$6,700 grant will support films and conversations exploring Indigenous knowledge, science, and healing during Block Cinema’s 25th anniversary year

Block Cinema at Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art has been awarded a $6,700 Science on Screen grant for the 2026–27 season. The grant, awarded by the Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, will bring films into conversation with scientists, scholars, filmmakers, and community partners.

The new series explores the relationship between Indigenous knowledge and contemporary science. Programs will consider butterfly genetics, ancestral healing practices, medicinal mushrooms, and foraging, with a focus on Mexico and the movement of knowledge across borders. The series will be part of Projecting the Future: Block Cinema at 25, a year of programs marking the cinema’s 25th anniversary.

“Science on Screen gives us a way to bring people with different kinds of expertise into the same room,” said Michael Metzger, Pick-Laudati Academic Curator of Media Arts and Director of Block Cinema. “This series will use film to open conversations about whose knowledge is recognized, how it is passed down, and what we can learn when scientific and cultural perspectives meet.” 

The series includes Alexis Gambis’s SON OF MONARCHS (2021), about a biologist whose return to his hometown near a monarch butterfly forest prompts questions about identity and Indigenous knowledge; a 35mm presentation of Nicolás Echevarría’s CABEZA DE VACA (1991), accompanied by a discussion of ancestral healing and conservation; and Echevarría’s MARÍA SABINA, SPIRIT WOMAN (1979), a documentary portrait of the Mazatec healer and poet. A live, two-projector program featuring Elena Pardo and Azucena Losana’s NANACATEPEC (2024) and Pardo’s POR DENTRO SOMOS COLOR (2024) will explore mushrooms, foraging, and community practices in Mexico. Dates and guest speakers will be announced as they are confirmed.

Block Cinema has previously used Science on Screen to connect film with urgent questions in ecology, medicine, and the history of science. Its recent Watching the Weather series examined how filmmakers and scientists make the effects of environmental change visible. As with all Block Cinema programs, the 2026–27 screenings will be free and open to the public.

Science on Screen is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation that pairs films with presentations by experts in science, technology, and medicine.