Canberra Screening Weekend
Join us for a SCINEMA weekend at Mill Theatre Dairy Road. Festival Director Cris Kennedy introduces each session, with some special guests popping up to say hello. This program is curated as a 'Director's Choice' from the 300+ film entered into SCINEMA (scinema.net) in 2026. The standard of films is very high, but we promise an intimate and informal screening environment.
Saturday 22 August at Mill Theatre
12PM Session One - Mini-playlist ‘Best of 2026 short films’: 12.00 Women in STEM at the Royal Australian Mint (5 mins, Australia, Leigh Adey) + 12.05 B-Cells: A Chemotherapy Poem (4mins, USA, William Doan) A visual and poetic journey through the experience of chemotherapy for Large B Cell Lymphoma. 12.10 + Soraya in the Land of Nod (3 mins, India, Leela Dutta) A girl named Soraya is sent to sleep by a Sleep Sprite - based on the scientific stages of sleep. + 12.15 Trading Cards (15 mins, Australia, Radheya Jang) A dark fantasy animated film about the weight of living with Obsessive-compulsive disorder. + 12.30 Overlooked : A Silent Extinction (25 mins, UK, Cathy Ellington) Decline in giraffe populations explored. + 12.55 Burnt Country (17 mins, Australia, Kirsten Slemint) Traditional Indigenous techniques for land management through fire. Session One ends 1.15PM Get tickets here (Select 12pm Sat 22 Aug)
1.30PM Session Two - Physics for Poets (90mins, USA, Gina Payzant). Blending historical drama with magical realism, the film unfolds over one pivotal night in 1633, as Galileo grapples with truth, power, and consequence. Session Two ends 3PM Get tickets here (Select 1.30pm Sat 22 Aug)
3.15 Filmmaker intro Flightline (19mins, USA, Nisha Balaram) Connecting two groundbreaking moments in aviation history: the Wright brothers’ first flight on Earth and NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter’s first flight on Mars.+ 3.45 Cosmic Coda (86mins, USA, MJ Doherty) In 1985 MIT grad students search for gravity. 30 years and 1 Nobel prize later they find it. Session Three ends 5.15PM Get tickets here (Select 3.15pm Sat 22 Aug)
5.45pm Liz Lea presents Dance on Film program: Dessaim (20mins, France, Maxime Pelletier-Huot) A choreographic project offers an intimate look at the interdisciplinary collaboration between artists, engineers, and researchers as they push the boundaries of robotic expressivity. + She Measures the Earth (18mins, Canada, Ching You) Four women scientists in Canada reshape who belongs to science. + World Premiere Christopher Knowlton’s Deus Ex Machina Doctrina (8mins, USA, Christopher Knowlton) An experimental dance film that examines the deification of new technologies, the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for dance, and the extractive forces underpinning generative AI. Session Four ends 6.45PM Get tickets here (Select 5.45pm Sat 22 Aug)
“Overlooked and under-appreciated, the tallest animal on the planet is suffering.”
“Many things have changed; many things have NOT changed: scientists are human beings after all!”
“Ai knows no body. Ai moves through us. Ai cannot dance, except through us. Ai moves through me, and I move through Ai.”
11.00am Session One: Mini-playlist ‘Mexico on screen’: El Chichón is Still Alive (40 mins, Mexico, Ali Zare) A still active volcano in Chiapas Mexico and the researchers studying it. + 11.40 Through Abe's eyes (18 mins, Mexico, Melissa Yaeth) Embracing Mexican Magic Realism. + 12.00 It Blooms from Within (21 mins, United Kingdom, Oliver Hill) Yucatan’s cenotes, underground water systems, face pollution issues. Session One ends 12.25pm Get tickets here (Select 11am Sun 23 Aug)
12.45pm Session Two: Mini-playlist ‘Medical Docs’: Social Anxiety Disorder (5 mins, Chih Hao Shen) A pastiche of animation styles create a sense of anxiety. + 12.50 ‘C’ is for Cherry (9mins, Italy, Francesco Piro) Intimately follows the day-to-day routine of Andrea, an elderly man living with Parkinson’s disease. + 1.00 Imperfect Days (27mins, Ireland, David Qualter) How clinical trials and patient and public involvement (PPI) are helping to shape better diabetes care. + 1.25 Giving Back Breath (20mins, USA, Courtney Crowder & Chad Cohen) The long road from cystic fibrosis suffering to discovery and the lives changed along the way. + 1.45 Blue Blood (23 mins, UK, Neeve Ó Flynn-Mundin) Horseshoe Crab blood is the basis of numerous injectable medical innovations. Session Two ends 2.05pm Get tickets here (Select 12.45pm Sun 23 Aug)
2.30pm Session Three: Hunting Yellow Pigs (71 mins, USA, 2025, Directed by Jon Roberts) For over half a century, David Kelly has run the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program for high schoolers. Teachers especially will appreciate the man and his impact. Filmmakers Jon Roberts and Ming-I Huang join us over Zoom to answer questions. Session Three ends 3.50PM Get tickets here (Select 2.30pm Sun 23 Aug)
4.00pm Guest speaker: Canadian artist & filmmaker Peter McLeish on AI in Art, featuring The None of Us (4mins, Canada, Peter McLeish). Peter believes it is important to promote unity between art and science in order to create a better understanding of the natural world, with his practice recently turning toward generative biology and by simulating life-like processes in digital environments. Session Four ends 4.50pm Get tickets here (Select 4.00pm Sun 23 Aug)
5.00pm Session Five Prompt: Make a Documentary (95 mins, Australia, Zeke Morgan-Hind). Perth filmmaker Zeke Morgan-Hind’s film explores how AI is impacting the film production and education landscape at a pace faster than curricula can keep pace with the technological change. Session Five ends 6.45pm Get tickets here (Select 5.00pm Sun 23 Aug)
Sunday 23 August at Mill Theatre
“About 43 years ago, the El Chichón volcano in Mexico erupted and, within seconds, claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people.”
“we unearth what mathematics is, its connection to art, and we show how the way we treat each other, especially when someone is wrong, directly affects human progress and innovation.”
“asks whether AI will empower a new generation of storytellers or quietly erode the human values that define cinema”