Dr. Alexis Gambis

Imagine Science Film producer

http://www.alexgambis.com

I am a French-Venezuelan biologist, Filmmaker, and a TED 2019 Fellow. My films combine documentary and fiction, oftentimes embracing animal perspectives. I have written and directed over a dozen shorts that have played at festivals worldwide. My first feature film ‘The Fly Room’, which has screened in over 50 cities, is based on the true story of the birth of modern genetics and was produced with support from the Spike Lee Production Fund and Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

I am in post-production on a second feature, ‘Son of Monarchs’, which delves into issues of immigration, migration and animal-human hybrids. My work aims at transforming the way science is communicated to the public through film and visual arts.

I received a PhD in Molecular Biology at the Rockefeller University and a master’s in fine arts from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. My first feature film ‘the Fly Room; about the birthplace of genetics in New York, has toured festivals and academic institutions worldwide ending with a theatrical release in New York, Paris, and Berlin in the fall of 2017.

I have been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Nature, Cell, TED, and WNYC. At New York University I teach in both the Biology and Film departments. My courses combine scientific research and storytelling often featuring animals as actors and blurring the lines between fact and fiction. I am also the founder and executive director of the Imagine Science Films Festival, an annual science film festival now celebrating its 10th anniversary. I also recently launched LABOCINE, a science film platform, research video database and magazine coined by reviewers as the “science new wave”

I define my work as a hybrid of research and visual storytelling, two entities in symbiosis and equally important to create original films. I take scientific data outside the connes of the lab and throw them into fictional landscapes, to infiltrate people’s imagination and echo with their personal lives, cultures, and politics. Science is a beautiful, malleable, and universal language to speak about the human condition across cultures and the state of our planet. I act as a messenger. I am an activist trying to lead a movement of radical transformation, where scientic research is transformed into artistic practices and fuels the minds of our future generations, that will make the right decisions about the future of our fragile system. I like to call this moment the science new wave.

Recently, my film Son of Monarchs won the New American Cinema Grand Jury Award at the 2021 Seattle International Film Festival and the Alfred P. Sloan Feature 2021 Feature Film Prize Winner at the Sundance Film Festival 2021.

GUARDIAN OF THE MANGROVES (doc fiction, 9 minutes, 2015) Fatouh, the Guardian of the Mangroves has not been seen for the last few decades. Some say he left after disputes with local tribes while others claim that it is increasing destruction and pollution of these ecosystems in the Arabian Gulf that have forced him out. And yet recently fishermenhave reported sightings of Fatouh. As we maneuver into the tiny mangrove islands inhabited by flamingoes and cormorants of Umm Al Quwain, we discover traces of this forgotten creature and reminisce about his life.

https://vimeo.com/142474983