40 INDEPENDENT CINEMAS WIN GRANTS TO BRING SCIENCE TO THE MOVIES

40 INDEPENDENT CINEMAS WIN GRANTS TO BRING SCIENCE TO THE MOVIES

Nationwide Science on Screen® initiative promotes scientific literacy through entertainment

                       

Brookline, MA (Thursday, November 5, 2026) — Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation named the 2026−27 recipients of their nationwide Science on Screen® grant program this week, awarding grants totaling $225,000 to 40 independent cinemas, museums, and community groups with film programs. Each organization will receive up to $9,000 to create and present three or more Science on Screen events, which pair expert-led discussions of scientific topics with screenings of feature and documentary films. At least one of the films shown by grantees must be a past recipient of the annual Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Prize or a Sloan Development Grant.

 

Since partnering with Sloan in 2011, the Coolidge has awarded over $3 million in grants to 140 film and science-focused organizations in 46 states (plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico) across the country.

 

Science on Screen features classic, cult, and documentary films provocatively matched with presentations by experts who discuss scientific, technological, or medical issues raised by each film. The Coolidge/Sloan Foundation nationwide Science on Screen partnership seeks to inspire in theater-goers an increased appreciation for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as compelling enterprises and vital elements of a broad understanding of human culture and current events.

 

Over the past 13 seasons, grantees have sold more than 188,000 tickets to over 1,870 Science on Screen events (including free tickets offered by many grantees to their Science on Screen series). Those events have featured presentations by hundreds of scientists, doctors, teachers & professors, farmers, journalists, and more, including at least five Nobel laureates, three Pulitzer Prize winners, ten astronauts, and other luminaries including autism activist Temple Grandin; outed CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson; surgeon and writer Dr. Atul Gawande; environmentalist Bill McKibben; geneticist George Church; and trailblazing molecular biologist Dr. Nancy Hopkins.

Highlights from the 2025 season include:

 

• At Frida Cinema (Santa Ana, CA), Dr. Jacob Barandes, Theoretical Physicist and Philosopher of Science at Harvard University, introduced Oppenheimer (2023) and explored the underlying physics, like quantum theory and relativity, as well as the scientific history of the atom bomb.

• At Avalon Theatre (Washington, DC), Brendan Bordelon, Tech Lobbying and Influence Reporter at Politico, and Jason Dick, Editor-in-Chief at CQ Roll Call, introduced BlackBerry (2023) and explored how a quirky Canadian start-up ushered in the attention economy, rewiring our personal communication, jobs, politics, and attention.

• At Enzian Theatre (Maitland, FL), Jimmy Waldron, Educator and Paleontologist at Dinosaurs Will Always Be Awesome, introduced The Land Before Time (1988) and explored what makes a dinosaur a dinosaur, the kinds of dinos found in the film, and more fun family-friendly facts.

• At Coolidge Corner Theatre (Brookline, MA), before a screening of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025), Stefan G. Tullius, MD, PhD, Joseph E. Murray, MD Chair in Transplant Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School introduced miracles, heroes, and the many trials and tribulations in the history of organ transplantation.

• At County Theater (Doylestown, PA), Dave Goldberg, Professor and Department Head of Physics at Drexel University, introduced Primer (2004) and explored the various theories of how time travel could hypothetically work and the scientific opinions on whether any of those theories would be possible.

“We are delighted to continue our pioneering partnership with the Coolidge Corner Theatre to support the nationwide Science on Screen program,” said Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Sloan Foundation. "These events, which pair expert speakers in over 46 states with popular titles such as Sloan-winning films Project Hail Mary, Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, Twisters and Hidden Figures, demonstrate that science can illuminate films just as films can illuminate science.” 

Science on Screen was initially conceived and established in 2005 for Coolidge Corner Theatre audiences in greater Boston, which boasts one of the nation’s largest populations of life and physical scientists. In 2011, the Sloan Foundation partnered with the theatre to take Science on Screen nationwide and to make it an integral part of its coast-to-coast film program. To date, the Sloan Foundation has awarded the Coolidge more than $4.5 million to support the program, including the creation of a website (scienceonscreen.org) where information on these programs and archived videos of the speakers’ presentations are available to the public.

 

Science on Screen grant recipients are chosen based on the need for science-related programming in their community, the strength of their proposed Science on Screen programs, the success of past Science on Screen programs (for returning grantees), and their location.

 

All of these grant recipients play a significant role in the cultural life of their communities, with successful track records of building strong community partnerships and producing creative, thought-provoking film programs that both educate and entertain audiences. 

