Symmetry
Sci-fi opera film Symmetry is shot inside CERN, the largest science laboratory in the world. With the cathedral-like majesty of the Large Hadron Collider as his theatre, a modern physicist searches for the smallest primordial particle and discovers a love without end…
“If Neil deGrasse Tyson’s version of ‘Cosmos’ hasn’t convinced you of the beautiful drama hidden within the scientific community, perhaps this dance opera will twist your arm in the right direction.”
streaming full length films in 8 languages:
the cosmos revealed to a scientist while dancing
Symmetry follows a physicist - played by choreographer Lukas Timulak - as he pursues the theory of everything inside CERN's subterranean infrastructure. Driven by the voice of soprano Claron McFadden and drawn deeper into the geometry of the collider, the boundary between scientific method and inner world begins to dissolve. Dance becomes a mode of reasoning. The architecture of the machine becomes the architecture of the Self…
Shot across CERN in Geneva, the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, and the Netherlands, the film moves between the human-made and the vast, between controlled experiment and open landscape, as two forms of understanding the same unknowable whole.
The companion documentary Symmetry Unravelled deepens this territory: through conversations with physicists including Robbert Dijkgraaf and John Ellis, and the artists involved, it maps what happens when different ways of knowing collide.
“Symmetry expresses the two sides of our understanding, one rational, the other emotional, and sets the opera in CERN and a Bolivian salt flat to contrast the human-made machines with the vastness of nature.”
digital art can bridge different dimensions
“Modern science has no unifying concept connecting Einstein's theory of relativity with quantum mechanics; meaning the true relationships between planets, human bodies, atoms and quarks remain unmeasurable. We digitally captured the spatial information of a dance scene depicting the big bang, then combined this data with numerical patterns from open-source CERN data. A new image emerged that closely resembled the spiral formation of the Milky Way galaxy. In the film, we used this sequence for the moment Lukas arrives at his theory of everything, while dancing...”.
—Ruben Van Leer
“Symmetry, an upcoming film that fuses opera, choreography, digital art, and physics to tell a deeply existential tale around the basic questions asked by all curious humans: who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?”
uniting art & science audiences world wide
Symmetry reached an estimated audience of 1.3 million across festivals, television, and institutional screenings. On its Dutch television premiere, NTR recorded 100,000 viewers on opening night; twice the reach of comparable cultural programming. The film screened at the EYE Film Museum in Amsterdam, accompanied by a New Scientist back-cover campaign and a dedicated CERN event. It was invited to the University of Hong Kong and the University of Science and Technology of China. Ruben Van Leer spoke at the Evening of Science and Society in the Ridderzaal in The Hague, and continued conversations with physicists Fritjof Capra (Berkeley), Robbert Dijkgraaf (IAS Princeton), and Calin Alexa (National Institute of Physics, Romania) in San Francisco and across Europe.
“Occasionally a work of art carelessly tells something about the inner world of the material. Symmetry is such a gesamtkunstwerk. A perfect clash of disciplines.”
credits
| Written & Directed by | Ruben Van Leer |
| Music | Joep Franssens Henry Vega |
| Libretto | Stan Lapinski |
| Dramaturgy | Martin Butler |
| Cinematography | Paul Özgür |
| Performance | |
| Choreography & Dance | Lukas Timulak |
| Soprano | Claron McFadden |
| Dancers |
Shirley Essenboom Celia Amade Cesar Faria Fernandes Joeri Dubbe |
| Choir | Cappella Amsterdam |
| Choir Director | Daniel Reuss |
| Creative Team | |
| Production Design | Barnaby Monk Laetitia Migliore |
| Art Direction | Judith Veenendaal |
| Costume Design | Anne de Grijff |
| Styling | Babette Tielrooij |
| Make-up & Hair | Faisa Sontodimedjo |
| Camera & Sound | |
| 1st Assistant Directors | Kelly Joanne Jenkins Lennart Deen |
| Gaffer | Christophe Vingerhoets |
| Production Sound Mixer | Lennert Hunfeld |
| Post-Production | |
| Editing | Amber Hooijmans |
| Colorist | Joppo in de Grot |
| Sound Design | Henry Vega |
| Re-recording Mixer | Lennert Hunfeld |
| VFX & Digital | |
| VFX Lead | Tom Geraedts |
| 3D Animation | David Zaagsma |
| Compositing | Tom Geraedts Ruben Van Leer |
| Production | |
| Produced by | CTM Pictures |
| Co-produced by | NTR TRUTH.IO Operator |
| Producers |
Rosan Boersma Sander Verdonk Denis Wigman Ruben Van Leer |
| Executive Producer | André de Raaff |
| Creative Producer | Thomas den Drijver |
| Support | |
| Supported by | Netherlands Film Fund |
| Made possible by | Arts at CERN |
| Shot on location | CERN Geneva Salar de Uyuni Bolivia The Netherlands |
filmmaker & media-artist
