Sloan Science and Film

Satoshi Kon’s animated feature Paprika concerns a sleep researcher whose alter ego investigates criminal cases by entering her subject’s dreams. David Schwartz moderates this discussion with Harvard scientist Dr. Robert Stickgold, renowned for his work on sleep and dreaming, and film scholar Gilberto Perez, author of The Material Ghost.

The Fountain, a Sloan prizewinner at the 2006 Hamptons International Film Festival, moves between fantasy and science as it tells the story of a doctor trying to cure his wife’s cancer. Aronofksy and his writing partner Handel, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, discuss how they balance their interest in science with the demands of cinematic storytelling.

The directing-producing team of Howard and Grazer has made more than 25 films since they founded Imagine Entertainment in 1986. They discuss their collaborative working process and movies, including Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind, two of the most popular recent films that depict the lives and work of scientists.

Shane Carruth’s debut, an ingenious sci-fi thriller about a fraternity of innovators who develop a time-travel technology, won the Grand Jury prize and the Sloan prize at Sundance in 2004. David Schwartz moderates this discussion with writer-director Carruth, independent film producer George van Buskirk, and Jerome Swartz, inventor of bar-code scanning technology.