InScience Film Festival

The space program

With all the secrets it holds, the universe is an infinite source of inspiration for the imagination. And therefore also for the science film. This year films about Mars photographers, desperate rocket builders and the most famous space mission ever testify to this fascination. But also an interactive VR program to explore space or even share brain waves with the cosmos.

Apollo 11

Todd Douglas Miller | Documentary | US | 92 min | 2019 | tickets

Apollo 11 is the sensational cinematic take on the days and hours in July 1969, when astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot on the Moon. The documentary includes footage from never-before-seen 70 mm film and more than 11,000 hours of audio recordings. This spectacular retelling, fifty years after the moon landing, takes you back to that historic mission. It not only changed the lives of the three international heroes, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, it also changed the world. As Armstrong said in his now-famous one-liner: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Chesley Bonestell: A Brush with the Future

Douglass Stewart | Documentary | US | 95 min | 2018 | tickets

A Brush with the Future is an intimate portrait of the life of Chesley Bonestell, whose art inspired the US space programme. A man whose paintings depicted mysterious futuristic worlds. A forgotten artist who also worked on the Chrysler Building and on films like Destination Moon. Who was Chesley Bonestell? This award-winning documentary chronicles the extraordinary, nine-decade life of the ‘father of modern space art.’

Fly Rocket Fly

Oliver Schwehm | Documentary | BE, DE | 90 min | 2018 | tickets

Fly Rocket Fly tells the unbelievable story of the visionary and entrepreneur Lutz Kayser, who moves to the Congolese jungle owned by Mobutu, the president/dictator of Zaire. Together with a group of passionate space engineers, he set out to conquer space. The first successful rocket launch in the mid-seventies triggered an international firestorm and the initial dynamism surrounding Kayser and his team spirals into negativity. What started as a crazy dream, slowly turns into a nightmare. This documentary by Oliver Schwehm is a strange adventure that combines previously unseen archive footage with eye-witness testimony.

Interstellar

Christopher Nolan | Fiction | US, UK, CA | 169 min | 2014 | tickets

Earth has become uninhabitable and astronauts are sent on a mission to find a habitable planet that can sustain human life. The future of humanity rests in their hands and time is running out. Thanks to a wormhole near Saturn, they can fly faster than the speed of light and explore galaxies far away. The Endurance crew journeys through infinite space in search of a suitable exoplanet. The film paints a fascinating picture of wormholes, black holes and space-time, based on the theories of celebrated theoretical physicist Kip Thorne. The camerawork is by InScience ambassador Hoyte van Hoytema.

One With the Cosmos – VR installaties

VR-program | dates & times

Who doesn’t know ‘Earthrise’, the iconic photo of the Earth emerging from behind the Moon? Colourful and vulnerable, this is how astronauts see Earth from the dark universe. They return passionate advocates for sustainability. The VR programme for InScience 2019 gives you room to explore and literally flip your perspective on Earth. Who knows, that perspective may just give you a new-found respect for our planet.

The Other Side of Mars + The Sasha

Minna Långström | Documentary | FI | 55 min | 2019 | tickets

Do images reflect or shape reality? Robotics specialist and driver of the Curiosity Rover Vandi Verma works on Mars on a daily basis from her desk at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Los Angeles. Her work relies entirely on images and their technologically advanced manipulation. Through the lenses of various experts we learn how NASA’s images are created, used and manipulated for the sake of science but also for the public. Mars is the ideal place for an investigation into our paradoxical relationship to photography.

More news

Subscribe to our newsletter

Stay up to date about the festival