Filmmaker In Residence 2021
2021 Filmmaker in Residence, Alexis Gambis
The Woods Hole Film Festival is pleased to announce that filmmaker and biologist Alexis Gambis is the Filmmaker In Residence for the 30th edition of the Woods Hole Film Festival. French-Venezuelan Gambis, whose films combine documentary and fiction, often embraces animal perspectives and experiments with new forms of scientific storytelling.
His most recent feature SON OF MONARCHS, which screens in competition at the 30th Woods Hole Film Festival, dissects through issues of identity, (im)migration and animal/human evolution. After the death of his grandmother, a Mexican biologist living in New York returns to his hometown nestled in the majestic monarch butterfly forests of Michoacán. The journey forces him to confront past traumas and reflect on his new hybrid identity, launching him on a personal and spiritual metamorphosis.
The Mexican-American narrative premiered at Sundance in 2021 in the NEXT category and received the Sloan Feature Film Prize. It took home the Grand Jury Prize of the New American Competition at the 2021 Seattle International Film Festival. Screen Daily called the film a “a visually flamboyant film…a daring mosaic which floats like a butterfly.”
Alexis founded the Imagine Science Film Festival that recently celebrated its 13th year of showcasing the latest crop of science filmmaking from around the world. Four years ago, he launched the sister platform Labocine that provides a virtual ecosystem to experience science cinema online and to foster collaborations between scientists, artists and educators.
As a recipient of the 2019 TED Fellowship, Alexis’ TED Talk makes a case for more science in fiction to humanize the scientist in the public eye and to inform a broader audience on the interplay of research advancements, scientific representations and social issues.
He is currently working on his next feature “The Next Jaguar” that merges pressing issues about animal endangerment, climate change and indigenous rights with the controversial science of de-extinction.
As the Filmmaker In Residence, Alexis will offer a virtual master class in science filmmaking on Monday, August 1st and participate in a virtual discussion with Nipam Patel, Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory on Thursday, August 5th at 3 pm about how filmmakers and scientists collaborate to make films about complex scientific concepts. Director Patel’s lab participated in the production of SON OF MONARCHS and the MBL assisted Gambis with information and images for his prior feature film THE FLY ROOM.
