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As we expand the search for life beyond Earth, a water-dominated planet, we turn our eyes to other aquatic worlds. Microbial life found in Earth’s many extreme habitats are considered useful analogs to life forms we are likely to find in extraterrestrial bodies of water. Modern-day benthic microbial mats inhabiting the low-oxygen, high-sulfur submerged sinkholes of temperate Lake Huron (Michigan, USA) and microbialites inhabiting the shallow, high-carbonate waters of subtropical Laguna Bacalar (Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico) serve as potential working models for exploration of extraterrestrial life. In Lake Huron, delicate mats comprising motile filaments of purple-pigmented cyanobacteria capable of oxygenic and anoxygenic photosynthesis and pigment-free chemosynthetic sulfur-oxidizing bacteria lie atop soft, organic-rich sediments. In Laguna Bacalar, lithification by cyanobacteria forms massive carbonate reef structures along the shoreline. Herein, we document studies of these two distinct earthly microbial mat ecosystems and ponder how similar or modified methods of study (e.g., robotics) would be applicable to prospective mat worlds in other planets and their moons (e.g., subsurface Mars and under-ice oceans of Europa). Further studies of modern-day microbial mat and microbialite ecosystems can add to the knowledge of Earth’s biodiversity and guide the search for life in extraterrestrial hydrospheres.

Cinema remains current and saleable by constantly revolutionising the mode of its distribution. Film Auteurs are affected by these changes, using the contemporary “tools of their trade” to their advantage. This chapter focuses on two Auteurs’ use of digital technologies. Jean Luc Godard, one of the most innovative filmmakers of the last fifty years is a recent convert to digital film, having denounced the medium previously. Mike Figgis has been an advocate of digital filmmaking until recently, when he has been more circumspect. These filmmakers employ techniques indebted to Sergei Eisenstein and Bertholt Brecht. The “active” variant of third text understandings applied represent a “para-formalistic discourse” where the audience is made aware of the film’s artifice, projecting the audience into an ontological virtual space where they are compelled to confront conditions around them. A tentative advocacy of the digital as an aid to enhancing this experience is here advanced.