THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Science and Technology gets a space at the fourth International Documentary and Short Film Festival, all set to begin this Sunday. A package of science films to be followed by a national seminar on the topic on science documentary filmmaking will be a major highlight of the festival. What is more, eminent scientist and founder director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology P M Bhargava will be in the city to inaugurate the seminar; probably the first time a scientist of such eminence is being a part of a film festival. ‘’Giant strides in technologies such as biotechnology, which are poised to radically impact the way we live, also raises concerns of ethics, risk and safety, as well as human desire to know and understand,’’ said Chalachitra Academy deputy director Bina Paul Venugopal. The relatively small package of three films has a delightful movie, ‘Donald in Mathemagical Land’, where Donald Duck shows us how mathematics are not just numbers and charts, but magical living things. Disney has used animation here to explain through this wonderful adventure of Donald how mathematics can be useful in our real life. Donald learns that mathematics applies not only to nature, architecture, and music, but also to games, including chess, baseball, football, basketball and hopscotch. Some of the other science documentaries included in the festival are ‘Methods of Science’ from Films Division, and ‘Time Is’, an interesting documentary on the concept of time. These science documentaries, very different from the earlier genre of dull and monotonous documentaries, is expected to excite a large portion of the festival audience in the city as education has taken a back seat and edutainment has become the buzzword. ‘’Understanding of the role of science in society has also witnessed a sea change. From the desire to communicate what science is, the present day imperative is ‘how science is made; how does it work’. In short, the expectation is not only communication of science but also about science,’’ said Bina Paul Venugopal. The proposed national seminar on science in television media will focus on several topics such as television as a vehicle for cultivation of scientific temper, the broadcast scenario and the place of science in it, modern broadcast technologies and what they offer for television science, new genres of television science programmes, from popularising to public understanding of science, training and capacity building required to sensitise young filmmakers towards science programme making and opportunities and scope for undertaking science filmmaking in India.
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