Lifestyle & Entertainment

Science Launches onto the Silver Screen

May 2nd, 2001

Scinema, Australia's first international science film and multimedia festival, will launch tomorrow night with the premier screening of Fragments of Genius - a documentary on the controversial research Australia's Professor Allan Snyder.

With over 140 entries received so far from 13 countries, Scinema's place among the world's biggest science film festivals is well established.

The festival, run by CSIRO, features entries from as far afield as France, Chile, Canada, Bulgaria and Sweden on every subject from sex to skyscrapers. They include big-budget wildlife documentaries, educational multimedia presentations, animation and experimental student shorts.

The BBC documentary Fragments of Genius showing at the launch examines the work by Professor Allan Snyder, Director of the Centre for the Mind on the extraordinary abilities of savants such as Dustin Hoffman's character Raymond in the movie Rain Man. Professor Snyder claims that such abilities lay dormant within our minds, while suggesting that he can turn these skills on and off in people by sending magnetic pulses to the brain.

Other highlights of the Scinema festival are:

• the world premier of the latest work by world-famous ethnographer, Canberra's David McDougall
• recently discovered footage shot inside the Parkes telescope as it received the first pictures of the Apollo 11 Moon landing
• the 1930s science documentary classic Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet
• a one-night only reunion of the 80s' pin-up boys of science: Rob Morrison and Deane Hutton from The Curiosity Show, for a session of Sexy Skivvy Science.

Scinema's Director, Rebecca Scott of CSIRO, was inspired to organise the event after being invited a year ago to represent Australia as a jury member at Téléscience - one of the world's largest science film festivals held in Montreal.

"It seemed crazy that Aussie films were winning at these international competitions, but there was no opportunity to showcase them back here in Australia. So it was fitting that CSIRO decided to create that opportunity with Scinema."

"Scinema wants to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration between the sciences and the arts, using film to highlight the contribution that scientific research makes to all of our lives. It's a great opportunity to showcase past and present Australian science film successes," says Ms Scott.

For daily screening details, email scinema@csiro.au, ph: 02 6276 6639 or visit the website at www.csiro.au/scinema.