Short Film Program: Crisis Studies

Short Film Program / Imagine Science Film Festival

Where will you be when the world ends? Bringing together many of this year’s threads of survival, our final short film program examines present and future disaster. From the neighborhoods right in New York City already rendered unliveable by sea level rise and undergoing demolition, to the web of orbital debris that may render the upper atmosphere impassible, from deathly sunlight to ecological collapse, this program explores a series of endpoints. What better culmination for the short film program than with the end of everything.

The film program will be followed by a panel discussion with filmmakers Nathan Kensinger and Joe Leuben, and journalist Amy Brady whose Burning Worlds column investigates the growing sub-genre of Cli-Fi -- climate sci-fi.

Film line-up (TRT 81 min)

Astroturf (James Uren | 1 min | UK | 2017)

A meticulous gardener tends to his plastic paradise to the eerie sounds of space.

The Earth Is Humming (Garrett Bradley | 14 min | USA | 2017)

Around 10 percent of all earthquakes occur in and around Japan, with citizens experiencing as many as 1000 earthquakes per year. For them, preparing for these disasters is a part of daily life, as well as a full-blown industry.

One Day the Sun Turned Black (Joe Lueben | 14 min | USA | 2017)

One day the sun turned black. White people must pigment themselves or die. A daughter does. Her father refuses.

Buffer Zone Blues (Franz Milec | 9 min | Czech Republic | 2018)

As part of the so-called strategy of mutually assured destruction, the U.S. produced a list of over 2,000 nuclear targets in the Eastern Bloc, declassified only recently. The list includes military bases and airports, but also targets that would have had an impact on millions of civilians.

Managed Retreat (Nathan Kensinger | 18 min | USA | 2018)

Faced with rising sea levels, three New York City neighborhoods are purchased by the government, to be demolished and permanently returned to nature.

The Fall (Boris Labbé | 14 min | France | 2018)

The collapse of the anthropocene by way of the apocalypses of Bosch and Bruegel. The world’s order unbalances and a tragic fall leads to the parturition of crucial opposites: Hell and Heaven’s circles.

Adrift (Cath Le Couteur | 11 min | UK / Chile | 2017)

Adrift follows the story of astronaut Piers Sellers, who accidentally dropped his spatula in space in 2006, becoming a deadly piece of space junk, travelling at 17,000 miles per second.