The Last Gift: Jim’s Courage, Our Hope is a moving short documentary exploring the intersection of science, altruism, and human dignity at the end of life. The film follows Jim Dunn, a man living with HIV who chooses to participate in UC San Diego’s Last Gift Study, a pioneering research effort enabling people nearing death to donate their bodies to science immediately after passing, helping researchers uncover where HIV persists despite treatment. Through intimate conversations, reflections on mortality, and moments shared with his wife Susan, clinicians, advocates, and scientists, the film reveals Jim’s profound desire to contribute to a future free of HIV. With honesty and grace, it captures the emotional complexity of end-of-life decisions and the extraordinary courage behind them. Jim’s legacy reminds us that scientific progress is built not only on data, but on human generosity, relationships, and hope.
In northern Iraq lie the ruins of a 3,000-year-old city, Nimrud, once the capital of the powerful Assyrian Empire. In 1988, archaeologists conducted excavations beneath one of the palaces and uncovered a vaulted room filled with bronze cups, lamps, and ceramic jars, which led to an untouched chamber laden with precious objects. A stone sarcophagus, still intact, contained an impressive amount of jewelry: the treasures of this burial site surpassed those found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. The bodies of two women, placed one on top of the other, were also exhumed. Presumably of high rank, who were they?
A team of international skiers embark on a two-week glacier traverse connecting two remote research stations in Kazakhstan. The Tien Shan's 4000+ meter peaks host an active scientific community, leveraging the rare environmental conditions for groundbreaking research. Established during the Soviet Union's occupation, the high-altitude research stations here are home to some of the longest-standing glacier and cosmic radiation experiments in the world - and are surrounded by deadly alpine terrain.
In this educational film, laboratory demonstrations show the effects of moisture and temperature on the growth of molds. Photomicrography reveals the structure of molds: hyphae, mycelium, spore balls, spores. Beginning with spores on a rice culture, time-lapse photography shows the formation of a new colony.
This film delves into the life cycles of various insects, highlighting their survival and adaptive strategies through the seasons. It showcases insects like dragonflies and preying mantises in their summer activities of feeding and reproducing, and then shifts focus to their unique winter survival tactics. The film particularly emphasizes the praying mantis's method of laying eggs in a protective case to ensure species continuity. Other species' adaptations are explored, such as aphids laying eggs on tree bark and swallowtail caterpillars forming chrysalises. It also touches on different hibernation methods and the renewal of life cycles in spring, with a new generation of insects emerging to continue the cycle of life. The documentary underscores the diverse and fascinating ways insects adapt to their environments throughout the year.
A 'very intellectual' dirty talk on online sex work and a remix of 23-different-sources on the lookout for the answer to 'What happens to violence when you are not looking at it?' In this new work, EMIRHAKIN traces the parabola of performativity and gauges the unequal distances of labor in performance art and webcam performances from the focus point of body politics.
Madman's dictionary
A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
With a wealth of fantastic archive footage and a series of revealing interviews with those who had first-hand experience, filmmaker Vicki Lesley tells the turbulent story of the West’s love-hate relationship with a nuclear power over the past seventy years. Capturing both the tantalising promise and the repeated disappointments of this singular technology, the film reveals how the post-war, romantic fantasy of an Atom-powered future developed into the stormy, on-off relationship still playing out today. A tale of scientific passion and political intrigue all wrapped up in the packaging of a sentimental screen melodrama.
Short educational film of our solar system
2-channel film installation 'Die Last meines Namens', wherein Heydt deals with an unpleasant part of his own family history. Heydt’s great-grandfather was a member of the NSDAP and mayor of the small town of Haselünne in Emsland for almost 10 years during the Third Reich. Based on interviews with his grandfather and research in various archives, Heydt develops a personal perspective on the subject. The film deals with how we construct identity from oral retellings, how we process family histories, and how we can find current and personal points of access to German remembrance culture. At the heart of the work are two conversations with his grandfather Heinrich Heydt, recorded at different points in the research process. In them, the grandfather describes his memories of his father, the time, and the two reflect on the subject and the results of the research.
50 years on from the event, environmentalist Steve Backshall retraces a young Prince Charles' Arctic adventure and uncovers dramatic changes to our planet alongside an urgent need for action.
Before the internet. Before social media. Before breaking news. The victims of Thalidomide had to rely on something even more extraordinary to fight their corner: Investigative journalism. This is the story of how Harold Evans fought and won the battle of his and many other lives.
STRATA INCOGNITA, is a trans-scalar and trans-temporal journey across the geographies that articulate soil as an agro-industrial infrastructure, but also as an ecosystem and a somatic archive of crimes, memories and myths.
Who knows about springtails? And among those for whom this name rings a bell, how many have already seen them? Yet, these small animals, similar to insects, are present in all terrestrial ecosystems. Springtails are undisputed soil regulators. Scientists recognize them today as absolutely essential, especially in the search for pollutants, disruptors, and all the variations that affect our soils, but this little animal is almost unknown. Thanks to extremely precise cameras, as close as possible to these microscopic animals, a teeming life is revealed before our eyes. According to the seasons, the film invites us to get into the intimacy of the springtails, to discover their morphology, their role and their usefulness in the ecosystems of the planet while rubbing shoulders with other organisms in the same environments.
The first American space station Skylab is found in pieces scattered in Western Australia. Putting these pieces back together and re-tracing the Skylab program back to its very conception reveals the cornerstone of human space exploration.
Near the cold Pyrenees of Iberia, surrounded by ancient and dark green forests, lies a strange land where the rain is scarce and the wind is always blowing. The soil is poor, there are no trees and the landscape resembles the moon. Is this what the future of desertification will look like? Incredible creatures with surprising behavior live in this strange landscape. The documentary explores a place with very dry skin but a wet hidden heart where even waterfowl or amphibians can live. Living in such conditions is not easy and only the toughest animals will survive.
It all started with a simple question: Is it possible to travel to the oldest and newest places on Earth? YouTuber, author and filmmaker Joe Scott looked into it, and it turned into the trip of a lifetime. It's a journey across 4 billion years of geologic history that explores the past and present of our remarkable planet, the absurd immensity of deep time, and our tiny but important place in it.
Decolonising the Curatorial Process is a forty-minute documentary which explores decolonial strategies in an academic and curatorial context. The film features academics, activists and practitioners, and contains case studies of institutions that are deploying critical, self-reflective forms of curatorial practice. The Museum of London Docklands exhibition on slavery and the sugar industry is examined as an example of how an institution can decolonise the curatorial process, utilise the work of artists in a museum context, and critically examine East London's imperial history. The Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford, who are working with Maasai activists from Kenya and Tanzania on a project centred on repatriating the museum's collection of sacred Maasai artefacts, also features in the film.
Considers marvels of modern science: contact lenses, kitchen gadgets, bubble bath (with cheesecake), diatoms, Boulder Dam.