Academia Film Olomouc
International Festival of Science Documentary Films
April 17 - 25, 2012
Olomouc, Czech Republic
For programme details, please click here.
VISIONS OF THE FUTURE - UTOPIA AND DYSTOPIA
The media are almost constantly giving information about the threat of this year's end of the world that has been predicted in the Maya calendar. AFO 47 will offer both the scientifically sober view of this whole affair and the plurality of opinions. The main festival panel will focus on people's imaginations of their future and on the visions of the future from the point of view of contemporary science and technology.
Screening: Visions of the Future - The Intelligence Revolution / Visions of the Future - The Biotech Revolution / Visions of the Future - The Quantum Revolution / End Day / 2210: Collapse? / Making Stuff: Smarter
ROUSSEAU RELOADED
This year it is exactly 300 years since the birth of Jean-Jacque Rousseau, a renowned French philosopher and one of the first education theorists. AFO 47 will remind this remarkable anniversary to its visitors through the projections of movies and also by means of seminars and discussion panels. In this panel will talk about both the functionality of the current education systems and various approaches to the education of children and also to the phenomenon of gay and lesbian parenting – this means the upbringing of children in gay and lesbian pairs.
Screening: Carrot and Stick / Race to Nowhere / Hyper Parents and Coddled Kids / Daddy and Papa / Raising Hell
NANO
The contemporary science hype connecting sustainable development and the revolution in the medical diagnostics and treatment. The panel will look into the history of nanotechnologies and it will show us the particular ways nonmaterials can transform the world we live in. Simultaneously, it will also give us an insight of the nanoworld from a completely different perspective – the exhibition of the photos from the electron microscopes by Tescan.
Screening: Welcome to the nanoworld: From Micro to Nano / Welcome to the nanoworld: Nanos around Us / The Nano Revolution: More than Human / The Nano Revolution: Will Nano Save the Planet / Nano What?: Nano in Nature, Nano What?: Nano Hospital / Nano You
SELF-MADE MEN
This panel is focused on the personalities that thanks to their genius and knowledge rose above the restrictions of their generations. From the films listed it is obvious that it is possible to serve as an example and to shift all the boundaries imaginable and that this is possible even in the world were an individual gradually loses on importance.
Screening: Bill Gates: How a Geek Changed the World / Steve Jobs: iChanged the World / Adidas vs. Puma
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Apart from the views on the future of the humankind AFO 47 will also touch on a different provocative issue – the religion from the point of view of the science. The goal of contemporary science is to reveal the centre of the religious experiences in the brain or enlighten the evolutionary mechanisms of the origin of science. If it succeeds, will it signify that religion is a mere product of evolution? Will the modern science lead us to the denial of all divine and supernatural? These questions and many others will be raised by the series of popular-science documentaries, the presentation by Eva Klocková from the Masaryk University in Brno, and the panel discussion.
Screening: Who Wrote the Bible? Did God Create Universe? God on the Brain
GREEN MEDICINE
There is evidence that it cures multiple sclerosis, Parkinson"s disease and that it successfully battles other diseases. Is it really one of the most effective cures? The AFO 47 panel discussion will focus on various opinions of the use of marijuana in pharmaceutics. One of the main speakers will be no one less than the profound specialist on this matter Lumír Hanuš from the Hebrew University, who began his lifelong research in 1970 in Olomouc.
Screening: Grass: the history of marihuana, Reefer Madness, Run from the Cure, The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
TRIBUTE – DAVID DUGAN
The co-founder of the Windfall Films company, the producer David Dugan personally, will introduce the progressive and controversial natural scientific series Inside Nature"s Giants that ruins the standard procedures in the natural scientific filmmaking. In 2009 this series was awarded BAFTA award for the best series of the year.
Screening: Inside Nature’s Giants: Fin Whale, Inside Nature’s Giants: Giraffe, Inside Nature’s Giants: Great White Shark
TRIBUTE – STEVE JONES
Steve Jones, the highly regarded British expert on evolution and genetics, will be the main guest of AFO 47. At the festival he will be personally awarded for the contribution to science popularization. Steve Jones is Emeritus Professor at University College, London, where he was Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment till 2010. He is one of the most significant science populizers, he regularly discusses current scientific topics on TV, radio and in the press. His View from the Lab column is being published in the Daily Telegraph.
Screening: Nature or Nurture? A View from the Genes, and the Screens
CIVIL DEFENCE EDUCATION
The documentaries as well as the seminar and the excursion to the fallout shelter are there to remind us the traumatic era of the Cold War that formed and de-formed the inhabitants of both of the political blocs – the eastern and the western.
Screening: Duck and Cover, Survival under Nuclear Attack, Atomic Café
WORLD COMPETITION
The Fabric of The Cosmos - What is Space
Inside The Metaverse
Keep on Rolling (the dream of the automobile)
The Substance - Albert Hofmann´s LSD
Heartbeat
Au bonheur des dames, l"invention du grand magasin
Your Hairness
The odyssey of the continents: Oceania
Poppy´s Promise
Automatic Brain: The Magic of the Unconscious
Automatic Brain: The Power of the Unconscious
I evolve
The World after Dinosaurs
Serge Aviotte: The Iceman
LAb Animal Kingdom
Pasteur
Alpine Meltdown....just a few Degrees more
Immortal
Blank
CZECH COMPETITION
A Man with a Pipe
Jídlo s ručením omezeným
24
31 endings/31 beginnings
The Story of the Sick Soul
Jan Balabán
Solar Eclipse
My Father George Voskovec
In Sight
Further research is needed
Liquid and Brown
On the Outside
Porucha
Neodcházení
Číst počasí
For programme details, please click here.