About.
Company
New Zealand International Film Festival
Duration
82 minutes
Advisory
Exempt
Aotearoa New Zealand
In English
Science in Dark Times follows the work of a remarkable woman, Dame Juliet Gerrard, Jacinda Ardern's Chief Science Advisor, through three years of dramatic crises, including the Whakaari White Island eruption and the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This remarkable documentary follows Juliet Gerrard, Jacinda Ardern’s Chief Science Advisor, through three years of dramatic crises, including the Whakaari White Island eruption and the unfolding of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Dame Juliet Gerrard has become a central figure in the way Aotearoa New Zealand reacts to crises, providing important scientific advice from which our leaders take guidance. Recorded over three extraordinary years (that saw some of the most significant local and global emergencies of our time), documentary filmmaker Shirley Horrocks captures the woman at the forefront of it all.
The film, which had its world premiere at NZIFF 2021, examines Juliet’s unorthodox trajectory, from graduating with first-class honours at Oxford to her marriage and 1997 move to Christchurch, and welcomes us into the scientist’s laboratory and the “bunker”, the national emergency headquarters in the basement of the Beehive. On-the-job footage is supplemented with quiet, unobserved moments: at home, or holidaying on Aotearoa Great Barrier Island. The filmmaker’s intimate access presents a portrait of the woman as both an immaculate professional and humorous, down-to-earth individual.
Horrocks, a veteran filmmaker of 30 years and known for her documentaries on artists, continues her pivot to scientific subjects. Having previously examined the work of physicist Sir Paul Callaghan and the Transit of Venus astronomy event, she now shines a light on a pioneering woman, accomplished scientist and remarkable yet underexposed role model. — Adrian Hatwell
“I find that leading scientists have a lot in common with artists, in their energy and their ability to think creatively. Like our artists, they are too little known. They ought to be household names yet many of them never gain a public profile.”
— Shirley Horrocks
