CPH:Dox 2023: Science Programme (Mar 15-26)

Atomic Hope: Inside the Pro-Nuclear Movement

Frankie Fenton

<p>Nuclear power &ndash; yes, please? Thought-provoking insight into the grassroots activist movement convinced that hated nuclear power is the future and the quickest way out of the climate crisis.</p> <p>Gandhi famously said that first they make fun of you, then they fight you, and then they lose. With those words as an inspiration, a group of activists is launching a campaign to convince a sceptical world that nuclear power is the fastest way to get coal out of our energy systems in the face of climate change. With cardboard signs, courage, a love for the climate and thought-provoking facts, they try to convince and convert their many opponents. But over them looms the shadow of fear from the accidents at the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plants and the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But what if those fears are not rational and iPhones, for example, cost more lives in traffic every year than nuclear power ever did? And having already opened Pandora&rsquo;s nuclear box, can we ever close it again?</p>

Cyborg: A Documentary

Carey Born

<p>Artist Neil Harbisson was born colour blind, but an antenna drilled into his skull enables him to hear colours and today he is the world&rsquo;s first officially recognised cyborg. Meet a man who may be the prototype of the human of the future.</p> <p>There are no others like Neil Harbisson out there&nbsp;&ndash; at least not yet. As the world&rsquo;s first officially recognised cyborg, he is a unique creature and on a dedicated mission for the right to design himself. Born colour-blind, artist Harbisson has an antenna implanted in his skull that enables him to hear colour and, along with his collaborators, he tours the world talking about being a cyborg &ndash; in fact, parts of Carey Born&rsquo;s portrait road movie were filmed during CPH:DOX in 2014, where Harbisson was the festival&rsquo;s special guest. Unfortunately, not everyone shares Harbisson&rsquo;s tech-optimism, and he has faced death threats from conservative zealots who see the symbiosis between man and machine as blasphemous. A film from the technological forefront about a cyborg who may be the prototype of the human of the future.</p>

Green City Life

Manon Turina François Marques

<p>How do we build the city of tomorrow? One that combines the benefits of the countryside with the advantages of the urban world?</p> <p>Manon and Fran&ccedil;ois, two young city dwellers, traveled between Mexico, Europe, and the US in search of concrete and revolutionary initiatives at every scale that bring nature back to the heart of cities. Accompanied by associations, business leaders, and city experts, they provide inspiring ideas to propel cities into the 21st Century: from revegetation to urban farming and bio-waste recovery. By making the link between all these solutions, they offer us their vision of what the green city of tomorrow could be, calling on government, private companies, and citizens to take action.</p>

Intruders

David Krøyer

<p>Invasive plant and animal species have changed the Danish landscape. Six nature lovers are on a mission to remove them again, but is it even possible to rewind the human impact on nature, now that we brought them here ourselves?</p> <p>Six figures immersed in the landscape in a dogged battle against invasive plant and animal species, often brought here by humans themselves. A noble but seemingly impossible mission, for every time a bear claw is removed or a raccoon dog is shot, two more are already on the way. But with a time frame that starts in Ancient history and continues long after our own moment in world history, David Kr&oslash;yer&rsquo;s film takes a different look at the stubborn and almost existential project of the six Danish nature lovers. Rather than telling and explaining, Kr&oslash;yer approaches the subject with the same minimalist ethos as his six protagonists. With sparse dialogue behind composer Magnus Plejdrup&rsquo;s original score and an agile camera that senses its surroundings rather than simply letting them illustrate its subject, &lsquo;Intruders&rsquo; is a rare and beautiful bird in the Danish film landscape.</p>

The Longest Goodbye

Ido Mizrahy

<p>Ever wondered what the reality of spending months on a spaceship might be like? Not the romanticized, exciting vision of a space mission, but the fundamentals of day-to-day reality: the isolation, confinement, and lack of privacy and social contact. Sounds similar to our pandemic lives, you might think. But in this case, it&rsquo;s your job, and sadly you can&rsquo;t escape to the woods when you&rsquo;re feeling blue.</p> <p>In his engrossing, heartwarming, and beautifully contemplative documentary, Ido Mizrahy ponders the conflict between our need for connectivity and the urge to explore the unknown. Scientists predict that we will have the ability to send humans to Mars (and to return them safely) within the next decade. Dr. Al Holland, a senior NASA psychologist, studies the effects of prolonged separation of individuals from Earth. <em>The Longest Goodbye </em>offers us an opportunity to witness as Dr. Holland investigates the ways to provide support and coping mechanisms to the red planet-bound explorers in order to prepare them for the actuality of becoming a long-mission astronaut.</p>

