CineSpace Short Films

In the spirit of George Méliès landmark illusionistic film, “A Trip to the Moon,” the artists Hillerband+Magsamen with their children embark on an adventure to construct and fly a rocket ship to the moon by taking apart their Houston, Texas suburban home.

This is the story of Kalpana Chawla, an American astronaut, engineer and the first woman of Indian origin to go to space.

Our ancestors believed that the movements of celestial bodies were a form of music. Wanda Diaz-Merced, a blind astrophysicist from Puerto Rico, studies the universe through sound and carries on this ancient tradition.

From the viewpoint of an engineering student from a rural village in Indonesia, we can see how the ISS has empowered the children of his village to dream of something that is out of this world.

Opportunity, a NASA rover on Mars, must find a way to survive as a life-threatening dust storm approaches.

Before the acronym STEM even existed, Dr. Pauline Beery Mack, Texas Woman’s University professor in the 1950s-1970s, pioneered in the quest for knowledge in science, technology and statistical research. Her advances in bone density provided NASA invaluable information for manned spaceflight, earning Mack a Silver Snoopy award presented by Astronaut Jim Lovell in 1970, a time when women scientists were rarely recognized among their male peers.

A fictional “lost” NASA recruitment reel from the year 1991 while the STS (space shuttle) program was in full swing; the campy short captures the joy of NASA employees working and supporting the shuttle from the ground, as well as astronauts operating the shuttle during liftoff, low Earth orbit, and landing. Nearly all shots are carefully constructed using archival references combined with modern-day footage, using visual effects to remaster existing archival videos and finally recorded to a 23-year-old VHS tape.

FILM BEST DEPICTING INNOVATION AND INCLUSION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Elena Franco, Mexico, 2018, 9:58

Juanita manages to turn her dreams into reality.

in 1985, Juanita was one of 16 Mexican women semifinalists in a contest that chose the first Mexican astronaut.  A pioneer for Mexican women, she created an opening for females in a field heretofore dominated by men.

From director Gabriela Iancu comes a documentary that celebrates the dedication of NASA’s space program to the successful landing of the first man on the Moon in July 1969, and the values that contributed to this historic moment: science, expertise, ingenuity, and hope. Drawn from thousands of hours of footage and original audio recordings from NASA’s archives, we witness the Apollo 11 mission to land on the Moon. The cinematic event unfolds from sunrise on launch day to splashdown with immersive sound design.

From the blackout opening scene of the lunar day, revealing features of the Moon and the speech made by President John F. Kennedy, to the thoughtful and meticulous preparations for the launch and the apocalyptic lift-off to Neil Armstrong’s legendary walk, the historical events play out at an epic scale. Edited and directed in an observational style, the film becomes a portrait of the many faces of humanity, and documents a fearless leap forward, a dream of the optimistic people of America made true.

Alien Abduction follows Missy, a young science prodigy, and her childhood best friend Yesenia. When Missy finds out she’s pregnant, she becomes distant and shifts her focus to the stars. Yesenia discovers an almost full term Missy secretly laying in a crop circle, for reasons that threaten to separate them forever. Together, they must confront whether their friendship can transcend space and time.

Alien Abduction, written by Candice D’Meza and directed by Nate Edwards, is part of a series of Afrofuturism micro-films entitled “30 Ways To Get Free”, which positions Abolition and Liberation within the worlds of science fiction. The films examine three of an unlimited number of ways Black people across the African Diaspora may triumphantly enter a free new world of their own imagining. Produced by The Catastrophic Theatre.