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Hiper – The Path to Clean Energy

Original Title: Hiper – The Path to Clean Energy
Duration: 13’39’’
Producer: Thomas Delfs
Director: John Parris
Company: Orca Media Ltd (UK)
Scientific Field: Fusion Energy
Year: 2008
Country: UK

Today mankind faces a huge problem – how to generate energy to meet global demands without continuing to burn fossil fuels or producing high levels of radioactive waste. Renewable energy sources like wind, wave, tide and solar power must be developed to their fullest potential, but these alone cannot hope to meet the global energy demand. The only answer on the horizon is to master nature’s own way of releasing energy on the very large scale – the process which happens throughout the universe, lighting all the stars... fusion.
Two approaches are underway to master control of fusion on Earth. Both are essential to the long term future of mankind. HiPER is the international project which will use huge and powerful lasers to achieve controlled fusion. Once harnessed, fusion will give us a clean energy source for the very long term as well as a fuel source to bring energy security to nations across the globe. The prime source of fusion fuel is sea water itself – something which, thankfully, we have in abundance here on Earth.

Hobbit Enigma, The

Original Title: The Hobbit Enigma
Duration: 52’
Producer: Annamaria Talas / Simon Nasht
Director: Annamaria Talas / Simon Nasht
Company: Essential Media and Entertainment
Scientific Field: Culture / Anthropology
Year: 2008
Country: Australia

The Hobbit Enigma examines one of the greatest controversies in science today: just what did scientists really find when they uncovered the tiny, human-like skeleton of a strange creature on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003? Since the discovery was made public a bitter dispute has split the world of anthropology. Are the bones a previously unknown and bizarre primitive species of human? The Hobbit discovery forces us to rethink some of the most fundamental questions of human origins. How could the Hobbits have survived for so long and until so recently? Who were its ancestors? Is it possible that human origins are to be found in Asia, not Africa?
With exclusive access to ongoing interdisciplinary research and new fieldwork, this is a comprehensive account of a startling new view of human evolution. The Hobbit Enigma forces us to ask the most difficult question of all: what does it mean to be human?

How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer / Connected, the Power of Six Degrees

Original Title: How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer
Duration: 54’
Producer: Aline Jacques
Director: Annamaria Talas
Company: Essential Media and Entertainment
Scientific Field: Environment / Space / Exact Sciences / Experimental / Culture / Anthropology / Nature / History / Genetics / Medical / Wildlife / Technologies
Year: 2008
Country: Australia

HOW KEVIN BACON CURED CANCER brings us a new view of the world, as we unfold the science behind the popular trivia game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’. Based on the idea that anyone on the planet can be connected in just a few steps of association, ‘six-degrees of separation’ was supposedly an urban myth. Through the film we discover it’s at the heart of a major scientific breakthrough.

Hunting the Hidden Dimension

Original Title: Hunting the Hidden Dimension
Duration: 56‘46’’
Producer: Michael Schwarz, Bill Jersey, Edward Gray
Director: Michael Schwarz, Bill Jersey
Company: A Quest Productions and Kikim Media production for NOVA in association with The Catticus Corporation
Scientific Field: Exact Sciences / Technologies / Maths
Year: 2008
Country: USA

What do movie special effects, the stock market, heart attacks, and the rings of Saturn have in common? They’re all connected by a revolutionary branch of math called fractals, which has changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. NOVA tells the dramatic story of a group of pioneering mathematicians who transformed fractals from a mathematical curiosity that few took seriously into an approach that is touching nearly every branch of science and technology.

Immortality

Original Title: Aux Frontières de l’ Immortalité
Duration: 48’
Producer: Sophie German
Director: Gèrald Caillat
Company: Kaleo Films
Scientific Field: Biology / Genetics / Medical
Year: 2008
Country: France

Why do we die? Immortality was not planeed by Nature. It is neither useful to reproduction nor to the perennity of species, but it may not be impossible.
With the new fields of research on the living – genomics, nanomedicine, neuroscience – and the exponential technological progress, the vertiginous of an immortal man is at stake.
In teh four corners of the planet, at the heart of great universities and private foundations, gathered in coengress, leaning above their microscopes or debating with their colleagues, scientists reveal to us their most daring hypotheses on the possibility to stop ageing one day. Not withstanding, tnere is always a part of us that refuses to take science seriously when it appears to progress too quickly or attempts to tread too far into the unknown.

