Science Cinema at Sheffield DocFest 2021 (June 4-13)

Minamata Mandala

Hara Kazuo

<p>An epic tale of struggle and commitment. Shot over 15 years, Hara Kazuo&rsquo;s film documents the arduous legal and medical battles endured by the residents of Minamata, a city in southern Japan whose name has become synonymous with the infamous neurological disease. Sixty years since industrial wastewater from a chemical factory caused an outbreak of severe mercury poisoning, Minamata patients and their families continue to fight for legal recognition and compensation.</p>

Homenaje a la obra de Philip Henry Gosse (Homage to the work of Philip Henry Gosse)

Pablo Weber

<p>Using images and sounds from his own personal archive, and taking a broad approach to his subject matter &ndash; including insights into artificial intelligence, the philosophical theory of positivism, and even H.P. Lovecraft &ndash; Pablo Martin Weber builds a poetic film essay, which has as its consistent thread a genuine passion for science, and regard for the figure of Philip Henry Gosse.</p>

All Light, Everywhere

Theo Anthony

<p>An exploration of the shared histories of cameras, weapons, policing and justice. As surveillance technologies become a fixture in everyday life, the film interrogates the complexity of an objective point of view, probing the biases inherent in both human perception and the lens.</p> <p><em>Not Available - Sundance Film Festival 2021</em></p>

The Troubled Mind

Margaret Thomson

<p>A dramatised documentary featuring Adrienne Corri, made to recruit women for training as nurses in &lsquo;mental hospitals.&rsquo; It takes a deeply humane and stylistically vivid approach. Some of the treatments shown would be considered unsuitable today.</p>

Two Sons and a River of Blood

Amber Bemak Angelo Madsen

<p>​A queer woman is pregnant. The self-made family unit of two dykes and a trans man imagine a kind of erotic magic that will allow for procreation based solely on desire. Together they enact a public sex ritual to symbolize their hopefulness for multiplicity, acknowledging their cyborg bodies as technological interventions. When the queer woman miscarries her child, the three begin to build their own mythic understanding of where bodies live when they are not inside us. They create a story to trace movement of the non-body, from a hole, to a river, to a room. Images of an imaginary white room, an ikea-esque torture chamber of stillness, haunt them. As a parallel emerges between the pregnant body and the trans body, the techno-sex act becomes the key and a pyramid becomes the portal to access this other world of non-bodied existence.&nbsp;</p>

Kalsubai

Yudhajit Basu

<p><em>Kalsubai</em>&nbsp;is an ethnographic film exploring the legend of Kalsu, a Goddess of India&rsquo;s Mahadeo Koli people, whose story and identity remains highly present within the consciousness of the women of the tribe today. Yudhajit Basu&rsquo;s film plunges us into a reverie that seeks traces of this ancestral myth in the contemporary world.</p> <p>An ethnographic film exploring the legend of a Mahadeo Koli Goddess Kalsu whose story and identity remains impregnated in the consciousness of the women of the tribe even today. The film tells the story of the Goddess while drawing visual contrasts between primordial and contemporary images.</p>

In Posse (Screening)

Charlotte Jarvis

<p>With&nbsp;<em>In Posse</em>, Charlotte Jarvis documents a quest she took to make semen from &lsquo;female&rsquo; cells. The work engages with semen as a revered magical substance, a totem of literal and symbolic potency, and aims to use art and science to disrupt the patriarchy. This has involved growing spermatozoa from her own body, developing a female form of seminal plasma, and resurrecting, reimagining and reenacting the ancient Greek fertility festival of Thesmophoria with new communal rites and rituals devised by participating womxn. This cinematic version of In Posse is shown alongside its installation, a new commission by Sheffield DocFest, in partnership with Site Gallery. Jarvis will join for a Q&amp;A to discuss how the work rewrites our cultural narratives.&nbsp;<em>In Posse</em>&nbsp;was produced in collaboration with Dr. Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes (Leiden University Medical Center), Kapelica Gallery/Kersnikova Institute (Ljubljana), MU Hybrid Art House (Eindhoven) and others.</p>

