FILM FESTIVAL
Imagine Science 2016
February 18 - 23, 2016
Highlighting unique voices in science film-making in the UAE, the Gulf, and beyond.
With films ranging from traditional and narrative to experimental, IMAGINE SCIENCE will highlight the many creative ways that science can be investigated, explained, and understood.
“The Middle East’s first science film festival hopes to inspire more scientists to look at art to communicate their work.” –Nature Middle East
Highlighting unique voices in science film-making in the UAE, the Gulf, and beyond, Imagine Science Abu Dhabi is an essential new science film forum in the Middle East. Following the success of its first festival last winter, Imagine Science Films returns to Abu Dhabi, even bigger and more multi-faceted. Primarily encompassing a series of short and feature film screenings and a new sci-art exhibition, the festival will host panel discussions, Q&As, talks, workshops, and performances, on a wide variety of pertinent scientific and sci-inspired subjects from simulation to ecological balance, from weather to future archaeological record. In addition, in the weeks leading up to the festival Imagine Science Films will be promoting film and science throughout the region through talks, collaborations, and outreach.
Previously in this Event Series

Simulated Cities and Secret Escapes
SHORTS
This program deals with real and simulated worlds, and the ways in which lives may sometimes seek to circumvent the boundaries drawn around them.

Excavations and Displacements
SHORTS
These films examine the states of refugees, both as victims of information and from information itself in the form of inescapable modern communications.

Equilibrium
SHORTS
This program turns around the idea of equilibrium on simultaneously personal and global scales, with a special attention to how human actions break the symmetry around us, or yet seek to reestablish it.

CLOSING NIGHT
The Visit
FEATURE FILM
For our closing night we’ll look beyond the earth and humanity. Michael Madsen’s new feature The Visit, examines the possibility of visitors from far from the Earth.

ATMOSPHERES
Sci-Art Exhibition
ATMOSPHERES is a sci-art exhibition held in conjunction with the Imagine Science Film Festival Abu Dhabi, the NYUAD Arts Center, and the NYUAD Art Gallery.

OPENING NIGHT
Ice and the Sky
FILMS & PANEL
The film festival will open with a voyage into the farthest reaches of the icy Antarctic, a destination seemingly far from the deserts of the Gulf, but of equally vital relevance to the entire world. Equal parts scientific procedural and gripping adventure story, Luc Jacquet’s Ice and the Sky also presents the findings that laid the groundwork for much of our modern understanding of climate change.
OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION & PERFORMANCE
Join us for the opening of the Imagine Science Film Festival
Thursday | February 18
Opening night reception | 6PM – 7:30PM
Performance | 6:00PM
Performance by American experimental musician Quintron and his Weather Warlock, a weather-controlled synthesizer.
Opening night FILMS & PANEL | 7:30PM – 10PM
Performances by Quintron & Weather Warlock
February 18: East Plaza at sunset
Feb 19 – 20: The Arts Center Lobby at sunset
ATMOSPHERES sci-art exhibition
A Project Space Exhibition
Feb 18 – 23, 2016
ATMOSPHERES is a sci-art exhibition held in conjunction with the Imagine Science Film Festival Abu Dhabi, the NYUAD Arts Center, and the NYUAD Art Gallery. The show includes a unique roster of international artists whose works complement the films and expand guests’ interest in the intersection between science and art, all while exploring ‘atmospheres’ in both a literal and metaphoric sense. How do we understand that which is all around us, but can’t be seen? The show will feature everything from art that engages with scientific topics to aesthetically striking scientific data and images in it’s attempt to answer that question.
FILM LAB
The Film Lab is a division of Imagine Science Films dedicated to empowering students to explore science creatively through film. The exhibition will feature works from local students as they explore the topic “air above us, air inside us.” Students were taught the basics of filmmaking and given several weeks to shoot material. They then received a short course in editing, in order to put together short, 2-3 minute films on the topic, which are then screened as part of the exhibition.