Make People Better

Cody Sheehy

<p>Nerve-wracking high-tech thriller about human genetic engineering, ethical twilight zones and the ability to control evolution, spiced up with grand political battles between the US and China. Thought-provoking science fiction from a future we already live in.</p> <p>Chinese researcher JK has genetically engineered two twin fetuses to be resistant to HIV. A huge scientific breakthrough, but not everyone is equally thrilled, and suddenly JK disappears from the face of the Earth. Like a high-tech thriller from a futuristic and urban future that is already a reality, &lsquo;Make People Better&rsquo; digs deeper and deeper into the case of the missing scientist, which turns out to be the tip of the iceberg in a big political game between China and the US. For if technology can already help us control evolution and create stronger and smarter humans, then perhaps it&rsquo;s not just a question of ethics, but of who comes first?</p>

Remains (2023)

Linus Mørk

<p>Join Eske Willerslev on a research tour of the US where 10,000-year-old bones may tell us about the first Americans, but where ethical and personal dilemmas pile up in the Danish professor&rsquo;s encounters with today&rsquo;s indigenous peoples.</p> <p>DNA traces from some 10,000-year-old bones may hold the answers to two of the most debated questions in American history: Who were the first Americans? And how do they relate to today&rsquo;s indigenous people? Danish professor Eske Willerslev has spent more than 10 years travelling around the US to study the genomic data and what it can tell us about the early humans. A journey in which his encounters with indigenous tribes, who are today fighting to have the remains of their ancestors reburied, forces Willerslev to reconsider his own position and possible biases in his interpretation of the ambiguous data. His objective ideals as a scientist are put to the test in the encounter with the Paiute-Shoshone tribe, where the Danish scientist has a terrifying spiritual experience. &lsquo;Remains&rsquo; takes us along for the ride and deep into all the ethical and personal dilemmas involved in researching the history of others.</p>

Silent Extinction

Maja Friis

<p>Silent extinction is a video portrait of the coral species Fungia undergoing a complete transformation as an immediate response to an ongoing heat stress. The video shows the coral&#39;s instantly response to rising water temperature in a way that hasn&#39;t been visually detected an captured in real time before.</p>

Sophia

Crystal Moselle Jon Kasbe

<p>SOPHIA chronicles David&rsquo;s pursuit to create empathetic robots that can help solve some of humanity&rsquo;s most pressing issues. For him, Sophia is more than a machine. She offers deep connection, and a glimpse at what the shared future between AI and humans might look like.</p> <p>As he works tirelessly in his lab, shaping Sophia&rsquo;s lifelike face and building her intelligence, pressures from the outer world are growing. When his mother&rsquo;s health takes a turn for the worse, and investors begin to question his vision, David&rsquo;s unwavering belief in Sophia is all that stands between him and failure. With time running out and resources dwindling, will David and Sophia find their place in the world?</p>

Theater of Thought

Werner Herzog

<p>Werner Herzog sets his sights on yet another mysterious landscape &mdash; the human brain &mdash; for clues as to why a hunk of tissue can produce profound thoughts and feelings while considering the philosophical, ethical, and social implications of fast-advancing neural technology.</p> <p>Werner Herzog turned 80 this year. He&rsquo;s travelled on every continent including Antarctica. In recent films, he&rsquo;s reached back in time to study ancient paintings, stared down into volcanoes, and cast our eyes heavenwards to contemplate meteorites. Now he ventures into the inner landscape of our brains.</p> <p>He teams with scientist Rafael Yuste who, in Herzog&rsquo;s words, &ldquo;is at the forefront of research that will change the world as much as the understanding of DNA has changed it.&rdquo; They go on a road trip to meet an array of people whose cutting-edge research sounds like the stuff of science fiction. There&rsquo;s the tech billionaire funding brain scanners. The scientist inspired by psychedelic trips to build a brain-to-computer interface. And the human rights lawyer who warns that the international community is totally unprepared for the rapid advances in neural technology.</p> <p>Herzog delights in dialogues that probe into philosophy, ethics, and the offbeat. He ponders questions such as: How do all our senses of motion, love, hate, pleasure, pain, and more emerge from the tissue inside our skull? How does music affect human existence? Do fish have souls? How does a tightrope walker conquer fear? How stupid is Siri? Are we living in some sort of theatre of thought, an imaginary world that only exists in our brain?</p> <p>The film is multifaceted, illuminating the technological advances that are helping people overcome brain-related illness, confronting conspiracy theories over implanted chips, and questioning the politics of mind control.</p> <p>Most of us will never set foot on the forbidding terrain Herzog has traversed. But we all have a brain. This film deepens our understanding of what&rsquo;s happening inside it.</p> <p><em>Thom Powers, TIFF</em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