In Search of Memory – the Neuroscientist Eric Kandel

Original Title: Auf der Suche nach dem Gedächtnis – Der Hirnforscher Eric Kandel
Duration: 94’
Producer: Petra Seeger
Director: Petra Seeger
Company: FilmForm Cologne
Scientific Field: Medical
Year: 2008
Country: Germany

A documentary biopic about Eric Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, one of the most important neuroscientists of the 20th century.
Kandel is a Viennese Jew by birth. At the age of nine he was forced to emigrate to the USA. In New York he studied Austrian history and literature, but later qualified in medicine and became a psycho-analyst. For 50 years he has been a neuro-scientist. His research field, which is closely linked with his traumatic childhood experience during the Nazi era in Vienna and the Holocaust, is: the search for memory.

Ingredients for Life, The – on Earth & in Space

Original Title: The Ingredients for Life – on Earth & in Space
Duration: 31’
Producer: European Space Agency
Director: Jim Franks
Company: European Space Agency
Scientific Field: Biology / Exact Sciences / Health / Technologies/ Space
Year: 2008
Country: EU

We are all space travelers flying around the Sun at 107,000 km per hour. Our spaceship is the Earth and our bodies have evolved to live on this amazing craft.
We now have the capability of leaving planet earth. However, if man is to live in space and travel to other planets, we must learn how to survive for long periods out there; we have to recreate in space the vital ingredients for life on Earth.
On the International Space Station many of the Earth’s environmental support systems have already been engineered. Examining how some of these key technologies work, allows us to understand the vital ingredients that make Earth such an ideal place to live.

InTube

Original Title: In Vitro B ΠΡΟБИPΚΕ
Duration: 27’
Producer: Boris Korchev
Director: Vitaliy Korchev
Company: Vitaliy Korchev
Scientific Field: Genetics / Technologies
Year: 2006
Country: Ukraine

Unique in own way film. On an example of plants the author with also it is accessible tells about why people are afraid of transgenosis and genetic engineering, it is about life and different kinds of viruses, plants cloning obtaining of artificial meat. Strangely enough, but these themes are closely intertwined between itself not only in film, but also in a life. For what does humanity do this? An answers on one questions form other, yet more interesting…

Invaders, The

Original Title: Les Envahisseurs
Duration: 26’
Producer: RTBF – Patrice Goldberg
Director: Benjamin Luypaert / Patrice Goldberg
Company: RTBF – Matière Grise
Scientific Field: Environment / Nature / Technologies
Year: 2007
Country: Belgium

Les envahisseurs sont parmi nous ! Des crabes gigantesques venus d’Asie, d’une envergure de près de deux mètres, apparaissent déjà dans les eaux européennes. Des plantes exotiques, importées au 19e siècle pour orner nos jardins, sont aujourd’hui devenues des monstres qui grandissent presque à vue d’œil et n’autorisent aucune adversité. Ces phénomènes sont le fruit d’une mondialisation galopante de la nature, qui détruit des espèces vivantes à toute allure. Comment appréhender cette nouvelle donne ? Et comment lutter contre ces envahisseurs qui menacent parfois des activités humaines ? Des scientifiques mais aussi des exterminateurs sont sur la piste…

Invasion – Nature on the Move / Adventure Research

Original Title: Invasion – Wenn die Natur mobil macht / Abenteuer Forschung
Duration: 30‘
Producer: ZDF (Sabine Armsen; Christiane Götz-Sobel)
Director: Juergen J. Grosse
Company: ZDF
Scientific Field: Environment / Exact Sciences / Nature
Year: 2009
Country: Germany

