For the second year running, the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) and Filmoteca Vasca have programmed a film for schools thanks to the collaboration of the San Sebastian Festival through the initiative Belodromoa ikastetxeetan. This time round, the chosen title is Harrapatu bandera (Capture the Flag) and hundreds of schoolchildren throughout Gipuzkoa aged from 6 to 11 years will be able to enjoy the film in their classroom, dubbed into Basque.

The Covid-19 pandemic has put the velodrome out of use as a giant film theatre, meaning that this year, exceptionally, the screenings for schoolchildren will move into the classrooms. However, the activity renamed ‘Belodromoa ikastetxeetan’ will maintain its essence and will once again combine the magic of cinema with science, given that the screening will have the recorded video presentation of Eneko Axpe, a Basque physicist who works for the NASA and at Stanford University.

Precisely, the animated feature film Harrapatu bandera, directed by Enrique Gato, follows Mike, aged 12, the son and grandson of astronauts, whose dream has always been to win the game “capture the flag”. In order to reconcile his family, he must capture history's most important flag: the one planted on the Moon by the astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission.

To convey a positive image of science, Eneko Axpe will introduce the film, talk about his experience at the NASA and offer, at a subsequent meeting, to answer the questions asked by the schoolchildren, who will be encouraged to share a photograph of the session or drawings and craft projects related to the subject at hand.

The Donostia International Physics Center is an international research center in Physics and related disciplines that also assumes the responsibility of sharing scientific knowledge with society. Within its collaboration with the Festival, in 2019 it assembled almost 13,000 pupils from 27 schools at the Velodrome. In addition, since 2018 and during the first quarter of the year, the Filmoteca Vasca, the DIPC and the Festival jointly organise at Tabakalera a season of cinema and science for an adult audience and special sessions for secondary school students. This cycle includes the programming of films, debates and explanatory talks seeking to transmit the culture of cinema and science in a city where working international scientists amount to more than 4,000, placing San Sebastian among the European cities with most scientists per capita. This shows that San Sebastian is not only a city of cinema, but also of science.

FIRST BASQUE PHYSICIST AT THE NASA

Eneko Axpe (Barakaldo, 1986) is the first Basque physicist at the NASA and he also works at Stanford University (California) in the field of biomaterials. At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) he studies how the bones of astronauts would change in the absence of gravity, in the context of a long-term space mission to Mars. He was formerly a researcher and professor at Cambridge University. He completed his doctorate at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and has also been a visiting fellow at Oxford and at Harvard University. He has recently obtained a contract as a research fellow at Ikerbasque, thanks to which he will return to the Basque Country to continue his research career. Apart from his dedication to science, Axpe is also an artist: he has studied short film directing and is a composer, especially of hip hop and electronic music.