanced cultures in space? A short experimental documentary regarding the biodynamic interstellar communication experiments of electronics engineer L. George Lawrence.
Facing the impossibility of finding more understandable bills for any citizen, and upon discovering that there were few proposals to deal with the health crisis caused by COVID, I decided to create a fictional character "DORA SENA", Senator of the Colombia's Republic; made by an artificial intellige
Filmmaker, Ali Alvarez, collaborates with one of America's leading astrophysicists, Dr. Rebecca Oppehnheimer, in a tribute to one of the world's leading scientific institutes, Palomar Observatory - creating a reflection on the memories of the universe lost due to the pandemic.
Working in sublime self-isolation during the strange pandemic spring of 2020, avant-garde filmmaker Mike Maryniuk composes a surreal ode to rebirth and reinvention. Juxtaposing archival imagery with handcrafted animation, he conjures up a shimmering utopian dreamscape, a post-COVID world shaped by t
A group of indigenous women risk their lives to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which jeopardizes their land, water and entire way of life. Despite the desecration of their ancient burial and prayer sites, violent confrontations, and limited resources, these women refuse to back
A personal dive into the world's most impersonal substance: plastics. Amid the lockdown, a bereaved mother unfolds a surprising journey within and across oceans to understand the contemporary landscape of single-use synthetics. From the noble intentions behind its invention to scales of havoc it has
The world is about to be swallowed by a black hole. Meteorites fall from the sky, ocean waves take on enormous new heights, and chaos abounds in city streets as people confront their looming demise. The world turns to wealthy entrepreneur, Rob Bilford, whose "Escape Lottery" offers the only chance a
We are backing up the planet, creating 3D models of animals, rainforests, cities and people. We are archiving as if ecological collapse could be staved off through some digital Noah's Ark of beasts and objects. OUR ARK is an essay film on our efforts to create a virtual replica of the real world.
If you were about to die, how would you live? Kiwi David Downs had just months to live when he entered a clinical trial of an innovative cancer treatment called CAR T-cell therapy in Boston. Within weeks, he was in complete remission, and two years later he is deemed cured. Now, he has dedicated him
In July 1969, much of the world celebrated the "giant leap for mankind" that the successful moon landing constituted. In 2020, nothing is quite so straightforward. In Event of Moon Disaster illustrates the possibilities of deepfake technologies by reimagining this seminal event. What if the Apollo 1
Tiny Wonders, a short film directed by Lavado Stubbs and featuring Miraflor Santos, an oceanographer, is about how resistance can mean, not only the potential for ocean life to resist climate change, but the emotional journey we go through to feel empowered to resist those pressures that hold us bac
Through the collective memory of a 250 million year old species which has survived two mass extinctions, structures of exploitation, industrial monoculture, and interspecies relations are reframed through the plantationocene.
Agronomists as revolutionaries who sought political change through scientific work An archival, animated history of three scientists who became sparks to political and social revolution from within and beyond the lab. Amílcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau, Africa), Nikolai Vavilov (Soviet Union), and
Your mode of existence is not superior. It is only another state of being.
Drawing on the wisdom of mitochondrial networks, solar photons, and prehistoric tress, this ode to science asks: how do we resist our most fundamental nature?