Sneak Peek at The Bio:Fiction Film Festival

In May 2011 the Bio:Fiction Film Festival will be held at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. It's a competition for short films about synthetic biology.  It's meant to go beyond mere genetic engineering:

Synthetic biology is based on genetic engineering but goes much further. In genetic engineering the goal was to manipulate an organism’s genes, usually by transferring one gene from a donor to a host organisms. Synthetic biology, on the other hand, aims at creating whole new biological functions, systems and eventually organisms.

They are also clear on what it's not:

Synthetic Biology is NOT about cloning; stem cells per se; only reading DNA; random mutation through radiation or chemicals, old school genetic engineering (e.g. Monsanto GM crops)!

So what exactly do they have in mind?  You can check out the festival trailers to get a taste of what sort of entries they are looking for – unfortunately the deadline was today, so it's too late to submit your own.




The film festival will be accompanied by a BioArt exhibition, also at the Natural History Museum.

I'm hoping the finalist films will be shared online for those of us who can't make it to Vienna.