Letter from your Far-Off Country

Suneil Sanzgiri

<p>In this film shot on 16mm, Sanzgiri traces lines and lineages of ancestral memory, poetry and his history. A search for solidarity in the sounds and colours of a spontaneous movement in Delhi led by Muslim women, an Iqbal Bano song, images of B.R. Ambedkar &ndash; a radical anti-caste Dalit intellectual &ndash; all revolving around a letter addressed to a distant relative. Seeking to reclaim the past from erasure, and provide a journey towards a potential future.</p>

All of your Stars are but Dust on My Shoes

Haig Aivazian

<p><em>All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes</em>&nbsp;tracks the public administration of light and darkness as an essential policing tool. The video moves between cities like New York and Paris, with the artist&#39;s native Beirut setting the central pulse. Creating an associative genealogy that moves from whale oil lamps to gas lanterns to LED bulbs, from blackouts to curfews, the video is comprised of found footage and material from Aivazian&rsquo;s own phone. Layering, splicing, and confronting disparate kinds of sound and image, the artist generates a sensorial meditation on how the fundamentals of human vision&mdash;light hitting the retina&mdash;were mechanized into tools that capture our movements, be it in everyday life or on screen.</p>

Umbilic

Natasha Thembiso Ruwona

<p><em>UMBILIC</em>&nbsp;is an essay film that expands on the current discourse of Hydrofeminism through a mapping of research into water, following the line of a Black Feminist Geographical framework. An excavation into Scotland&rsquo;s Black history, this work began in 2020, which incidentally was the &lsquo;Year of Scottish Coasts and Waters&rsquo;. The work asks: what can we learn from water? Fluidity, impermanence, ease of movement, care, methods of listening, tenderness &ndash; these are some possible answers. We can liquify ourselves, and look to water to guide us, provide answers, or inspire questions.&nbsp;<em>UMBILIC</em>&nbsp;is an offering; it is forever incomplete.</p>

Two Minutes to Midnight

Yael Bartana

<p><span style="font-size:18px">A panel of female experts is confronted with a devastating nuclear threat in a radical performative work that stages real experts in a fictitious setting.</span></p>

Ancient Sunshine

Jason Livingston

<p><em>Ancient Sunshine&nbsp;</em>traces a meandering path through coal extraction and climate activism in the American West, focusing on The Utah Sands Resistance, and setting interviews with its primary organisers against images of the industrialised landscape. Reflecting on anarchist organisation, labor history and cultural myth, the film proposes that we foster solidarity against the violence by which &lsquo;earth&rsquo; becomes &lsquo;resource&rsquo;.</p>

Microcosmos (1996)

Claude Nuridsany Marie Pérennou

<p><em>Microcosmos</em>&nbsp;is a journey to an unknown planet, where fantastic creatures live, obscured in deep forests of moss and grass. Where dewdrops are as large as boulders, and animals walk on water. Here, the Earth is rediscovered on a miniature scale: the unseen world of the insect kingdom. Set entirely in a quiet meadow, over the course of a single day and night,&nbsp;<em>Microcosmos</em>&nbsp;zooms-in on the landscape, until it morphs and transforms into something unfamiliar to the human eye. Filmed over three years, but preceded by 15 years of research, biologists-turned-filmmakers Claude Nuridsany and Marie P&eacute;rennou craft a near-wordless film that allows us, for a moment, to imagine life at the scale of an insect. Journeying deep into this perspective, the film acts as an initiation, inviting us to consider the beauty, complexity, and fragility of our shared planet.</p>

Windjarrameru, The Stealing C*nt$

Karrabing Film Collective

<p><em>Windjarrameru, The Stealing C*nt$&nbsp;</em>blends Indigenous storytelling with modern worries over environmental degradation and substance abuse in a story about a group of young Indigenous men hiding in a chemically contaminated swamp after being falsely accused of stealing some beer, while all around them miners pollute their land.</p>

Symbiotic Earth: How Lynn Margulis Rocked the Boat and Started a Scientific Revolution

