ABOUT THE PROJECT
LOGLINE
Two generations of scientists, 33 years apart, search for gravitational waves. Same filmmaker, same lead scientist, tell us how it feels to be an astrophysicist searching for the incomprehensible boundaries of the universe.
SYNOPSIS
COSMIC CODA begins in 1985 when MJ Doherty, then a film grad student, made a cinema verité film called Gravity—about curmudgeonly Dr Rainer Weiss (‘Rai’) and his grads dashing about, building a gravitational wave antenna at MIT. Back then, the idea of detecting an actual gravitational wave was only slightly more plausible than dancing on Mars. Gravity is an UnDoc—process scenes laced together with cartoons and irreverent asides, concerned as much with the humanity behind the science as with the science itself. MJ finished her film, received an award, then stuffed Gravity in her closet: that story was over.
Except it wasn’t. Thirty years later Rai detected the first gravitational wave; in 2017, he co-won the Nobel Prize. MJ’s ancient film suddenly mattered—as the only case of an epic experiment’s earliest days captured on film and that by sheer coincidence.
By 2022 things have changed—technologically of course, but even more important, Rai’s protégés, many of whom are women, now run the show. In fact Lisa Barsotti, Rai’s former student, is about to launch an experiment promising to blow gravitational science wide open. COSMIC CODA tells both stories, Lisa’s and Rai’s, and does so in the present tense. So, whether it’s 1985 or 2022 viewers witness events as they unfold. This way the 2017 Nobel Prize comes as a surprise, only to be followed by yet another surprise, as a new set of players pushes the science forward. And with the same filmmaker and same main character (Rai, now 90, irascible as ever) spanning the decades, COSMIC CODA reveals what has not changed: it turns out that the film’s subjects—lovely, messy, gloriously complex scientists—are human beings after all.
PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature
DIRECTOR MJ Doherty
PRODUCER MJ Doherty
WEBSITE maryjanedoherty.com/cosmic-coda-this
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