Joyful collisions of art and science
Two intriguing arts festivals launch this week, and both feature local film artists: the first- ever Cambridge Science Festival starts on Saturday and goes through April 29 at spaces throughout the city, and the every-two-years Boston Cyberarts Festival runs from Friday through May 6 at a huge number of venues across the Boston area.
This is the fifth Boston Cyberarts, and it has everything from dance and music performances to a conversation about the online world Second Life. The heart of the 16-day program, though, is its array of art exhibitions.
At the Photographic Resource Center on the Boston University campus, for instance, an exhibit called "Picture Show" draws from old-time Victorian toys and optical devices such as the zoetrope (a spinning cylinder that creates the illusion, when you look through slits on the side, that images inside are moving) and mutoscope (a "moving picture machine" that uses flip-book technology).
The PRC's works "exist somewhere between photography, new media, sculpture, and installation," says press material, and "although often antique in appearance, each piece uses technology -- high or low, revealed or concealed -- to produce allusions and illusions to delight the eyes and the mind." Artists include Steve
The Cyberarts gala takes place May 4 at 6:30 p.m. at the Hotel @ MIT, where
Meanwhile, the new Cambridge Science Festival is a designed to give a peek into the wild scientific underbelly of the city.
Most of the programs are participatory, such as the "Collisioneleven" experimental art show that features interactive videos, robots, and light art from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday at the MIT Stata Center. Henry Kaufman's work, for instance, features a touchable projection screen and infrared lights. There are also movies, including Saturday's presentation of "Star Trek IV -- The Voyage Home" along with a chapter from the 1936 "Flash Gordon" serial, and a post-film conversation about what makes good science and bad science. That's at 7 p.m. at the Phillips Auditorium at the Harvard Observatory. Full program information is at cambridgesciencefestival.org.
JEWISHFILM.2007 CONTINUING: The annual festival by the National Center for Jewish Film continues this week through next Sunday. Among the highlights is the New England premiere of "2 or 3 Things I Know About Him," German director Malte Ludin's peeling back of the curtain to explore his father's role as a Nazi commander and his family's reluctance to acknowledge the very public history. That plays on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Institute for Contemporary Art and next Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Wasserman Cinematheque on the Brandeis University campus in Waltham. Ludin and his producer, wife Iva Svarcova, will be at both shows for post-film discussions.
Also featured this week is the US premiere of "Fence, Wall, Border," director Eli Cohen's look at the separation barrier being built in Israel. Cohen will be at the show, and Daniel Terris, director of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life , will lead a post-film discussion. That's next Sunday at 2 p.m.
Except for the one screening at the ICA, all shows are at the Wasserman Cinematheque. Details on program s are at www.jewishfilm.org , or call 781-736-8600.
CONVERSATIONS WITH: A collection of short works by New England filmmakers covering "absurdist cultural commentary, explosive poetic montage, and tormented dream reverie," as the promotion puts it, plays today at 7 p.m. at the Harvard Film Archive. Directors Brittany Gravely, Xander Marro, Jonathan Schwartz, and Paul Turano will be at the show for a Q&A. Included in the program is the short "The Daily Planner" by Max Coniglio, a Cambridge animator who died in February and to whom the evening is dedicated (617-495-4700 and hcl.harvard.edu/hfa).
Harvard professor of psychology and biology Dr. Marc Hauser will lend his insight into Stanley Kubrick's 1971 "A Clockwork Orange" as part of the Science on Screen series at the Coolidge Corner Theatre tomorrow at 7 p.m. (617-734-2500 and coolidge.org).
Susan Buice and Arin Crumley, whose film "Four Eyed Monsters" has the tagline "We met online, started a relationship, and turned our lives into this project," will present a workshop on how they built a fan base (12,699 MySpace friends and counting) through podcasts and other way s , on Friday at 7 p.m. at the Boston University College of Communication, 640 Commonwealth Ave. , room B-05. The couple won the $100,000 indieWIRE Undiscovered Gems Audience Award last fall and have set of goal of selling 5,000 copies of their DVD themselves.
SCREENINGS OF NOTE: The Museum of Fine Arts is presenting a pre-release screening of Canadian director Jennifer Baichwal's "Manufactured Landscapes," a documentary that follows photographer Edward Burtynsky while in China, as he photographs factories, the Three Gorges Dam, and urban renewal projects. It's a "landmark glimpse into China's modern-day industrial revolution," says Variety, and "a profound, open-ended meditation on man's physical impact on his environment." That's on Thursday at 7:45 p.m. (617-267-9300 and mfa.org/film).
Also at the MFA, the series of classic French cinema restored and reprinted continues with Max Ophüls' 1953 "The Earrings of Madame de . . . " about romance, debt, adultery, and narcissism among the ruling class. It plays on Friday at 8 p.m., with an additional five screenings through May 6.
And director Alexandra Lipsitz's goof-fest "Air Guitar Nation," which depicts the exhilarating competition among air guitarists -- limbs akimbo, tongues a-flyin', miming out to Kiss and Cheap Trick -- gets its area premiere at the Brattle Theatre starting Friday. Contestants are judged like figure skaters, and the battle can get fierce. "He's got nothing on the inside," sniffs one challenger of another. Says another participant, joyously, "You don't have to be a rock star to be a rock star!" (617-876-6837 and brattlefilm.org).
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.
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