John Feldman

<p>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.</p> <p>As a young scientist in the 1960s, Margulis was ridiculed when she first proposed that symbiosis was a key driver of evolution, but she persisted. Instead of the mechanistic view that life evolved through random genetic mutations and competition, she presented a symbiotic narrative in which bacteria joined together to create the complex cells that formed animals, plants and all other organisms &mdash; which together form a multi-dimensional living entity that covers the Earth. Humans are not the pinnacle of life with the right to exploit nature, but part of this complex cognitive system in which each of our actions has repercussions.</p> <p>Filmmaker John Feldman traveled globally to meet Margulis&rsquo; cutting-edge colleagues and continually asked: What happens when the truth changes? Symbiotic Earth examines the worldview that has led to climate change and extreme capitalism and offers a new approach to understanding life that encourages a sustainable and symbiotic lifestyle.</p>

Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 3 Micro Resistances

Marwa Arsanios

<p>Marwa Arsanios&rsquo; trilogy&nbsp;<em>Who Is Afraid of Ideology?&nbsp;</em>weaves an intersectional path through the struggles of women &minus; in places such as Northern Syria and Colombia &minus; to claim the right to the land and to reconnect with nature in an unmediated way.&nbsp;<em>Part 3 Micro Resistancies</em><strong>&nbsp;</strong>takes place in Tolimo, and focuses on the ongoing systemic war waged by transnational corporations against the smallest and the most essential element of life &minus; the seed.&nbsp;<em>(&Ouml;v&uuml;l &Ouml;. Durmusoglu)</em></p>

Who We Were (Wer Wir Waren)

Marc Bauder

<p>What do an astronaut, a deep-sea scientist, an economist, a philosopher, a post-humanist and a Buddhist monk have in common? More than you might think. From their different professional and human perspectives, they try to understand the increasingly complex challenges to our planet due to climate change. And no matter if they are at the top of the world, at the bottom of the sea, inside the human brain, at a G-20 summit or in the heart of the International Space Station, they are all looking for constructive ways to save our planet. But is human dominance on Earth perhaps only a small ripple in the ocean of time? Marc Bauder&rsquo;s magnificent, cinematic vision is inspired by the popular German intellectual Roger Willemsen&rsquo;s posthumous essay &lsquo;Who We Were&rsquo;.</p>

The Great Silence

Jennifer Allora Guillermo Calzadilla

<p>Arecibo, the world&rsquo;s largest radio telescope, is located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, which is also home to a critically endangered species of parrots. The telescope functions as an ear that is capable of capturing signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. The witty messages from the parrots remain unnoticed.</p>

From the Wild Sea (Fra det Vilde Hav)

Robin Petré

<p>FROM THE WILD SEA is a poetic documentary film that zooms in on the complex collision between human and nature. We are taken on a disturbing and fascinating journey into the emerging Anthropocene Era, seen from both the human and animal perspective.&nbsp;</p>

Gunda

Victor Kossakovsky

<p>Where his prior film, the acclaimed epic AQUARELA, was a reminder of the fragility of human tenure on earth, in GUNDA, master filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky reminds us that we share our planet with billions of other animals. Through encounters with a mother sow (the eponymous Gunda), two ingenious cows, and a scene-stealing, one-legged chicken, Kossakovsky movingly recalibrates our moral universe, reminding us of the inherent value of life and the mystery of all animal consciousness, including our own.</p>

Everything

David OReilly

<p>Whoever you are, whatever you are and where ever you are, you&#39;re in the middle - that&#39;s the game. &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Narrated by the inspiring philosophy of Alan Watts</p>

White on White

Viera Čákanyová

<p><em>White on White</em>&nbsp;is the video diary that filmmaker Viera Č&aacute;kanyov&aacute; kept while staying at the Polish Antarctic station, where she shot her neural network-led film&nbsp;<em>FREM</em>&nbsp;(2019) in 2017. During her stay, the author talks with a compellingly conversant AI chat bot, driving conversations that touch on the nature of film, art, and the meaning of life, while also revealing a way of thinking which &ndash; free from a distinctly human emotionality &ndash; forces deep introspection. Footage from her ordinary, everyday life at the station contrasts with lyrical images of the Antarctic&rsquo;s immaculate scenery and wildlife. Č&aacute;kanyov&aacute; complements this with her own probing and intelligent commentary, provoked by the loneliness of the ice-covered landscape.</p>

