Mon 20 May 2013 | 
Julia Scott-Stevenson
Science merges with documentary
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Enlarge textIt’s National Science Week, so it’s time to get excited about science documentaries. Yes, really. Science on film is often done so woefully badly that it’s taken me half of Science Week to even bring myself to write this post, but it turns out that Scinema is making a pretty decent effort to address this. Scinema is a science film, video and multimedia festival that screens around Australia through the week and beyond, with submissions from across the globe.
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Awards for the festival were announced earlier this month, with a Spanish film, The Lightbulb Conspiracy, taking out the top prize. The descriptions of the various category winners have nary a white lab coat between them, which is mightily heartening. I particularly like the sound of the best short film category winner - the Victorian Department of Primary Industries’ film Climate Dogs - which uses animated canines to explore how different climate processes work to attract or repel rain in Victoria.
Scinema is screening all over Australia; click here to find a venue near you.
Also part of National Science Week, documentary film Transcendent Man is screening in Melbourne on Friday. The film is about Ray Kurzweil, inventor extraordinaire and futurist. According to Kurzweil, within the next thirty years humans will have merged with machines. If that means less lugging of camera gear for a shoot, I’m all for it. Nineteen universities have thought his ideas worthy of honorary doctorates, so see for yourself on Friday at Cinema Nova, and listen to a follow-up panel discussion with artificial intelligence experts.
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Comments (3)
the lightbulb conspiracy
when can we see it again?
22 Aug 2011 13:41 AEST
From:
re: light bulb
Hi Murray, A lot of the screenings will have finished last week, but some were extending into this week - here's a list where you can see if there's one near you still to come - http://www.csiro.au/scinema/program/venues.html Or if you missed it you can email the people at Scinema to find out if there are other screenings planned - scinema@csiro.au
21 Aug 2011 19:24 AEST
From: Australia
light bulb
top notch how can i see it again?
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About this Blog
Julia Scott-Stevenson Julia is a writer and researcher of all things documentary, and even dabbles in making them herself from time to time. She lived in the Pacific Islands of Fiji and Samoa for a few years, where she made a documentary about the inaugural Miss Tokelau beauty pageant and a short documentary about climate change in Samoa, which screened at the inaugural Pacific Climate Change Film Festival. While in the Pacific she was subjected to limited internet connectivity, and was staggered to discover the possibilities in online documentary on her return at the end of 2008. She has since been making up for lost time by undertaking a PhD researching cross-platform documentary, and also working on a database documentary about volunteers. Julia is also on the programming team for Antenna International Documentary Film Festival.
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