The Youtube Effect

Alex Winter

<p>A deep dive down the internet&rsquo;s ultimate rabbit hole. Alex Winter&rsquo;s rambunctious high-speed essay on technology takes a thorough and thought-provoking look at the many realities we live in at once.</p> <p>The Internet is fundamentally surreal. And if in doubt, just take a look at YouTube, the greatest media platform and magic mirror in the history of the world. In a provocative and wildly entertaining high-speed essay, tech documentarist Alex Winter takes a hard look not just at YouTube, but at how the internet has changed the way we live and think since the video platform launched &ndash; and that was not until 2005. Back then, there were two million video views a day. Today, the site has 2.6 billion daily users. Some of the people who have been involved with YouTube since its inception give their own take on the (r)evolution in Winter&rsquo;s film, which takes an intelligent deep dive down a rabbit hole of K-pop, Justin Bieber, revolutions in the Middle East, radicalisation, cat videos and organised misinformation. It&rsquo;s a wild ride.</p>

The Pavillion (2023)

Aannguaq Reimer-Johansen

<p>An architect&rsquo;s sculptural work intervenes in the Greenlandic nature of which it is itself a product on the country&rsquo;s western coast. A construction that becomes a reflection on the natural conditions from which it springs.</p> <p>High up in the cliffs and facing the sea in Sarfannguit in western Greenland, architect Konstantin Ikonomidis is working on a curved pavillion built of ice blocks the size of bricks, laid out in an ingenious system according to strict mathematical principles. An almost sculptural monument, it is at once a man-made intervention in the frozen and rugged rocky landscapes of the wild, and a product of the very raw material and condition of that same nature: the ice that is now melting. The story of the construction of the Qaammat Pavilion is told by Ikonomidis, who shares his thoughts on its construction, and his hopes for the future of his work and the vast country around it.</p>

The Color of Ice

Anders Graver

<p>Two scientists and a Greenlandic hunter each investigate and discover climate change in their own way on the white and blue ice sheets, but the goal and the hope are the same.</p> <p>Over 60 years ago, an expedition of scientists drilled down through the Greenland ice sheet to measure temperatures at different depths. In &lsquo;The Color of Ice&rsquo;, two American scientists find the same site to conduct the same experiment using a new drilling technique to investigate how much ice has melted and how much the temperature has changed. Because information from Greenland is important because it melts two to three times more than the global average. In the middle of the ice sheet, their paths cross with Greenlandic hunter Olennguaq, who observes and feels the climate changes scientists are drilling for evidence of every day. He can tell by the colour of the ice and the moisture of the snow if his dog sled can run on it, but the changes make it hard to hold on to traditions and culture.</p>

Algorithms of Beauty

Miléna Trivier

<p dir="ltr">A contemplative film about the boundaryies between natural and technological beauty. Can an AI-generated image recreate the beauty of a flower?</p> <p dir="ltr">In 1772, artist Mary Delany imitated flowers through decoupage. By pasting together hundreds of paper cuttings, she managed to depict flowers with exquisite botanical precision. Centuries later, a programmer is working to invent an algorithm that can also replicate the patterns and radiance of fauna. With the help of an artificial intelligence, the beauty of plants is recreated down to the smallest detail. The technology is groundbreaking, even though reproducing nature is not new. &lsquo;Algorithms of Beauty&rsquo; moves across science and beauty, technology and emotion in its examination of the AI inventions of our time, questioning the limits of our vision. Can we tell the difference between a computer-generated image of a flower and the real thing?</p> <p dir="ltr">Can a picture contain all the beauty of a flower? This is what the narrator is looking for. To try to make it, she takes a revolutionary tool, an Artificial Intelligence. Through the film, she creates a link with Mary Delany. Indeed, the flowers created 300 years ago by the English botanist are strangely in resonance with those created by the algorithms. Between technology and emotions, Algorithms of Beauty questions the limits of our gaze when faced with AI images.</p> <p dir="ltr">&nbsp;</p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>