Our desire for total mobility: successful strategy or dangerous game?
Life in the 21st century is life on the move. It is made possible by total mobility, unrestricted and unlimited. Global traffic and communication form the basis of our society and enhance our quality of life and prosperity. But there is also a downside: modern transport provides unwanted invaders with an easy route of entry. Pathogens – viruses and bacteria – travel around the world as blind passengers and thus spread disease at an ever accelerating pace. Global mobility also presents opportunities for larger organisms like invasive plants and animals. They propagate at explosive rates. These new arrivals are a danger for local biodiversity and can even threaten the livelihoods of people. High-speed global travel opens up a Pandora’s Box by transporting living creatures into regions where indigenous competitors have no means to defend themselves. Evolution is then being taken out of its natural boundaries. It is an experiment on nature with global dimensions. As for the results, mankind is still in for surprises.

Joao Magueijo’s Big Bang

Original Title: Joao Magueijo’s Big Bang
Duration: 44‘42’’
Producer: Honor Peters
Director: Chris Holt
Company: Tigress Productions
Scientific Field: Space
Year: 2007
Country: UK

Charismatic cosmologist Joao Magueijo believes he knows what happened at the beginning of time. His brilliant new theory provides fresh answers to the question “how did we all get here?” and explains many of the paradoxes of ‘The Big Bang’ – the zero hour when everything we know came into being. But his radical ideas have sent shockwaves through the scientific world and threatened to undermine many of the most fundamental beliefs in physics. He has been accused of being ‘an anarchist’, a ‘heretic’ and even a ‘moron’.
In this visually-inventive and mentally-stimulating documentary Magueijo explains exactly what makes his ideas so ‘dangerous’.

Journey to the Edge of the Universe

Original Title: Journey to the Edge of the Universe
Duration: 90‘42’’
Producer: Stuart Carter
Director: Yavar Abbas
Company: Pioneer Productions
Scientific Field: Space
Year: 2008 / 2009
Country: UK

Using cutting edge visual effects and CGI - we create the first accurate non-stop journey from here to infinity. In one single, epic camera move we travel from two people staring at the night sky, accelerate up and out of our atmosphere, past the aurorae, past the Moon and our neighbour planets, out of our Solar System, to the nearest stars, nebulae and galaxies and beyond – right to the edge of the Universe itself. On this awe-inspiring and unique voyage we encounter the most beautiful, powerful and mysterious phenomena in the Cosmos, from pulsars to supermassive black holes, from star nurseries to quasars. Ultimately, we take the audience to the very edge of Time itself in a scientific and visual HD extravaganza that maps the Universe itself and will be the most stunning cosmology film ever made.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial

Original Title: Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial
Duration: 113‘26’’
Producer: Joseph McMaster, Gary Johnstone, Vanessa Tovell
Director: Gary Johnstone, Joseph McMaster
Company: A Production by NOVA and Vulcan Productions, Inc. in association with The Big Table Film Company
Scientific Field: History / Evolution
Year: 2008
Country: USA

November 13, 2007 at 8 pm ET check local listings
One of the latest battles in the war over evolution took place in a tiny town in eastern Pennsylvania called Dover. In 2004, the local school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to their high school biology students. The statement suggested that there is an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution called intelligent design, the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore had to have been designed by an intelligent agent. The science teachers refused to comply with the order, and alarmed parents filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the separation of church and state. Suddenly, the small town of Dover was torn apart by controversy, pitting neighbor against neighbor. NOVA captures the emotional conflict in interviews with the townspeople, scientists and lawyers who participated in the historic six-week trial, Kitzmiller, et. al. v. Dover School District, et. al., which was closely watched by the world’s media. With recreations based on court transcripts, NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as “What is evolution?” and “Does intelligent design qualify as science?” For years to come, the lessons from Dover will continue to have a profound impact on how science is viewed in our society and how to teach it in the classroom.

