Belén Vidal was a guest speaker at AFO – Academia Film Olomouc, the 59th Festival of Science Documentary Films. AFO is an annual event in Olomouc, Czechia, in partnership with Palacký University Olomouc. As part of the Science in Pop Culture strand, Belén introduced a screening of The Imitation Game (2014) to the festival audience and gave a talk at MUO (Olomouc’s museum of modern art) entitled ‘Dramatizing scientific discovery in the biopic’.
Abstract: From Edison, the Man (1940) to Oppenheimer (2023), the biopic has visualised science and the scientific process in myriad ways. While the Hollywood studio picture popularised real-life scientists as entrepreneurs, humanitarians and rebels, the scientist biopic has served pedagogic, nation-building but also counter-historical narratives in many other film industries around the world. In this talk I explore how the biopic’s storytelling conventions and memorable tropes naturalise myths of scientific genius, to test the ways in which screen bio-fictions diversify and sometimes challenge public histories of individual achievement and scientific progress.