Inspiration of Astronomy in the Movies: a history of a close encounter

GARCIA, B; REINOSO, E; PEREZ, S.; GABELLONE, R.

Bath

Conferencia; The seventh international conference on The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena INSAP VII; 2010

Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, University of Wales, Lampeter.

<!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> The connection between astronomy and an independent, widespread cultural expression like cinematography is of particular interest within the context of the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena. Astronomy has caught the interest of the seventh art since its birth, early in the 20th Century. In this work we go through a collection of movies that reveal how astronomy and astronomers are perceived by society. We notice the influence of the progress achieved in astronautics in the second half of the past century, and how interplanetary or even intergalactic travels have become a recurrent issue. In many cases, astronomical facts are rigorously treated, but several other times, serious mistakes are transmitted. Biographical movies based on astronomical celebrities are rare, but some are really master pieces, like Giordano Bruno by Giuliano Montaldo, or Galileo Galilei by Liliana Cavani. In this sense, the Astronomers as main characters in cinema, support the idea of a scientist as a common human been, connected with life and in many cases, with a social responsibility. From the analysis of more than a hundred movies, we can see that this particular manifestation of art, which involves science and technology, can be used not only to reproduce astronomical events, transmit a message or reproduce a particular epoch of science history, but also to teach, to develop the critical behavior in front of the information from media, and to show that astronomical facts can be as interesting, relevant, dramatic, happy or funny as real life.