St Cross Fellow by Special Election Anthony Geffen, BAFTA and Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker, has been collaborating with the family of the late Stephen Hawking to teach young people the complexities of black holes through an immersive experience.
Anthony had been working with Professor Hawking on the project for nearly two years, before Hawking's death in 2018. The experience will be narrated by Hawking himself, whose wish was to make the experience accessible to all, to inspire the next generation of scientists.
Anthony said:
Professor Hawking was one of the most incredible minds of modern times. His ground-breaking scientific findings shaped physics as we know it and helped to unlock some of the Universe’s greatest mysteries. It was a great honor to work with Stephen Hawking, so closely on these projects which he considered to be an important part of his legacy. The immersive experience will take the viewer on a journey through his mind, using cutting edge technology. I am excited by our preliminary discussions about the [Science] museum being one of the locations for the immersive experience, who we have collaborated with before on Space Descent VR with Tim Peake. The documentary is going to give us an inside view into the man himself and how he carried out his work. With the help of those closest to him, new interviews with Hawking and his home footage, we are going to shed new light on his remarkable life.
Anthony will also be working with Professor Hawking's colleagues to ensure the experience is as accurate as possible.
Alongside the immersive experience, Anthony Geffen and his company Atlantic Productions are working on the Stephen Hawking Theatrical Documentary, which will access new personal footage and reveal the man behind his work. Anthony and his colleagues have been given exclusive access to the material.
Professor Hawking's daughter, Lucy Hawking, says:
We are delighted to be collaborating with Atlantic Productions on a revealing, informed and insightful documentary about our father’s life and work. We are also very excited about the creation of an experience to illustrate our father’s scientific theories through immersive technology. We are especially pleased as our father always searched for innovative ways to explain science to the widest audience possible and was fascinated by the potential of new technologies to enthral his audience. This project, which began in his office in Cambridge two years ago, will now take viewers on a stunning cosmic journey to reveal our father’s vision of the universe.
Stephen Hawking’s Black Holes Immersive Experience and the Stephen Hawking Theatrical Documentary are due to be made available in 2020.
You can read more about Anthony Geffen in a recent interview by Wired here.
Ella Bedrock
14 March 2019
