Festival Films - 2008
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Muerto Canyon
Jen Peel 30min.USA. 1998
The hanta virus sweeps through a Native American community in New Mexico, and tolerance is among the casualties. Peel, a Wisconsin native residing in Seattle, has constructed her film as a kind of medical thriller, in which a dedicated Native American doctor and a Center for Disease Control researcher work to find the Link and cause of the debilitating and sometimes fatal virus.
Jornada Del Muerto (Journey of the Dead Man)
Matthaeus Szumanski 28min.USA. 1999
In this tale of the high psychological cost paid by those who worked on the bomb, a scientist is wracked by guilt over the destruction and death the bomb will cause. He imagines finding a poor family – father, sick mother, and young son – living in a shack near the test site’s ground zero.
The First Vampire
Jason Todd Ipson. 24min. USA. 2004
The story centers on the true origins of the Western Vampire Legend 14th- century Scandinavia. A Viking fleet is decimated by an unknown force that drains the men of blood, pitting religion and science against each other, as the main characters try to make sense of the horror unfolding in front of them. The film is based on the historical origins of Vampirism as opposed to classic Vampire mythology.
In Vivid Detail
Dará Bratt 18min. USA. 2007
How is beauty measured? This unusual love story follows Justin, an architect who suffers from Prosopagnosia — a neurological disorder that makes him incapable of recognizing faces. Justin and Leslie must decide whether their new relationship can overcome the obstacles ahead of them as they try to cope with this bizarre but real condition.
>L2i
Jean-Jacques Beineix 15min . France. 2008
Ever since Man’s first thought, he has striven to understand and master matter and the elements, organise chaos, channel energy. Just as water is essential for Life, scientific knowledge and research cannot be disassociated from the history of mankind. L2i follows the history of the national center of scientific research (CNRS) in France.
CosmicConnexion
Denis Van Waerebeke. 10min . France . 2006
Green, red, viscous, hairy. How to classify in a sensible order all these sub-species? For the first time, we present a scientific classification of the living aliens.
A Biometric Tale
Nicolas Jacquet 11min . France . 2005
What would the world be like if biome- trics was used everywhere? Would life really be simpler? Would it be more complicated at times? Here is the story of Little Red Riding Hood reinterpreted for exhibition in a biometric world.
The First Men in Space
Daniel Muenter 52min . France / Germany . 2007
Joseph Kittinger Jr. and David Simons were the first human beings in space. In the late 1950s, they soared above the atmosphere of our planet, gazing at the curvature of the earth. The first and potentially fatal steps into space were undertaken from within a thin sheet of plastic capsule lifted by air- filled balLoons. With the help of original footage and interviews, this exciting film reveals the engineers’ technical achievements, used to this day.
The Wormhole
Jessica Sharzer 17min. USA. 2002
The passage between light and dark, between happiness and despair, find an elegant scientific metaphor in this film. Wally watches his grandmother lecture college students about worm- holes that connect black and white holes, and the immense gravitational pull between them. He remembers the time before his little brother was kid- napped, tearing his family apart.
The Aviatrix
Toddy Burton lOmin. USA. 2007
Lonely, friend-less Anne lives with her mother and is fighting cancer. Her es- cape from reality exists in Aviatrix, an intergalactic superhero alter ego who rockets through space to fight evil on distant planets. Anne’s fantasy world is her only way of experiencing the adven- ture and romance that remain painfully absent from her life, until Miles appears.
Conflation
Stephanie Joalland 14min.USA/France.2007
What happened in the desert? Just re- leased from the hospital, Carol wakes up one more time totally confused. Why does she feel strangely out of place in her life now? Why is she haunted by a little girl who keeps talking about a big black bubble? A supernatural thriller where physics and a little girl’s uncanny intuitions mix with a haunting Joshua tree in the desert.
Transgressions
Valerie Weiss 15min. USA. 2006
Clockwork Orange meets Pleasantville in this sci-fi short set against the back- drop of a dystopian society that idolizes celebrity assassins called Agents. Carl Phillips dreams of giving his young son a better life by sending him to Agent Training Camp. His wife doesn’t share this dream and does the unthinkable to save her son from a murderous life.
California King
Eli Akira Kaufman 22min. USA. 2008
Love is often found in the most unlikely places. In California King, a womanizing mattress salesman – who employs faux physics to get female customers into bed – falls for a skeptical insomniac who knows her science better than her heart. Of course these lovelorn characters deserve nothing less than each other.
The Un-Gone
Simon Bovey 9min.UK.2006
In 2020 global travel is simple. Step into a matter transporter in one time zone and arrive seconds later in ano- ther. But this apparent golden age of travel without boundaries has another side. When the system malfunctions, one man discovers the dark truth behind the corporate facade.
Fermat’s Room
Luis Piedrahita & Rodrigo Sopena | 88 min | Spain
Rodrigo Sopeña. 88min . Spain . 2008 Four mathematician strangers are invited by a mysterious host on the pretext of resolving a great enigma. They find themselves in a shrinking room that will crush them if they do not discover in time what connects them and why
Semmelweis
Jim Berry 17min. USA. 2001
It’s a tragic, maddening story, pitting common sense against the entrenched ignorance that drove Semmelweis to a nervous breakdown. In 1847, he disco- vered that many cases of childbirth fever had been caused by the fact that doctors weren’t washing their hands before treating pregnant women. His findings were spurned by the medical community. Shortly after his break- down, Semmelweis died.
The Visionary
Joel Shapiro 22min . USA . 2005
Nikola Tesla finds himself inside the sort of fantasia in which Fellini might feel at home. It’s not just Tesla the genius that intrigues Shapiro, but Tesla the showman.
Paprika
Kati Anguelov 8min. USA. 2005
Paprika celebrates the Hungarian scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi, who received the Nobel Prize in 1937 for his work in the isolation of vitamin C.
Great Genius and Profound Stupidity
Benita Raphan. 27min . USA. 2008
This experimental documentary, which includes interviews with Avital Ronnell, Oliver Sacks, and Merce Cunningham, explores pilgrim mathe- matician Paul Erdos, Hellen Keller, and the philosophical ideas of genius and stupidity.
A Fruit Fly In New York
Alexis Gambis. 12min. USA/France. 2007
Take a flight over NYC, the lab and the history of fruit fly research. The rapport that a scientist may have with his model organism is similar to what a painter may have with his canvas. Through the microscope, the fruit fly appears like a monstrously beautiful insect that has sacrificed itself in the pursuit of science.
Chip Kick
Volker Hahn 3min . Germany . 2008
Peculiar scientist Dieter and stubborn soccer robot Max are protagonists in this film, which reveals insights into soccer through humorous action. The pilot episode presents The Physics of the Mexican Wave. More topics could include: Does heading make you dumb; How can a ball fly a curve; How do fans shout the referee onto their side?
Séance of Maths
Andrew Gori & Jackie Goss. 11 min . USA. 2007
A brother and sister fall in and out of a hotel room serving as the meet- ing place of mutual memories. They contribute their intuition towards a common mechanism – some cosmic machine that best articulates the strangeness of scientific process – the combination of intuition and factual knowledge. Part seance, part math.