Khufu Revealed

Original Title: Khéops Révélé
Duration: 52‘19’’
Producer: Stéphane Millère / Marie-Pierre Aulas (Gédéon Programmes) in coproduction with NHK, TSR / Al Jazeera / NRK / Télé Québec / TV Ontario / Dassault with the participation of FRANCE 2 / FRANCE 5
Director: Florence Tran
Company: FRANCE 2
Scientific Field: History / Technologies / Architecture
Year: 2008
Country: France

It’s the only one of the Seven Wonders of the World that’s still standing today. 5 million tons of stone stacked 146 metres high, 4,500 years ago!
The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the tallest, largest and most enigmatic of all the Pharaonic constructions.
45 centuries later, the mystery lives on: how was the pyramid actually built?
French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has been investigating this question for ten years. He’s scrutinized and studied the monument with the eye of an expert, as if he were going to rebuild the whole thing himself. Today, at the end of his investigations and with the help of new technology, he’s offering a revolutionary solution. Could he have managed to solve the mystery of the Great Pyramid of Khufu?

Kill to be Born

Original Title: Tuer pour Naître
Duration: 28’
Producer: CNRS Images
Director: Luc Ronat
Company: CNRS Images
Scientific Field: Environemnt / Animal / Insects
Year: 2009
Country: France

Parasitoid insects are veritable serial killers and they play a major role in the regulation of insect populations. Europe-wide scientific research on the lines of a criminal investigation reveals how these killers behave and what remarkable capabilities they have.
In basic research, parasitoids make excellent models for behavioural ecology studies. They are also used in applied research, notably for biological control, where they can serve as precious auxiliaries for controlling crop pests. Parasitoids still have many secrets to reveal, and new research avenues are opening up.

King Restorer, The

Original Title: Kralovsky Restaurator
Duration: 57’
Producer: Czech Television
Director: Jana Hadkova
Company: Czech Television
Scientific Field: History / Technologies
Year: 2009
Country: Czech Republic

This documentary presents academic painter František Makeš, who emigrated to Sweden in 1968 and discovered a unique method of painting restoration on anzyme base in 1970s. The subject of the film will be at the smae time the circumstances of plundered Rudolphinian collections.

Library on Ice – Lutz Fritsch in the Antarctic

Original Title: Bibliothek im Eis – Lutz Fritsch in the Antarctic
Duration: 43’45’’
Producer: Reinhard Wulf
Director: Maria Anna Tappeiner / Reinhard Wulf
Company: WDR Cologne / 3sat
Scientific Field: Nature / Art
Year: 2007
Country: Germany

The German Neumayer Station is located in the north-eastern Weddell Sea, on the Ekström-Shelf Ice and works as a research observatory for geophysical, meteoro-logical and atmospheric chemistry measurements. The snow-covered Neumayer Station is located on shelf ice 200 metres thick and almost completely flat. 9 scientists pass the winter for 15 months. No daylight ever comes into the station, no window enables a view into the largeness of the Antarctic landscape.
Since January 2005 the „Library on Ice“ is located just near the research station, an art installation by the Cologne artist Lutz Fritsch. A place of contemplation and thinking about nature and civilization and the relations with space. The „Library On Ice“ is an art work, which is meant to make use of it: filled with thousand books donated by artist and scientist, who were asked by Lutz Fritsch to select a book just for this unique space.
Lutz Fritsch documented the come into being of the library with thousands of photographies and 60 hours of video material. Together with an interview with the artist the documentary tells the story of this outstanding art installation.

Light Attack

Original Title: Light Attack
Duration: 26’
Producer: RTBF – Patrice Goldberg
Director: Felice Gasperoni / Patrice Goldberg
Company: RTBF – Matière Grise
Scientific Field: Medical / Technologies/ Consumer
Year: 2007
Country: Belgium

De plus en plus de personnes consomment des produits dits « light ». Le plus souvent, il s’agit de produits où le fabricant a remplacé le « vrai » sucre par des substances appelées « édulcorants ». Le plus connu de ces sucres de synthèse, c’est l’aspartame. Découvert complètement par hasard il y a plus de 40 ans, il est utilisé comme additif alimentaire depuis une vingtaine d’années. Produit miracle ? Pour l’industrie de l’alimentation, certainement. Car le marché du « light » est en pleine expansion. Mais l’aspartame est aujourd’hui au centre d’une controverse sur d’éventuels effets néfastes qu’il pourrait avoir sur la santé. Plusieurs études ont déjà été menées dans ce domaine, et jusqu’à présent elles ont été plutôt rassurantes. Mais une dernière recherche est plus inquiétante : elle semble faire un lien entre l’aspartame et plusieurs types de cancers, du moins chez les rats de laboratoire. Que penser de ces résultats ? Qu’en est-il vraiment de ces faux sucres ? Bref : anges ou démons ? Matière Grise a mené l’enquête…