 

The 2026−27 Science on Screen grantees include seven first-time participants:

 

• Barrymore Film Center, Fort Lee, NJ

• Buffalo International Film Festival, Buffalo, NY

• Centro Criollo de Ciencia y Tecnología del Caribe, Caguas, PR

• Desert Hearts Film Society and The Discovery Museum, Reno, NV

• East End Seaport Museum & Marine Foundation, Greenport, NY

• Gardena Cinema, Gardena, CA

• The Independent Picture House, Charlotte, NC

 

Grantees returning to Science on Screen in 2026−27 are:

 

• Amherst Cinema, Amherst, MA

• Athena Cinema, Athens, OH

• Athens Ciné, Athens, GA

• Austin Film Society, Austin, TX

• Belcourt Theatre, Nashville, TN

• Block Cinema, Evanston, IL

• Campus Theatre, Lewisburg, PA

• Cinema Arts Centre, Huntington, NY

• The Colonial Theatre, Bethlehem, NH

• Comic-Con Museum, San Diego, CA

• Cornell Cinema, Ithaca, NY

• Dairy Arts Center, Boulder, CO

• FilmScene, Iowa City, IA

• Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL

• Insights Science Discovery, El Paso, TX

• Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, Moscow, ID

• The Little Theatre, Rochester, NY

• The Loft Cinema, Tucson, AZ

• Manship Theatre, Baton Rouge, LA

• Marquee Arts, Ann Arbor, MI

• Mesilla Valley Film Society, Mesilla, NM

• New Orleans Film Society, New Orleans, LA

• The Nickelodeon, Columbia SC

• North Bend Theatre, North Bend, WA

• New York International Children’s Film Festival, New York, NY

• Opelika-Auburn Film Arts Collective: Boxcar, Opelika, AL

• Palm Theatre: SLO Film Center, San Luis Obispo, CA

• Pickford Film Center, Bellingham, WA

• Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT

• Salina Art Center, Salina, KS

• Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY

• Stray Cat Film Center, Kansas City, MO

• Varsity Cinema, Des Moines, IA

About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

 

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a New York based, philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that makes grants in three areas: research in science, technology, and economics; quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and public engagement with science. Sloan's program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports Books, Radio & Podcast, Film, Television, Theater, New Media, and YouTube & TikTok to reach a wide, non-specialized audience and to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities.  

 

Sloan's Film Program encourages filmmakers to create more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. Over the past two decades, Sloan has partnered with a dozen leading film schools and established annual awards in screenwriting and film production. The Foundation also supports screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, SFFILM, Film Independent, The Black List, the Athena Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival. The Program has supported over 850 film projects and has helped develop over 30 feature films, including Tesla, Radium Girls, Adventures of a Mathematician, One Man Dies a Million Times, The Sound of Silence, To Dust, Operator, The Imitation Game, and The Man Who Knew Infinity. The Foundation has supported feature documentaries such as Love Apptually, John Lily and the Earth Coincidence Control Office, The White House Effect, Ken Burns’ Leonardo da Vinci, Vishniac, Join or Die, Werner Herzog’s Theater of Thought, David France’s How to Survive a Pandemic, Picture a Scientist, Coded Bias, In Silico, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, The Bit Player, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, Particle Fever, and Jacques Perrin’s Oceans. It has also given early award recognition to stand out films such as Project Hail Mary, Frankenstein Twisters, Oppenheimer, BlackBerry, Don’t Look Up, After Yang, The Aeronauts, Searching, The Martian, First Man and Hidden Figures.

 

The Foundation has an active theater program and commissions about twenty science plays each year from the Manhattan Theatre Club, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the National Theatre in London, while supporting select productions across the country and abroad. Recent

grants from Sloan’s Theater Program have supported Jonathan Spector’s Tony-winning Eureka Day, Michael Walek’s Have You Met Jane Goodall and Her Mother?, Lloyd Suh’s Franklinland, Nelson Diaz-Marcano’s Las Borinqueñas, Mark Rylance’s Dr. Semmelweis, Anchuli Felicia King’s Golden Shield, Charly Evon Simpson’s Behind the Sheet, Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes, Chiara Atik’s Bump, Nick Payne’s Constellations, Lucas Hnath’s Isaac’s Eye, Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51, David Auburn’s Proof, and Bess Wohl’s Continuity. The Foundation’s book program includes early support for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, the best-selling book that became the highest grossing Oscar-nominated film of 2017 and Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus, adapted for the screen in Christopher Nolan’s hit film Oppenheimer.

 

For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, visit sloan.org or follow the Foundation on X, Instagram and Facebook at @SloanPublic.