RIP SENI

Daisy Ifama

<p>Overnight on 24th June 2020, graffiti reading &lsquo;RIP SENI&rsquo; appeared on a public artwork outside Bethlem Royal Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in South London. The red spray-painted letters called attention to Seni Lewis, a 23-year-old black man who died at the hands of 11 police officers while in the care of the hospital in 2010. The artwork had been created by Turner-prize nominee Mark Titchner. It was made up of eight placards asking questions about mental capacity and assessment, creating a powerful resonance between the artwork and the new graffiti. This film reflects multiple perspectives, from mental health professionals to families who have lost loved ones in police custody, prisons and psychiatric hospitals. It explores Seni&rsquo;s story, the crisis of mental health and racism in the UK, the long fight for justice and what happens when members of the public take art into their own hands.</p>

The Quintessence

Pamela Breda

<p>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,&nbsp;<em>The Quintessence</em>&nbsp;considers the scientific study of outer space as a narrative, and analyses the hidden dreams and expectations of those shaping contemporary research about the universe. Audio interviews with scientists provide an intimate insight into astrophysicists&rsquo; ideas and creative intuitions, moving beyond the traditional academic representation of scientists as individuals possessing an unquestionable knowledge of the universe, while the visuals generate a sensorial representation of highly-secluded scientific laboratories, often situated in remote locations and usually not accessible to the general public. Looking into the nature of scientific progress, and our role as investigators of the universe, this film provides a unique angle on the act of looking at the stars.</p>

Cold Stack

Frank Martin

<p>Divided into three parts,&nbsp;<em>Cold Stack</em>&nbsp;charts the melancholic decline of the oil rig industry in the Scottish Highlands. The film uncovers the destructive effects of the collapse on those who were employed by the industry, and showcases the grand visual spectacle of the dereliction of the rigs in the Cromarty Firth. The first part documents the Kishorn fabrication yard on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, encountering those who worked there during the great boom of the 1970s and 80s, and showing the ghostly remains of the yard in its current all but abandoned state. The second part shows the Cromarty Firth, where dozens of unused oil rigs are &lsquo;cold stacked&rsquo;, covering the effects of economic decline on those who formerly worked constructing the platforms. The final section looks to the future, considering the otherworldly beauty of the new form of energy that is dominant in the highlands: wind farming.</p>

The Elvermen

Isla Badenoch

<p>Shot over a moonlit night,&nbsp;<em>T</em><em>he Elvermen</em>&nbsp;is an atmospheric film that reveals the last of a hidden community hunting an endangered fish. As the sun sets on the banks of the River Severn, on the outskirts of an impoverished city in the UK, a group of men race to catch a vanishing creature, the elusive elver (baby eel), supposedly worth more than its weight in gold. Over the course of a single night, the film surveys the mysterious world of the Elvermen: fathers, sons, brothers and friends addicted to the gamble of the stake-out, and the promise that it offers. Phone calls of frustration and joy echo down a river lit by head torches.&nbsp;<em>The Elvermen</em>&nbsp;shows how a rite of passage has changed into a fight for values: for tradition, for community, and for a connection to nature in an environment of impending change.</p>

Growing Love

Claire Davies

<p><em>Growing Love&nbsp;</em>conveys the joy of nurturing plants and watching them grow, regardless of their shape, size, or species. Beginning with the wonder and awe of a seed, the film ponders how it is that so much life can germinate from even the smallest of things. Following the activities of an amateur gardener,&nbsp;<em>Growing Love</em>&nbsp;is narrated through an autobiographical voice. The film tells tales of the relationships people build with plants, examines their day-to-day nurturing, and weaves in personal perspectives on what society considers as conventionally beautiful and worthy of our attention.</p>

The Story of Looking

Mark Cousins

<p><em>The Story of Looking</em>&nbsp;sees Mark Cousins prepare for surgery to restore his vision. Cousins explores the role that visual experience plays in our individual and collective lives. In a deeply personal meditation on the power of looking in his own life, he guides us through the riches of the visible world, a kaleidoscope of extraordinary imagery across cultures and eras. At a time when we are more assailed by images than ever, he reveals how looking makes us who we are, lying at the heart of human experience, empathy, discovery and thought. He shares the pleasure and pain of seeing the world, in all its complexity and contradiction, with eyes wide open. As the COVID-19 pandemic brings another dramatic shift of perspective, he reaches out to other lookers for their vision from lockdown, and travels to the future to consider how his looking life will continue to develop until the very end.</p>