'Dodos' takes in full scope of the evolution debate
"All those years that I was at Harvard," says Randy Olson, a biologist-turned-filmmaker, "we would sit there in [Stephen Jay] Gould's office at his Tuesday lunch discussion group, and there was a pillar in the middle of his office that he would tape all these nutball letters from creationists on, and we would all just laugh our heads off."
Gould was the reigning evolutionary biologist in the country before his death in 2002. Olson got his doctorate in biology from Harvard while Gould was there and went on to teach at the University of New Hampshire, where he got tenure.
In 1994, though, Olson left academia to move to Los Angeles and learn how to be a filmmaker. His first film, "Lobstahs," won an award of special merit at the New England Film and Video Festival. It was a citation, he says, less for his nascent filmmaking skills than for his I-don't-want-to-make-boring-PBS-documentaries attitude.
When the "intelligent design" movement became more visible, Olson had his next documentary topic. He says that while creationism was "nothing that anyone took seriously," intelligent design, which agues that a higher being must be behind the order of nature, turned out to be well-funded, sophisticated in its presentation, and adept at turning a phrase ("Teach the Controversy"; "God lives in the gaps of our understanding").
Olson traveled to his home state of Kansas to document the pro side of the movement by talking to school board members trying to get intelligent design into the science classroom. He then came back East to get responses from his fellow evolutionary biologists.
The resulting film, "Flock of Dodos," is a very funny and extremely engaging profile of one of the core battles in the U S culture war. No one comes off looking very good. The "dodos" in Olson's film, in fact, are the academics, who can't seem to make their case without being pedantic, condescending, and off-putting.
Two of the film's core evolutionists are Tom Givnish, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was on Olson's thesis committee, and Steven Orzack of Cambridge's Fresh Pond Research Institute.
"Givnish and Orzack really represent the two voices of the world of science on this issue today," Olson says. Orzack is the nay-saying voice who maintains that science is too powerful to have to worry about intelligent design. Givnish argues that science had better become more aggressive in making its case.
"Tom has the only line from evolutionists that ever caused an audience to cheer," says Olson. "When he says 'I think we have to stand up to these people and tell them they're idiots,' 600 people in an auditorium erupted."
"Flock of Dodos" comes to the Museum of Fine Arts Saturday at 7:15 p.m. , timed to coincide with the week of Charles Darwin's 198th birthday . Olson will be joined by both Givnish and Orzack for what will undoubtedly be a lively discussion. Information is at 617-267-9300 and mfa.org/film.
24-HOUR FEST: If you still like artistic license with your science, the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival comes to the Somerville Theatre next Sunday at noon and goes straight through to noon the following day, which is Presidents' Day .
As organizer Garen Daly says on the festival's website: "We're old enough to know better, but young enough to stay up." He's scheduling at least a dozen feature films along with cartoons and vintage movie trailers for the 24-hour marathon.
Included is director James Bai's 2005 "Puzzlehead," about a scientist who creates an android in his own image to talk to a shop clerk he has a crush on. The film has gotten rave reviews and a rare "100 % Fresh" rating at Rottentomatoes.com , with the
Also on tap are old favorites "The Stepford Wives" (the 1975 Katharine Ross version), "The Crawling Eye," and "Forbidden Planet." Line up and ticket information are at bostonsci-fi.com. The Somerville Theatre box office can be reached at 617-625-4088.
AFRICAN, BUNNY FESTS: The annual African Film Festival opens Friday at 7:45 p.m. at the MFA with "Bamako " by Abderrahmane Sissako. In the film, Sissako returns to his home country of Mali to put globalization "on trial" and hear from locals about how macroeconomics has affected them.
Danny Glover is in "Bamako" and produced it with his company Louverture Films . Glover will be at the MFA for the evening's event. The festival runs for 10 days.
Meanwhile, across the river at the Brattle Theatre, the 12th annual Bugs Bunny Film Festival launches Friday with an "All Bugs Revue." The festival runs through Feb. 24 (617-876-6837 and brattlefilm.org ).
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" plays tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre with Daniel Schacter as guest speaker. Schacter is a professor of psychology at Harvard with a focus on memory and cognitive neuroscience. The evening is part of the "Science on Screen" film series (617-734-2500 and coolidge.org ).
Cambridge's Alloy Orchestra is celebrating its 15th year of providing percussive cacophony to silent films with a three-day stint at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Alloy creates an exciting and physical atmosphere in theaters: As one 10-year-old put it after seeing the ensemble at the Kennedy Center in Washington , D.C., "It was like both sides of my brain exploded."
Thursday at 8 p.m. Alloy present s the New England premiere of a musical program for "The Eagle," a 1927 film starring Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky . Friday at 7 p.m., it accompanies "Phantom of the Opera," and Saturday at 2 p.m., "The General" (617-876-4275 and worldmusic. org ).
Next Sunday, the Globe's Ty Burr will be at the Coolidge Corner Theatre at 12:30 p.m. (after a 10:30 screening of Danny Kaye in " The Court Jester" ) to talk about his new book "The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together." Said Peter Bogdanovich of the collection: "Terrific, necessary, and carried out with integrity, intelligence, sensitivity, and totally without condescension."
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. 
