The López Piñero Institute for the History of Medicine and Science (joint centre of the CSIC and the University of Valencia), based at the Palau de Cerveró, introduces the film season on Biodiversity and Sustainability. The film Promised Land (Gus Van Sant, USA, 2012) will open the season on Thursday, 7 November. The second film, Medicine Man (John Mctiernan, USA, 1992) will be screened on Thursday, 14 November. The film to be shown the following Thursday is Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, Soviet Union, 1975). Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, USA, 1972) will close the season on Thursday, 28 November.

All films will be screened at 18:00 in the conference room at the Palau de Cerveró, in their original versions, with Spanish subtitles. A scientific expert in the matter will introduce the films. After the projection, there will be a discussion in which the audience can participate. The season will address, from several points of views, the importance of biodiversity on Earth and the impact that human activity has on it. There are multiple causes contributing to the destruction of ecosystems of great interest and to the deterioration of nature, such as resource extraction and air pollution, which will be covered during the season. Moreover, hunting, the introduction of exotic species and other actions have caused the extinction of many species.

In Promised Land, Steve Butler (Matt Damon), a salesman working for a large company, arrives in a rural town with his sales partner (Frances McDormand), with the offer to buy the drilling rights of the inhabitant’s properties. Steve will try to convince the people in that town, which has been hit hard by the economic crisis of recent years, of the benefits of drilling their land, but he will also have the opportunity to reconsider his life up to that moment.

Medicine Man takes place in the depths of the amazon rainforest, where veteran researcher Robert Campbell (Sean Connery) lives and works trying to find a cure for cancer. The company he works for, upon his request for help, sends researcher Rae Crane to work with him.

Dersu Uzala follows Capitan Vladimir Arsenyev and his detachment, who have to perform a geological survey in the forests of the Siberian taiga. They get lost due to the vastness of the territory and the harsh climate. Condemned to wander through the wilderness, Vladimir meets Dersu Uzala, a hunter nomad who knows the territory like the back of his hand and knows how to deal with the inclement weather. Dersu teaches Vladimir how to respect nature and live in harmony with it, a lesson that he will not forget for the rest of his life.

Lastly, Silent Running tells the story of a scientist (Bruce Dern) in a space station, who is responsable for keeping alive the last botanical species on Earth, but is ordered to destroy them.