Science and ideas are an integral part of culture, art, film and documentary and this dedicated strand - Ideas & Science supported by the Wellcome Trust - illuminates creativity, highlights controversy and brings experimentation to the heart of Doc/Fest. Comedian Robin Ince, broadcaster Jon Snow and an eclectic mix of filmmakers, big thinkers, digital creatives and campaigners will make waves and push the boundaries across the films, live events and sessions as well as the Virtual Reality Arcade at the Site Gallery and Interactive Exhibition at the Millennium Gallery.
Special events
Jon Snow, Ingvil Giske (prod: Good Girl) and Teresa Camou (dir: of Sunu) will explore how to turn controversial topics into compelling documentaries in Making Waves, Courting Controversy chaired by Sophie Heawood; comedian Robin Ince and friends on unthinkable and quirky commissions in Final Frontiers 101;agony aunt, psychotherapist, author and TV presenter Philippa Perry in conversation with fellow agony aunt, journalist and celebrated author Virginia Ironside inSex, Lies and Love Bitesand a Science Commissioning Panel will look at how the latest talent, trends, technology is pushing the boundaries of science programming, and how programme-makers can make their ideas stand out from the crowd. Other sessions include: Re-framing Climate Changehow can climate change be reframed, not just as an environmental issue, but one which affects all aspects of life? Sound of the Cosmos: The Making of...comedian Chella Quint and the collaborators of Sounds of the Cosmos (which features in the Special Events programme) for a behind the scenes look at the art, science and audiovisual design of bringing a breathtaking voyage to the outer limits of the universe to life.
The University of Sheffield Departments of Music and Physics/Astronomy, Festival of The Mind and Sheffield Doc/Fest will present Sounds of the Cosmosat the Crucible Theatre. A breath-taking voyage to the outer limits of the universe as Gustav Holst's The Planets will be performed by the Sheffield Rep. Orchestra conducted by George Morton, accompanied by images of interplanetary odysseys and newly commissioned visuals by Sheffield creative design agency Human and a commentary from astronomer and Paul Crowther who is also a creative producer with Stewart Campbell. There will also be a session looking at the making of the piece, see Sessions' below.
International Docs
Emmy Award-winning director Robert Kenner's latest film Merchants of Doubtlooks at the world of spin and punditry within the American science industry; The Visitis an entirely speculative, based around a hypothetical encounter with the extraterrestrial kind. Danish filmmaker Michael Madsen has made a film that turns the focus back towards humanity: who are we, as an Other might see us?; Teresa Camou Guerrero's Sunu(world premiere) explores rural maize farmer's wisdom and the battle against GM seeds in Mexico; Containment(UK premiere) by Peter Gallison and Robb Moss chronicles the complexities of managing nuclear waste after Fukushima; My Beautiful Broken Brain (UK premiere), Lotje Sodderlands recording of her recovery from a brain haemorrhage and subsequent aphasia - a condition affecting her use of language - with filmmaker Sophie Robinson; Tonje Hessen Schei's Drone, exploring the covert CIA drone war; short movie The Archipelago(world premiere) dealing with whaling, protest, and tradition on the Faroe Islands, by Benjamin Huguet; Alison Rose's astronaut road-movie docStar Men(world premiere), and Marc Schmidt's screening about re-socialising simians The Chimpanzee Complex(UK premiere); the deeply personal Good Girl (UK premiere), directed by Solveig Melkeraaen as she recalls her past experiences with depression whilst continuing her battle with the disease.
Interactive at Sheffield
Within the Crossover Summit Mel Woods: Serendipityfrom the University of Dundee will talk about how to bring serendipity back into our lives, and Karen Palmer(neuroscientist, Syncself2) and Brendan Walker(Thrill Engineer, Oscillate) and Erinma Ochu(neuroscientist turned interactive storyteller) will explore the brave new world of immersive storytelling in Reality Bites Back.
As part of Ideas & Science Interactive at Sheffield will showcase: Karen Palmer's neuro-game Syncself 2which reads your brain to get you in the mindstate of a parkour athlete; Brendan Walker at the Thrill Laboratory Oscillate, an immersive interactive art installation based on the multi millennia-old rope swing; Ryan and Amy Green share their family's intimate journey coping with their five-year-old son's terminal cancer diagnosis in videogame That Dragon, Cancer; a brand new underwater experiencePolar Sea 360project by DEEP; and May Abdalla and Amy Rose of Anagram who brought Door Into the Dark to Doc/Fest last year (which just won the Storyscapes Award at the Tribeca Film Festival), will be bringing us The Reality Reality Show.
About the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to improving health. It supports bright minds in science, the humanities and the social sciences, as well as education, public engagement and the application of research to medicine. www.wellcome.ac.uk
About Doc/Fest:
Sheffield Doc/Fest is the UKs premier documentary and digital media festival. It is the place to see world and UK premieres of the best creative documentaries from the cinema, television and online arenas, and to hear from and meet filmmakers at Q&A sessions. Highlights of the film programme are honoured with an award programme including the Sheffield Grand Jury, Innovation, Environmental, Interactive, Youth Jury, Inspiration, Student Doc, Short Form and Audience Awards. In 2014, 3,263 full festival pass holders attended the Festival and it attracted over 26,700 member
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Science and ideas are an integral part of culture, art, film and documentary and this dedicated strand - Ideas & Science supported by the Wellcome Trust - illuminates creativity, highlights controversy and brings experimentation to the heart of Doc/Fest. Comedian Robin Ince, broadcaster Jon Snow and an eclectic mix of filmmakers, big thinkers, digital creatives and campaigners will make waves and push the boundaries across the films, live events and sessions as well as the Virtual Reality Arcade at the Site Gallery and Interactive Exhibition at the Millennium Gallery.
