How To Build A Time Machine

Briarcliff Manor Man Builds A Time Machine

On Thursday, September 7th at 7:30pm, The Jacob Burns Film Center will present a special screening of How To Build A Time Machine, an award-winning documentary, that tells the story of Briarcliff Manor resident Rob Niosi and his 12-year odyssey to construct the time-traveling device from H.G. Wells' classic novel.
In creating the Time Machine, Niosi, a stop-motion animator known for his work on Pee-wee's Playhouse and on music videos for Peter Gabriel, attempted to recapture his boyhood memory of seeing the 1960 film, The Time Machine. He spent years honing artisan craft skills, sourcing rare antiques and consulting with a hidden community of time-machine enthusiasts to create the ultimate full-scale model.

While Niosi was building the object of his passion, a Toronto-based film maker named Jay Cheel became interested in the endeavor and asked to film the "Machine's" construction in Niosi's Briarcliff home. The result is a feature-length documentary entitled, How To Build A Time Machine. The film tells the story of two men—the artist, Rob Niosi, and the scientist, Dr. Ron Mallet—who are both obsessed with building their own time machines. Dr. Mallett, a theoretical physicist, was 10 years old when his father died suddenly of a heart attack. After reading H.G. Wells’, The Time Machine, Mallet dedicated his life to studying physics and time travel. He became a professor at the University of Connecticut and is now working on building a real time machine in the hopes that he might travel back to save his father's life.
How To Build A Time Machine goes beyond the concept of time travel to explore love, loss, and that which keeps us moving towards the future while still firmly enveloped by the past. After playing in festivals from Singapore to San Francisco, the new release will be screened for just one night in the area in which it was filmed.
Tickets are available at https://burnsfilmcenter.org/booking/how-to-build-a-time-machine/

Both Rob Niosi and Dr. Ron Mallett will be at the screening for a Q&A session following the film.