Edinburgh 2013: Hawking (UK, 2013)

Part of Connor McMorran's coverage for MKC of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (June 19-30, 2013).

Stephen Hawking is one of the most well known scientists of our time, and he will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the greatest minds of all time. When presented with the possibility of seeing a documentary about his life, I suddenly realised that I actually knew very little about Stephen Hawking beyond his book A Brief History of Time and his long-term motor neuron disease. Documentaries serve to discuss real people and real situations, acting as much as educators as they do entertainers or pieces of art. The main problem with them is their chosen medium, as film is so easily edited and changes the way people act in front of it that it at times becomes very hard to take what is presented to the audience as ‘real’.

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