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By journeying to the depths of the ocean to study bioluminescent sea creatures, Edie Widder, president of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association in Florida, has witnessed firsthand the strange, vibrant colours of deep-sea life. In a stroke of inventive inspiration, Widder has taken her work with bioluminescent life and applied it to the ongoing problem of invisible pollution, which is putting the world’s oceans and waterways in peril. A short documentary by the Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney, Speaking With Light is a meditation on hidden problems, inventive solutions and beautifully simple science.
Director: Alex Gibney
Producer: Alexis Bloom
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Technology and the self
A filmmaker finds a tactile beauty in the creation of her prosthetic leg
11 minutes
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Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
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Biology
Beetles take flight at 6,000 frames per second in this perspective-shifting short
9 minutes
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War and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
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Physics
What does it look like to hunt for dark matter? Scenes from one frontier in the search
7 minutes
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Biology
An elegy for a dying microbe explores what we really mean by ‘death’
9 minutes
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Biotechnology
It’s our responsibility to engineer corals that can weather the world we’ve created
11 minutes
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Physics
Imagining spacetime as a visible grid is an extraordinary journey into the unseen
12 minutes
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Engineering
For one of nature’s great builders, finding a mate means weaving the perfect nest
4 minutes