One of this year’s top awards contenders is a film about Alan Turing, a World War II codebreaker who helped invent the first computer. Another is about Nobel-winning scientist Stephen Hawking looking for a unified theory to explain the entire universe. A third uses relativity and complex theories of alternate dimensions to fuel an outer-space adventure.
So with “The Imitation Game,” “The Theory of Everything” and “Interstellar” all hitting theaters in the next few weeks, the Sloan Foundation has picked an appropriate time for its 2014 Sloan Film Summit, one component of which sports the title “Science and the Art of Storytelling.”
Science, says director Werner Herzog in this just-released video about the conference, is “the last bastion of true adventure.” Herzog goes on to compare science with filmmaking, which he says share “the same flame – the flame of discovery … the flame of trying to articulate who we are.”
The video also includes testimonials to the film/science connection from “Guardians of the Galaxy” screenwriter Nicole Perlman and “Another Earth” director Mike Cahill, among others, along with scenes from films like “The Imitation Game.”
The Sloan Film Summit is co-hosted by Film Independent and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which has awarded $4 million in grants to film students since it began in 1997.
The three-day summit will take place on Nov. 14-16 at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles, and will kick off with screenings of “The Theory of Everything” and the documentary “Particle Fever,” and then include two days of panels, workshops and networking sessions before concluding with a screening of “The Imitation Game.”
The Sunday program will be open to the public for the “Science and the Art of Storytelling” program, which includes a keynote from playwright and “House of Cards” creator Beau Willimon and advance looks at the Sloan-backed films “Basmati Blues,” with Brie Larson, Scott Bakula and Donald Sutherland; “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” with Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel; and “Experimenter,” with Peter Sarsgaard, Winona Ryder and Kellan Lutz.
Limited tickets will be available to the public at SloanSummit2014.org.
Watch the Sloan Film Summit video above.