Uncanny Me

Katharina Pethke

<p>Lale gets cloned virtually! Now that our reality mainly takes place on the screen anyway, she sees a realistic chance to make her digital twin work for her.</p> <p>The real Lale could do something different, could finally take a break from optimizing her self: More and more often she asks herself the question, who or what she would be if she would just stop working so hard.</p> <p>To find out, Lale has her friend Vinzent duplicate her body and mimics in 3D. The result is a digital Lale who laughs, looks, walks and talks like the real Lale. The only difference is that this other Lale doesn&#39;t grow older, works endlessly and is never hungry.</p> <p>In contrast, Lale shows an unembellished, moving video diary of her life her life between high rise and fall - while little by little, the science-fiction-like creation of the second Lale emerges in clearly composed images: from being photogrammetrically measured to the reconstruction of skin pores and hair structure.</p> <p>Gradually, the lines between the physical and the virtual world become blurred. One can no longer trust the eye: who is the real Lale, who is the avatar? And: Does it really bring the long-awaited freedom for Lale in real life?</p>

Exoskeletons

Mariana Castiñeiras

<p>An expedition into the micro world of insects with a passionate beetle collector and a Uruguayan film director who has an ingrained phobia of anything that crawls.</p> <p>An exoskeleton is a kind of external shield that protects creatures like beetles, butterflies, moths, caterpillars, ants and ladybirds. And Uruguayan director Mariana Casti&ntilde;eras has an ingrained phobia of all of them, which she decides to confront once and for all. Together with a passionate beetle collector, she goes on an expedition deep into the forest to capture the micro world of insects with her camera, before the beetle collector catches them in his net. In doing so, Casti&ntilde;eras confronts her own fear of insects in a series of beautiful and colourful close-ups, in which she uses her phobia of the little bug as an opportunity to reflect on life, death and the limits of knowledge.</p>

Sun Under Ground

Alex Gerbaulet Mareike Bernien

<p>Archaeological excavation of the many layers of narratives surrounding uranium, with threads back to the Soviet Union and nuclear weapons programmes.</p> <p>The white, radioactive metal uranium radiates like a sun in the darkness under ground while the planet Uranus travels across the sky. From 1946 to 1990, the Soviet company SAG Wismut operated mining operations in Germany. The company dug for uranium, which was used in the Soviet Union&rsquo;s nuclear weapons programme. But how does the mining of the past haunt the landscape today? And how is it all connected to the spectre of socialism? Examining the earth as if it were a vast archive, the aesthetically accomplished &lsquo;Sun Under Ground&rsquo; takes us on a contemporary speleological journey. A journey where the sedimented narratives surrounding uranium materially, metaphorically and geopolitically are unearthed and re-examined along the way.</p>

The Entangled Forest

Nick Jordan

<p>The Entangled Forest is a film which explores the multifaceted interrelationships between trees and fungi within forest ecologies. Featuring the voice of ecologist Suzanne Simard, and her ground-breaking research into tree and fungi communities, the documentary reflects on the &lsquo;biological neural network&rsquo; of forest ecosystems, and how the reciprocal, shared behaviour of mycelium and trees creates a resilient and healthy community of co-dependent species. Highlighting cooperation, mutual aid and the redistribution of resources between neighbouring species, the film interweaves Simard&rsquo;s observations on the &lsquo;wood wide web&rsquo; with an atmospheric and textural collaborative soundtrack score, recorded with traditional folk instruments, woodwind and analogue synths. The documentary features a diverse range of tree species and fruiting fungi, growing in ancient forests and urban woodland habitats; filmed from the blazing heat of late summer to the frozen depths of winter.</p>