Events

Small Town Universe - A Documentary film screening
with
Film Guests: Filmmaker Katie Dellamaggiore and Astrophysicist Ellie White

This screening is an exclusive event for members of the NASA Night Sky Network, Solar System Ambassadors, and educators in the Museum and Informal Education Alliance.

Registration for this special event is located below.

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Small Town Universe paints an intimate portrait of life in Green Bank, West Virginia, home to the world's most sensitive radio telescope and the only U.S. town where Wi-Fi and cell phones are banned. In this uniquely radio-quiet community, scientists use the telescope to search for signs of extraterrestrial life while residents share everyday moments of love, loss, and resilience.

Small Town Universe has captured the hearts of audiences at film festivals nationwide by offering a profoundly human perspective on scientific discovery and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The film debuted at the 2024 Cleveland International Film Festival on Solar Eclipse Day and won the Global Health Competition Award. Other notable screenings include the San Francisco Documentary Festival, the Heartland International Film Festival, the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival, the Brooklyn Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award, and the Raw Science Film Festival, where it was honored with the Industry Award for Breakthrough in SciComm.

Guest Filmmaker and Director

Katie Dellamaggiore is an Emmy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker and commercial director. Her feature directorial debut, Brooklyn Castle, won the SXSW Audience Award, was a New York Times Critic's Pick, and was nationally broadcast by PBS's acclaimed POV series. At Courageous Studios, Warner Bros Discovery's branded content studio, Katie directs bold, culturally relevant premium storytelling for advertisers. She’s directed commercials for Delta, Sleep Number, Subaru, Hulu, Lego, The Salvation Army, Abbott, and Micron. Her recent work for Amica won the Digiday Best Brand Series award. Katie's latest feature, Small Town Universe, won the Global Health Competition Award at the Cleveland International Film Festival and is playing the film festival circuit.
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Ellie White

Guest Astrophysicist

Ellie White (she/her) is a graduate student and longtime science geek. She is currently working on a Master's degree in Physics at Marshall University, where she also teaches introductory astronomy and physics classes. Through the years she has worked on research projects in the fields of astronomical instrumentation and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) with the Green Bank Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the UC Berkeley SETI Research Center, and the SETI Institute, for which she received the 2021 SETI Forward Award. Her other passions include astronomy and STEAM outreach and DEI efforts, and she is a founding member of the nonprofit, West Virginia Alliance for STEM and the Arts. In her free time, she likes spending time with her family, friends, and pets, enjoying the outdoors, baking obsessively, reading, and watching too many rom coms.