The Gwacheon National Science Museum (director Lee Chung-won) will host the International Planetarium Movie Festival (IPMF 2026 GNSM) in its planetarium for two weeks, from Sept. 7 to 18. Asia’s first planetarium film festival, which had been suspended after 2016, returns to audiences after eight years.
 [코리안투데이] Poster for the Gwacheon National Science Museum’s International Planetarium Movie Festival, ‘IPMF 2026 GNSM’ © 장형임 기자 |
The festival hosted by the Gwacheon National Science Museum takes place not on a conventional theater screen but in the planetarium, where the entire 25-meter-diameter dome becomes the screen. Beyond a flat screen, audiences experience the universe and the natural world through fully immersive 360-degree imagery that wraps around their entire field of view.
The International Planetarium Movie Festival (IPMF) began in 2010 as Asia’s first festival of its kind and was held four times on a biennial basis through 2016. It was later scaled back in 2018 owing to the planetarium’s renovation project, and it was called off during the COVID-19 pandemic. With IPMF 2026, the festival now picks up its legacy once again.
From the 12 submitted works, a total of eight have been officially selected for screening, including six Korean premieres. The selected films are recent productions from a range of countries — Japan, Spain, South Africa, France, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and the United States — offering visual artistry that draws on the unique qualities of the dome to explore the universe and astronomy, life and nature, and science, technology and exploration.
The screenings are divided into four sessions: ‘Cycle,’ ‘Life,’ ‘Exploration’ and ‘Voyage.’ ‘Cycle’ captures the wonders of the aurora and of ecosystems, while ‘Life’ depicts African wildlife and the water cycle. ‘Exploration’ sheds light on the unseen universe and humanity’s challenges through radio telescopes and Mars exploration, and ‘Voyage’ travels across the vast cosmos, following the sky and the galaxies.
The ‘IPMF 2026 Dome Film Screening’ for the general public will be held on Saturday, Sept. 12, and Sunday, Sept. 13, in multiple sessions each day at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4:40 p.m. Along with screenings of the eight selected films, audience evaluations and quiz events are held to encourage visitors to take part in the festival directly.
A ‘Dome Cinema Talk’ is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12. Under the theme ‘Film and Science,’ two expert panelists will join film critic Yoon Sung-eun in conversation. The talk will move between scientific inquiry and cinematic imagination on the subject of extraterrestrial life, unfolding stories about unknown living beings, and is open to anyone aged 10 and older.
On weekdays from Sept. 8 to 18, a ‘Special Dome Cinema Week’ commemorating the festival will also run. It pairs encore screenings of popular animated films for children with reflective, emotionally soothing programs for adult audiences, offering something to enjoy across generations.
Programs to foster international exchange and to invigorate the domestic planetarium ecosystem have also been prepared. The ‘2026 National Planetarium Practitioners Workshop,’ held from Sept. 7 to 8, will bring together about 50 planetarium managers, operators and industry professionals from across the country for screenings and judging, the sharing of case studies on equipment improvement and content development, and networking. On Monday, Sept. 14, the festival’s awards ceremony will be broadcast live online.
Lee Chung-won, director of the Gwacheon National Science Museum, said, ‘IPMF 2026 is an international festival where visitors can experience film, science and the universe together in the special space of a planetarium,’ adding, ‘I hope you will come to the Gwacheon National Science Museum this autumn to encounter a new world of cinema that expands beyond a flat screen into a full 360 degrees.’ He went on to express hope that the festival would ‘carry on the significance of the IPMF that began as Asia’s first in 2010, and serve as an occasion where planetarium content and technology from home and abroad meet to create new possibilities.’
Applications for the IPMF 2026 public screenings and the Dome Cinema Talk are accepted online on a rolling basis beginning at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 1. Detailed information, including eligibility and application methods for each program, is available on the Gwacheon National Science Museum website (www.sciencecenter.go.kr).
지역 홍보대사 신청 기자양성과정 신청 코리안투데이 지부장 신청 코리안투데이 인천강화
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