The festival was founded in 2000 by Rebecca Scott and Damian Harris, with the aim of forging links between the sciences and the arts..
The inaugural edition took place at the Center Cinema in Canberra in 2001, hosted by CSIRO.
In that year, films covered diverse topics, including the history of asbestos, the use of lithium for psychiatric conditions, the evolution of beer, and, from Melbourne filmmaker Klaus Toft, a film about the relationship between orcas and humans in Killers in Eden.
[1] The 2016 festival received over 1,300 submissions from over 80 countries,[3] with 240 screenings around Australia and one on the Davis Station in Antarctica.
[1] One reviewer said of the 14th edition of the festival in 2017: "The most noticeable thing about the films is that, collectively and individually, they are less explicitly about science and more about us.