1960–1962. The international science film exhibition at the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica “Leonardo da Vinci” in Milan: The engineer’s solution to the problem of bridging museum, science, and cinema

• Published in: Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) England), 2019-01, Vol.28 (1), p.119-126
• Main Authors: Canadelli, Elena, Casonato, Simona
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 20th century; Entertainment; Galaxies; Historians; Knowledge management; Motion pictures; Museums; Production; Science; Scientific knowledge
• ISSN: 0963-6625; 1361-6609
• DOI: 10.1177/0963662518787564

In the first half of the twentieth century, under the label “scientific film,” we find a complex galaxy of genres, including dissemination, didactic and research films. Since the very beginning, film-making played a pivotal role in the production of scientific knowledge (Wellmann, 2011: 325) as well as in the popularization of science (Boon, 2008; Gouyon, 2016; Vidal, 2018). Researchers used films for “making movies for projection at conferences as well as in lecture halls, museums and other public venues, not to mention for breaking down into individual frames for analysis” (Olszynko-Gryn, 2016: 279). The relationship cinema enjoys with science, however, has always been “imprecise” (Gouyon, 2016: 19), and its study has only been undertaken recently by science historians (Gaycken, 2015: 7; Wellmann, 2011: 312). The fruitful tension occurring when cinema intersects with science, “between artifice/entertainment on one side, and evidence/science on the other” (Gouyon, 2016: 19), becomes even more cogent if we think of the use of film in scientific museums, where research and education are traditionally requested to coexist with entertainment and aesthetic pleasure.