ABSTRACT
The film, A Private Universe (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 1993), provides a view of a world different from the one that Alice experiences in Lewis G.Carroll’s classic, but one no less idiosyncratic or puzzling. The film begins with the solemn tolling of a bell, heralding new Harvard University graduates at their commencement ceremonies. The students are resplendent in their crimson and black caps and gowns and seem full of equal measures of hope and confidence. The voice of an unseen interviewer asks them an apparently simple, yet odd question, given the setting: Can you explain why we have the seasons?
