Biocentric: Biomimicry for everyone

Take a minute to observe the tree closest to you, notice its leaves, the roots that sometimes come out on the sidewalk, height, width, is there any animal living in it? Any plants around? If you can draw the shapes you find interesting, understand the function of these shapes. And oh, what did you learn in that minute?

This is biomimicry, I mean, it is certainly something more complex than looking at a tree for a minute, but this playfulness in the first paragraph is the way that the documentary “Biocentrics” by Fernanda Heinz Figueiredo and Ataliba Benaim brought to unveil the concept of biomimicry and turn it into something for everyone!

The long documentary accompanies some characters from the world of biology, design, engineering and even indigenous peoples, to show in a practical way how nature brings us solutions to complex problems, leaving us only to observe and understand it!

In the first minutes, unlike its optimistic ending, the documentary brings a warning tone, saying that only 1% of all living beings that have passed through Earth still exist.

Nature is a serial killer

Plays Fred Gelli, professor at PUC Rio and CEO of Ecodesign and Biomimicry, one of the characters in the documentary who participated in the conversation circle after the premiere of the feature at Cine Itaú Cultural in São Paulo, on 02/27. The prank seems a little catastrophic, but it serves to exemplify the natural processes of life, which must adapt or disappear.

“What we see here represents less than 1% of the species that have passed through the
planet. What survives has been highly refined over 3.8 billion years.
years of natural selection

And how do we survive?

The grooves in the leaves of trees, the arms of rivers and the pulmonary bronchi, this is the easiest way of transmitting fluids in a three-dimensional environment, but why don’t the plumbing in buildings follow these standards? Based on this issue, biologist Janine Bonyus, narrator and character, shows us how biologists have been inserted into the business world to bring practical solutions to common problems, inspired by nature.

This concept is shown through great inventors like Eiji Nakatsu, a Japanese engineer who was inspired by the beak of a bird to solve the problem of rumbling in the bullet train. Traveling through several countries, Brazil is still present in these innovations, represented, for example, by the brothers Bruno Rutman Pagnoncelli and Pedro Rutman Pagnoncelli, awarded by Ray Of Hope for their design inspired by bromeliads to reforest deforested areas of Lumiar in Rio de Janeiro .

And that’s how, with practical examples and a didactic script, the documentary “Biocentrics” inspires you to recover the attentive and curious look left behind in childhood and proves that many solutions are around us and that we are not individual beings, we depend more on the that we assume from nature.

The documentary “Biocentrics” is scheduled for release on March 16, 2023, check the schedule of theaters near you and live this experience!

By Yara Oliveira