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This Friday, the Imagine Science Film Festival launches its seven-day nomadic mission across New York City, showing shorts and feature flicks in spaces ranging from Brooklyn bars to CUNY to the TriBeca Cinemas. It’s a cool idea, and possibly the best of its kind: showing not science-fiction or straight-up science docs, but story-stories that involve science in a way that is actually accurate, not just science as a non-scientist filmmaker imagines it to be.

Like: Capucine, a film about a film shot and edited by a monkey; Darkened Horizons, an animated film about the Gulf oil disaster and its impacts; The Gynecologist, about a gynecologist whose next patient just happens to be a dude; and Seed, by Motherboard’s Hugo Perez, a dystopia where the world’s seeds have become its most precious commodity. 30 films in all, from 10 different countries.

I talked to the fest’s director and founder, Alexis Gambis, yesterday afternoon about his vision for the ISFF, why the science community has such a hard time connecting to the public, and how badly sci-fi has screwed up our image of the people that do science. (Hint: they have sex and go to bars like the rest of us.)

Motherboard: What’s the creation story of the ISFF? How did this start?
Alexis Gambis: I am myself a scientist; did a PhD in genetics. Came to the states [from Paris] about seven years ago to pursue a career in science. Enrolled in Rockefeller University on the Upper East Side. I studied genetics and cancer biology for about six years. I studied the fruit fly as my model organism. Midway through my PhD, it became more apparent that I was more interested in communicating science, and sort of the aesthetics of science.

I was really passionate about microscopes and the visualization of science. I started taking film classes, and started making small movies in my laboratory. And that’s sort of where the festival began. I became the coordinator of a film series that started at Rockefeller. The idea was to show science films to the scientific community and have them engage in talking about how they view science and film. You know, stereotypes of scientists—and the real dilemma, which is how do you make science exciting but accurate?

And that’s sort of our mission: incorporate science into stories, but credible science. You don’t have to destroy the science to make it exciting. There’s so many stereotypes and misconceptions about what a laboratory looks like or what a scientist does on a daily basis. I felt the urge to become a voice in that, and try to rectify that. That’s where the film series began, and that led to me contacting various venues around town for a citywide festival in 2008.

MB: Why do you think the scientific community has trouble interacting with the public?
AG: The main challenges are that there’s such a gap between the scientific community and the public and it’s a really contradictory feeling where a lot of people are really interested in science and a lot of people are really excited by science, but either they don’t grasp it or it’s not deconstructed in such a way that they can understand it.

And there’s also just a lot of misconceptions that come from science-fiction films. We definitely support science-fiction but there’s a lot of films out there that portray the sort of mad scientist, the sage or the delusional scientist, or the scientist that has no social skills. Stereotypes that we try to counter.

So the goal was more than a festival but a community where scientists can engage, collaborate, and show films—and that’s sort of the idea behind Imagine Science. It’s not about science per say, but it’s about people, places, relationships, mysteries, music videos, and all that. Science always interweaves into the story, so it’s almost like swallowing a pill. We try to make something people can relate to, but they’re also learning about science.

MB: Where do you think the failures in communicating about science come from?
AG: The issue is coming from I think three points. First of all, the scientific community is not engaged with the public. There’s a responsibility from the scientific community to communicate. After all, the public is funding their research.

And then there’s the media, which is really focused on the breakthroughs and the controversies. There’s not enough emphasis on the actual process of doing science. You always hear about the really simplified end result, but it’s never really about the process.

And the media tends to cover a lot of applied science—something that cures diseases or has some effect on society. There’s not enough coverage of basic research, like understanding how the wings are formed on the patterns of butterflies. So I think definitely that the media doesn’t focus enough on the scientific process and how creative it is to come up with ideas and hypothesize, thinking outside of the box, having the imagination to come up with revolutionary ideas.

MB: Is fighting for science part of the scientist’s role? Or should that role simply be doing science?
AG: There’s definitely a need to fight for it, and explain how science is in our everyday lives and affects us in so many ways. Back 200 years ago, science used to be really connected to philosophers, the philosophy of science. These people really thought of the implications of their work. Science is really organically part of our life.

MB: The ISFF is, safe to say, a bit more arthouse than network TV, or it is at least geared toward the already curious. I wonder what it takes to present something like, say, the Higgs to like a prime time Fox News crowd? Or should you bother?
AG: That’s one of our challenges. The nature of the film festival, you’re getting people that are inherently interested in the films. The way we try to get as diverse as an audience as possible—some events, and not to say anything bad about other events, but [some] attract a really specific kind festival-goer. The way we try to diversify is by having a diversity of venues. And we get a lot of homemade videos made by scientists, working in labs that pick up a camera. We have venues in academic institutions and we have them in partnerships with science events around the city.

We’re attracting the scientists and the scientific community. And then we also have an event with the Secret Science Club, which is all about inviting a scientist to speak at bars in Brooklyn. We have a mix of people at the different points. Every venue definitely attracts a different kind of audience, whether it’s in Brooklyn or at CUNY in midtown. The fact that it’s somewhat of a traveling film festival definitely affects the scope and audience.

MB: Is the relationship between science and film going to get better in the future?
AG: I think it is changing. There’s a lot more science and arts programs that are popping up here and there. There’s this push to show that science is really creative and artistic. There’s so much science shown on television and in movies, there’s inherently an interest. We’re just here to put the spotlight on films that show that science can be communicated in accurate ways and can also be exciting. We’re here to put a check on films we consider to be good science films and bad science films.

I feel like what we can do with science and the breakthroughs in science in terms of understanding so many things are going to have an impact in culture in society, whether it’s global warming or overpopulation or extending the life span. It’s just so integrated into our lives. I was just reading on Motherboard about the bionic man. That’s sort of the physical representation of how science and people are interwoven. There’s so much happening and a lot of the public doesn’t know. And decisions are made not fully understanding all the facts. Stem cell research, and all these things. Before getting into any kind of debate, it’s important to just kind of explain things, deconstruct them for the audience.

Film can have such a powerful impact. I consider it almost like a dangerous weapon.

Click for tickets and show times.

Enjoy a bit of behind-the-scenes video:

Behind The Scenes ISFF from Imagine Science Films on Vimeo.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.