On Friday, Sept. 19, Emory University’s Department of Film and Media hosted a special roundtable discussion tied to Off The Wall @ 725 Ponce, the Atlanta Beltline series that projects films onto what organizers describe as “the largest movie screen in the Southeast.” The conversation, moderated by Off the Wall curator Gregory Zinman, centered on Mark Levinson’s 2024 documentary ‘The Universe in a Grain of Sand,‘ which screened later that evening on the Eastside Beltline Trail. Joining Zinman in the discussion were Levinson, filmmaker and professor Kate Balsley, and archival producer Leo Goldsmith. Zinman also served as an archival producer on the project.
A few highlights from the discussion …
Art and science, parallel risks
Levinson traced the film’s roots to his earlier documentary ‘Particle Fever,’ which followed the Large Hadron Collider. What stayed with him was not the physics but the process. Scientists, he argued, are like artists in that they choose problems “that [are] beautiful and [have] significance” without knowing if they’ll succeed. In ‘Grain of Sand,’ Levinson utilized existing works by more than 40 artists, rather than relying on diagrams or charts, allowing the art to evoke scientific ideas.
“We didn’t want to just include things as pretty pictures to look at while you listen to people talk about science. They had to really illuminate something …”
‘The Universe in a Grain of Sand’ Director, Mark Levinson
A pandemic method takes hold
Levinson secured financing for ‘Grain of Sand’ in early 2020, just as COVID restrictions began. Unable to film new interviews, his team began by curating a library of experimental films and artworks—ultimately assembling a spreadsheet of 340 works—and then worked remotely with editor Melanie London. The first 14-minute test cut, Levinson recalled, “became the launching pad,” which shaped the film’s structure: relying on archival art and experimental cinema to introduce audiences to complex science.
Atlanta voices in the mix
Atlanta-based Balsley, whose work is included in “Grain of Sand,” traced a path from grade-school dreams of astronomy to an art practice shaped by science reading and public-domain space imagery. She described loving Carl Sagan as a kid, then realizing in high school that, as she put it, she “cannot math,” which nudged her toward filmmaking. For her short ‘Cosmos Obscura,’ Balsley started with a collaborator’s music and built sequences from Voyager 2 images and scientific diagrams—an exploratory process of testing what visuals can do. That curiosity undergirds her broader outlook: “We know so much about the world, but we really don’t know anything.”
Balsley’s work was particularly suited to Levinson’s vision for his film. Three of her pieces appear in “Grain of Sand.” “There’s a real connection there in your work,” he told her during the discussion. Moderator Gregory Zinman also noted that another Atlanta experimental filmmaker, Robbie Land, is represented in the film—one of several local links that helped the project bridge Atlanta’s scene with a global roster of artists.
Read more:
• Off the Wall @ 725 Ponce film screenings return June 20
• Off the Wall @ 725 showcases Jodie Mack’s ‘The Grand Bizarre’
Respecting experimental film
During the discussion, Goldsmith stressed that the team resisted treating avant-garde clips as filler: “We didn’t want to just include things as pretty pictures to look at while you listen to people talk about science. They had to really illuminate something …” On-screen credits identified the artist and title, giving audiences a path to explore further. Levinson said that level of transparency helped build trust with contributors, many of whom later expressed enthusiasm at seeing their work contextualized in new ways.
Editing toward clarity
Levinson spoke candidly about the difficulty of making quantum computing comprehensible. “The most important thing is knowing what not to say,” he explained. Early drafts were dense with detail, enough to leave early viewers confused. Levinson admitted he was “in the weeds for a while,” caught between trying to explain too much or cutting back. Eventually, he distilled it down to three core ideas that could be conveyed visually: superposition, qubits, and multidimensional space. An Escher-like staircase sequence gave audiences something visual to hold onto. “That was one of the best examples of something I had longer, cut it down, integrated with certain pieces of art … and that was it.”
A dialogue that continues
The panel ended much as it started—on the overlap between art and science. Levinson emphasized that his goal was not to explain everything, but to “give permission to people not to have to understand everything.” Goldsmith echoed that idea, noting that experimental film, like scientific research, is a process of trying, failing, and discovering. For Balsley, the exchange underscored how creative work can keep alive the same questions that drew her to astronomy as a child: what we know, what we think we know, and what remains unseen. Together, their conversation reminded the Atlanta audience that both artists and scientists move forward by embracing uncertainty—and that imagination, not certainty, is what binds them.
What’s next at Off the Wall @ 725 Ponce
- Oct. 17–18: William Downs — live drawing event
- Nov. 14–15: ‘Empire’ (Phil Solomon, 2008–2012), color, silent, 48 min