Lodgers, The

Original Title: Die Untermieter
Duration: 43’
Producer: Udo A. Zimmermann
Director: Florian Guthknecht
Company: ARTE / ARD
Scientific Field: Environment / Nature / Wildlife
Year: 2007
Country: Germany

We tend to think that our homes are ours alone, but in fact we have billions of subtenants: golden spider beetles, daddy long-legs spiders, drugstore beetles, book scorpions and many more. Countless species even live on our skins, like demodex. Immediately after birth they move on from the mother to the baby. We hardly know anything about these organisms: Where and how do they live? What do they eat? Are they harmful or just tedious? Their number is growing steadily. Due to the changing climate for example the Pharaoh ant, an extremely dangerous carrier animal, is on a permanent rise. The documentary “Subtenants – Life in Hiding” enters this mysterious microcosm and presents creatures that never have been shown on TV before.

Lord of the Ants

Original Title: Lord of the Ants
Duration: 56‘46’’
Producer: David Dugan / Neil Patterson
Director: David Dugan
Company: Produced for NOVA/WGBH by Windfall Films & Neil Patterson Productions
Scientific Field: Environment / Wildlife / History / Nature
Year: 2008
Country: USA

Every so often a giant emerges on the stage of science, someone who transcends the narrow boundaries of a particular line of research and alters our perspective of the world. E.O. Wilson is such a man. While studying ants, Wilson struggled to comprehend the evolutionary forces that have led workers to forage and soldiers to fight, and in doing so became the architect of a controversial new discipline: sociobiology. His appreciation of the natural world has been a driving force for his worldwide conservation efforts. E.O. Wilson is an icon of our times: a lord of the ants who sought to explain nature on earth... and who now fights for its survival.

Lost on the Atlantic

Original Title: Gegen den Sturm
Duration: 51’26’’
Producer: Iiona Grundmann
Director: Rudolph Herzog
Company: Iiona Grunmann Film production
Scientific Field: Culture / Anthropology
Year: 2008
Country: Germany

On 11 July 2007, archaeologist Dominique Görlitz and his crew of ten set sail from North America to Europe on a vessel made of 10 tons of bundled reeds and rope. They are determined to show the world that our Stone-Age ancestors were able to cross the Atlantic in both directions as many as 14,000 years ago. The film documents the crew's departure from New York City and the following journey on the high seas. The gripping adventure is intercut with excursions into archaeology, botanics, climate research and paleo-astronomy, which help us understand the complex and compelling reasoning that has led Görlitz and his team to attempt this daring project.

Marianska Tynice – Restoration of the Place

Original Title: Marianska Tynice – Obnova Místa
Duration: 22’
Producer: CTU Prague / FEE / Pilsen Region
Director: Vladimir Dvorak / Mylada Balounova / Irene Bukacova
Company: CTU in Prague / FEE / Pilsen Region
Scientific Field: History / Technologies
Year: 2008
Country: Czech Republic

The film is cut from amateur shots on well-known baroque music and celebrate 10 years of big effort and working on restoration of this unique Santini´s edifice.

Mediterranean Sea is still Alive, The

Original Title: Mediterranea Viva
Duration: 3x52’
Producer: Miquel Francès
Director: Batiste Miquel
Company: Taller d’ Audiovisuals – Universitat de València
Scientific Field: Environment
Year: 2008
Country: Spain

The Mediterranean area located in Spain stays in a crossroads intersection. It depends on its resolution that this place of the World keep being as sheltering as it used to.
This series of three episodes approaches, in a scientist way, the problems which threat the coast: fresh-water like an indispensable resource, the littoral occupation and the conditions of marine ecosystems.

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