Museum of the Moving Image’s inaugural Science on Screen program featured a screening of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s 2002 cult classic TEKNOLUST. Tilda Swinton plays four different characters–a bio-geneticist and her three replicants. As a bio-geneticist, Swinton’s character Rosetta Stone finds a way of uploading her DNA and reproducing a-sexually. Her offspring need periodic injections of the Y Chromosome from men in order to survive.

On January 29, Leeson introduced the film and spoke with Columbia University biologist and acclaimed author Dr. Stuart Firestein about reproduction in plants and animals, gene-editing technologies, and her new film. The discussion, moderated by Sloan Science & Film’s executive editor Sonia Epstein, is available to watch below.

TEKNOLUST is available to stream on Fandor. Lynn Hershman Leeson has directed 12 films. Her documentary TANIA LIBRE, about the Cuban performance artist Tania Brugera, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Dr. Stuart Firestein is Chair of Biological Sciences at Columbia University and his books Ignorance: How It Drives Sciecne and Failure: Why Science is so Successful, are available where books are sold.

The next Science on Screen program will feature short films by Jean Painlevé, Isabella Rossellini, and Roberto Rossellini and a discussion with marine chemical biologist Dr. Mandë Holford about sea creatures. The event will take place on March 26 at Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York.