Last updated June 12, 2018 at 2:52 pm
Grace Tulysewski reviews SCINEMA 2018 which continues around the country this June.
Still from KCLOC, winner Best Animation, SCINEMA 2018.
From Sci-fi to Fungi: the 2018 Scinema line-up is not to be missed.
SCINEMA International Science Film Festival celebrates the best in science-based film. The 2018 Adelaide screening presented an impressive selection of works that hold their own outside of the scientific realm. And really, isn’t that the trademark of any excellent piece of science communication?
Highlights include Frank Oly’s Grassroots, an inspiring documentary featuring a timely friendship between farmer and soil fungus in a bid to alter our alarming CO2 trajectory. Best Short Film and the film most likely to convince you to delete Facebook immediately, iRony, surpassed its impressive hype. Animation with a lighter edge, KCLOC, brought a witty, Creature Comforts-esque philosophy to the enigmatic concept of time, while Catalyst’s The Secret to Making Better Decisions succeeds remarkably at making hardcore mathematical logic genuinely useful to the public.
The artists behind Virtual Humans wield stunning visual effects to illustrate the nearly unbelievable complexity that is the human body and the possibilities surrounding human healthcare as we better understand our biological machinery. Aleix Castro’s Timelapse shares a cautionary tale of the unpredictable outcomes of disruptive technology à la sci-fi Netflix hit, Black Mirror.
Best Film, The Kingdom – How Fungi Made Our World, had me concerned at first. Could I handle 52 minutes of time-lapse fungal growth footage? Apparently yes – when combined with the surprisingly thrilling tale of how life on Earth has been powerfully affected by our fungal friends and foes. At its core, The Kingdom is both an ode to the symbiosis between science and nature and a humbling reminder of how little we know about the natural world. Sounds like a good reason to get back in the lab to me.
If you can get your hands on a ticket, don’t miss the final SCINEMA screenings in Canberra, Melbourne and Perth. Check out Peter Ellerton’s fantastic review of the Brisbane screening for further coverage of the winning films, and keep your eye out for SCINEMA 2019 on Australia’s Science Channel.
SCINEMA International Science Film Festival is showing now around the country – Canberra 13 June, Melbourne 14 June, Perth 21 June. Thanks to major sponsor BBC Earth.
Click here for bookings
*Disclaimer: the reviewer was supplied with a complimentary ticket.
