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Biography

Director’s Biography – Alison Rose

A turning point in my early career was choosing to do a story about scientists. They happened to be two pioneering AI researchers, Geoffrey Hinton and his student, Zoubin Ghahramani. They were brilliant, funny, and very clear. They were developing something called back propagation in artificial neural networks, as a way for the neural networks to learn from their choices. It is the foundations of today’s AI revolution. Hinton and his wife, Jackie, included me in brunches; I met other scientists. I made friends. I worked with a great editor, Bruce Headlam, and the story won the National Magazine Award gold medal for the best science writing in Canada that year. Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Ghahramani is at Google, at Cambridge University. I also won a National Newspaper Award for a profile of a man named Russell Johnson, who’d heard opera on the radio, growing up in Appalachia, and became an acoustician building great performing arts halls.

My first documentary project was about a group of scientists who were also priests, the Jesuits at the Vatican Observatory. I explored the history of astronomy, and the Church’s conflict with Galileo:

“A few Canadian documentaries sparkled: the best of the bunch was the Toronto-made Galileo’s Sons…” – The Toronto Star TV critic (James Bawden), year end review

”Galileo’s Sons is clearly one of the best and brightest of the season, packed with information, debate and some of the most gorgeous scenes of the solar system in offering a rare look inside the Vatican Observatory…[A]n intimate peep into eternity by producer/director Alison Rose.” – Starweek Magazine said

 

I made my second documentary after a research trip to Miami to interview Alina Fernandez, Fidel Castro’s exiled daughter, who was a vocal critic of his regime. Fernandez was Cuban royalty in a sense, and she startled me as we drove down SW 8th street by waving at the mid-century modern motels that lined the road. She said, these motels look like ordinary motels but they have mirrors on the ceiling, they rent by the hour and they’re for sex.  I tried to make a film with the church-going family who owned my chosen motels, and their staff but their stories pales in comparison to those of the guests, and the film became their confessional,  Love at the Twilight Motel.

Critics said that it was: “Exceptionally beautiful…” – The National Post ”a remarkable testament to the power of letting people tell their own stories.” the Globe and Mail

“fascinating, heartbreaking slice-of-life peek into another world. Gorgeously made.” – John Doyle, The Globe and Mail – Weekend TV pick

“A Must See Docu . . . so mesmerizing I’m betting you won’t be able to turn away. Shot seductively by cinematographer Daniel Grant…stunning.” jamesbawden.blogspot.com Posted by james bawden

“fascinating documentary…the air of a confessional.” – The Toronto Star

“darkly beautiful. Rose frames the film impeccably.” A’n’E VIBE www.anevibe.com/film- reviews

“Love at the Twilight Motel may very well be the most engaging, insightful and tragically human doc at this year’s Hot Docs festival.” – Exclaim.ca

 

My most recent feature documentary Star Men was about four elderly astronomers on a 50th reunion road trip in the American southwest. It was commissioned in Canada by Vision and Canal D; toured film festivals, had a limited theatrical release in the UK, and in Canada, toured Universities in the USA, and sold to the BBC and Netflix.

Critics said

★★★★THE GUARDIAN  ★★★★EMPIRE  ★★★★THE TIMES ★★★★TOTAL FILM  ★★★★THE EVENING STANDARD  ★★★★THE SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE MAGAZINE     Indie Film Spotlight ★★★★NOW Magazine  

 

My current project is following the people building the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the NSF & DOE funded ’s observatory designed to take a timelapse movie of the night sky every night for 10 years, with the world’s fastest telescope mount, the largest camera for astronomy, and the most precise system for focusing and calibrating ever used on an observatory. It is pushing the state of the art in every way.

I began filming the Rubin Observatory Documentary Project since 2017. I am immersed, and the product will be a long running series on the web that will allow audiences to imagine themselves as part of the mission. It will be like the real Star Trek or like a telenovela or soap, set on a mountain, where the community are the people building, maintaining and operating the Observatory. The filming is to make an archive like the NASA archive, following the people building Rubin Observatory.  Rubin will alert the world to every change in the sky with 60 seconds of the shutter closing in Chile. It will issue 10 million alerts each night.  It will keep all images in a database larger than all existing astronomical databases combined. The data will be accessible to all American researchers at all institutions across the United States and Chile, and to researchers in  30 countries selected to make in-kind contributions to operations in exchange for early data rights.  The survey is designed to maximize the amount of astrophysics researchers can do with one set of observations. The Observatory was named for Vera C. Rubin by President Donald J. Trump during his first term in office, and will begin making discoveries in his second term in office. The President who vowed to Make America Great Again will have a observatory that will make America the world leader in real-time astronomy.  The first test images were astoundingly successful.

 

 

 

 

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