Scinema

The SCINEMA International Science Film Festival is an Australian film festival celebrating international science-related drama and documentary films. The festival was founded with the aim of forging links between the sciences and the arts. SCINEMA accepts entries from all over the world. It is a program of Australia's Science Channel, operated by the Royal Institution of Australia.

History
The festival was founded in 2000 by Rebecca Scott and Damian Harris, with the aim of forging links between the sciences and the arts.. The inaugural edition took place at the Center Cinema in Canberra in 2001, hosted by CSIRO.

In 2005, the director of the festival was Chris Kennedy, of the CSIRO. In that year, films covered diverse topics, including the history of asbestos, the use of lithium for psychiatric conditions, the evolution of beer, and, from Melbourne filmmaker Klaus Toft, a film about the relationship between orcas and humans in Killers in Eden.

After a hiatus from 2014 to 2015, the Royal Institution of Australia took over hosting the festival. The 2016 festival received over 1,300 submissions from over 80 countries, with 240 screenings around Australia and one on the Davis Station in Antarctica.

In 2017, the festival hosted 317 events around Australia, involving more than 37,000 people participants.

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia from 2020, live screenings were limited, but streaming screenings attracted over 100,000 viewers.

Description
The festival also hosts a community screening program as part of National Science Week, where community groups and schools can register to run their own screening program.

Reception
One reviewer said of the 14th edition of the festival in 2017: "The most noticeable thing about the films is that, collectively and individually, they are less explicitly about science and more about us. These are very human stories about how we engage with the world — with the things in it, and with each other."