200 Nuns Walk into a Movie Theater...

It sounds like the beginning of a joke but that is exactly what happened in Sydney, Australis on the 24 April 1938. The picture here shows a huge nun ensemble, gathered together to watch Tarzan’s Revenge.  OK, so that is a complete lie.  The movie that the nuns were so keen to watch was “Cloistered” which, as you have probably guessed, was all about nuns. French nuns.  French nuns going about their daily lives.

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To get access to a convent in this way was very unusual at this time, so for director Robert Alexandre it was something of a coup.  Likewise, in Sydney, hundreds of nuns descending on a cinema at the same time was considered newsworthy (even though the young man on the left of the picture above seems distracted - girl trouble of another kind, no doubt). It all gets a little meta.  The media was curious about nuns who were curious to see a film about nuns, about whose lives little was known.  Regardless, the nuns do seem to be looking forward to the event.

Shattering Stars - the Story of the Indian Scientist Mocked for his Ideas

You may not have heard of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-95) – but that’s no problem – you are about to.  When studying in the 1930s at Cambridge, Chandra was mocked for his idea that not all stars become white dwarves at the end of their lifecycle.  He believed that when stars achieved a certain mass, they would form something denser – denser than anything that had been previously observed.

In fact, Chandra was the first scientist to start thinking about what we now call black holes.  After his now infamous knockback, Chandra’s life took a different path but he still won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his work on stellar evolution.  This is his story – and great use is made of recordings of Chandrasekhar himself.  It is directed by Peter Galison, a historian of science at Harvard University.  Special mention should be made about the wonderful art direction and animation by Shiv Kachiwala.

Galison’s short film sheds light on the life and achievements of one of the 20th century’s most remarkable scientific thinkers, while also examining how scientific endeavours are sometimes influenced by human flaws.

The Ice Builders (or How to Create your own Glacier)

In the Himalayan mountains of Northern India, life has never been easy.  However, there are new pressures on the traditional life of the Zanskar valley, coming from external sources. As the narrator of The Ice Builders says, the Tibetans are “the first victims of climate changes” but adds “very soon, you will all be victims too.” This is said in a very matter-of-fact way and not as a threat – but something inevitable.

The people of Zanskar, part of the Ladakh region, depended on the glaciers, at the bottom of which they built their villages.  Over the past 15 years, however, the local people have been forced to not count on the presence of the glaciers for their water anymore.  They have disappeared.  This film, directed by Francesco Clerici and Tommaso Barbaro focuses on how the Ladakhi people (particularly Sonam Wangchuk – activist and engineer) have responded to this.

The solution has not been to give up, pack their bags and move away. Stories from the past inspired these people to build artificial glaciers. Of course, the methods used to create them had been lost to time so today’s Ladakhi have had to reinvent the wheel, as such.   Using modern science, Wangchuk’s solution has been to create what he calls “stupas of ice”.  And they are spectacular.

Watch the video below – a testament to human ingenuity in the face of adversity.