Team:TU-Delft/HumanOutreach/Documentary

Documentary Lab-Life

Frank Theys makes a documentary about us and a few other labteams which will be broadcasted in several countries.
The TU Delft 2012 team will be on seen on Belgian, Dutch and German television next year! During this project a Flemish documentary film director, Frank Theys was filming the team for his documentary Lab-Life. This full-length documentary is focused on how modern scientific research is being carried out, from the idea-conception through research, to results and publication. This documentary will become a real international scope on research, including multicultural aspects.

Frank Theys started to record our team from the very beginning. The film director recorded many brainstorm sessions, and followed us till the final topic, Snifferomyces! Knowing what this project will be about, he started to film the amazing lab team while preforming experiments, but also the modellers who explain the importance of their contribution in the scientific world. And will film the final presentation at the Jamboree. Furthermore another interesting part of this documentary will be the focus on societal implications. The problems what comes with scientific research and the solutions and breakthroughs will be shown to a very brought audience on the television senders NOS, VRT and ZDF next year.

By participating in this documentary our team will let a broad audience know about the daily life in the laboratory in the fields of the new technologies (NBIC). The team will inform people about what scientific research is about today. This means more than just doing lab work. Also other daily aspects that are connected to the research were filmed by Frank, like funding, public relations, social events, the team’s expectations of the research and possible applications, basically the whole biotope around a modern research team.

We are one of the first iGEM teams that a documentary has been done for it. Thus, the film may constitute a useful material for the following iGEM teams!

Who is Frank Theys? – Our film director

Frank Theys is a film and theatre director and visual artist. His work has been shown worldwide and belongs to the collections of a.o. the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Centre National de la Cinématographie (Paris). He received several international awards and the honourable title of Cultural Ambassador of Flanders. Currently he works on a documentary film called 'Lab-Life' in which he follows the daily life around a few scientific research projects. One of these projects is the iGEM team of TUDelft that he considers as an ideal project to introduce the world of science to a broad audience. Frank Theys has an MD in Philosophy and is currently doing a PhD in the Arts at the KULeuven. He teaches media art at the St-Lucas Art Academy in Ghent and art philosophy at the ArtScience Interfaculty at the Royal Art Academy in Den Hague.