Abstract
As 2015 began, 20 scientists at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved their famed “Doomsday Clock” ahead 2 minutes, announcing the world is now 3 minutes from a catastrophic midnight. They say Earth is now closer to human-caused doomsday than it has been in more than 30 years because of global warming and nuclear weaponry. “This is about doomsday; this is about the end of civilization as we know it,” Bulletin executive director Kennette Benedict said at a news conference. “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon,” she emphasized. Not all in the science community agreed. Nor is the dire message being communicated by filmmakers—Hollywood studio style. Thankfully, at least hints of a future to be avoided were evident in independent movies at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.
Actor/Director/Sundance Founder Robert Redford’s 2015 Film Festival screened 123 feature-length films from 29 countries, selected from 4105 submissions. The 2014 program offered 123 feature-length films selected from 12,166 submissions, including a long list of documentaries and short films from some 21 countries. Showcased in the mountains of Utah during late January, the 10-day festival is the centerpiece of year-round public programs for the Sundance Institute, which hosts 24 residency labs and grants more than US$2.5 million to independent artists each year. Last year, eight documentaries and seven short films were included in a genre list then labeled “science/technology/environment.” This year, an edited genre label—“nature/climate change/environment”—omitted science; surprisingly, no other genre list specified science, although at least five films, including a documentary listed in the altered list, tackled serious science issues. The changed sans-science genre included a total of only eight films—four documentaries and four features: one a midnight “horror” sci-fi drama—and listed no shorts. The sparse attention to listing science seemed odd given the strength of programmed films with clear science themes and portrayals of scientists, three based on real science history. Two such features retold the controversial tales of human subjects’ experiments in psychology: The Experimenter, Stanley Milgram’s use of electric shocks in an attempt to study blind obedience; and this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Science Award winner, The Stanford Prison Experiment, Phil Zimbardo’s use of role-playing college students in a military-funded recreation of brutality in prisons. Both of these historically based drama served as sad reminders of social science’s lesser ethical standards past. Two more films that should have been included in a science genre listing depicted a future one would hope to avoid: Z for Zachariah, in an apocalyptic New Zealand three survivors—a young female farmer, a government agency engineer, and a lone miner—confront life in a radioactive world; and Advantageous, a mother and daughter face economic/political/business/gender crises in a not too distant future as marketing usurps untested neurobiological science to sell the promise of solutions. Of concern, unlike in the 2014 screenings and in spite of the new genre label, global warming and climate change garnered little more than a background hint in one or two documentaries.
Documentaries traditionally seek to tell truth in stories, hoping to influence discourse and behavior. This year, Sundance offered one outstanding example. The feature-length documentary, The Russian Woodpecker, tells a uniquely unsettling story about the devastation at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and offers evidence that the disaster was no accident. Ukrainian artist Fedor Alexandrovich delves into what he believes was a planned doomsday action. Interviewing the scientists and engineers involved with the plant operations and reporting as would normally be expected from an investigative journalist or research scientist, the artist uncovers a political cover-up that erased an entire city, forced relocation of thousands, and left human and animal populations contaminated with radioactivity. The investigation and filming took place during a time of extreme tumult and conflict in Ukraine, where history continues to be written and revised on a daily basis. Alexandrovich and director Chad Gracia surmise there is a link between the leaked reactor and Duga, a notorious radio antenna built near the Chernobyl site. Duga, a massive wall of metal and electricity, had been constructed at a cost of millions to send out a pounding, radio wave–interfering noise sounding much like a woodpecker. Impacted nations discovered the signal and traced it to the Duga source. Since the Cold War–altering potential for global espionage failed, the film asserts a conspiracy within the Soviet Union Central Communist Party, and connects with Russia’s current brazen behavior regarding Ukraine. The film’s assertions are accurate enough to have engendered threats for the artist’s and director’s safety. “Equally as dangerous as nuclear weapons is the culture of lies and corruption that Russia is spreading throughout the world, mostly having a strong effect in the Ukraine and in parts of Europe,” Alexandrovich said during a question and answer period following one screening. The film received the Sundance Special Jury award.
Recent studies point to the significance of confronting audiences with controversy and the importance of media convergence. Communication spans a multitude of platforms today. Measuring audience attention and engagement has morphed from print to innovative technology. In an Israeli content analysis of online news, Ori Tenenboim and Akiba Cohen (2015) found more clicking on sensational topics and curiosity-arousing elements, while commented-on items were more political/social and controversial. No doubt the Sundance programmers responded more immediately to the obvious controversy of a headline that read “Chernobyl Was No Accident” than to lesser political/social issues concerning science featured in other film submissions. The selection of this film and its festival jury award would seem a likely path for future strong science infused entries.
The fact that a dramatic, independent documentary unearthed a startling analysis unreported in traditional news outlets also points to the role film may now occupy in a world of changing mass media. In a study of convergence in Greece where traditional news sources have become less prominent, researchers found converging news presentation and delivery may act as a resource for more open and inclusive journalism (Doudaki and Spyridou, 2015). Films in all formats are now more readily moving from the big screen to the small screen, both television and online. YouTube, Netflix, HBO and other television and online outlets gathered at the Sundance Film Festival to promote and support indie filmmakers seeking distribution for their work. Deals announced assure global audiences will have access to more independent films. “There is an attack on freedom of expression everywhere,” Redford said at the opening press conference. “Change is inevitable,” he said. “[Sundance] rides with change and [we] use it to our advantage; I’m only interested in the fact that stories get told.” (Go to sundance.org/festival for full information on this year’s program.)
Major Hollywood studio releases during 2014 had some observers hoping perhaps 2014 was a turning point for communicating science in popular films. Interstellar, The Imitation Game, and The Theory of Everything were blockbusters. Although all three movies depicted moving from difficulties to promise and hope about humanity’s future, not necessarily here on Earth, but nonetheless survival stories, there were significant differences in how scientists and science are presented. Some viewers may not realize the background story in The Imitation Game said as much about institutionalized homophobia and the misuse of medicine via chemical castration as it presented about a heroic depiction of mathematics. In general, in Hollywood’s vision, science and technology appeared to pave the way to a manageable future. Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of both geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, emailed in response to the Doomsday Clock advance, “I suspect that humans will ‘muddle through’ the climate situation much as we have muddled through the nuclear weapons situation—limiting the risk with cooperative international action and parallel domestic policies.” Some independent films are already projecting that muddled future. It is not a pretty picture.