MADISON – Gregg Mitman says good storytelling can motivate people to think about, and act on, critical environmental issues.
Moviegoers will see plenty of good storytelling in November at Tales from Planet Earth, a three-day environmental film festival in Madison organized by Mitman, a science historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and hosted by the Nelson Institute's new Center for Culture, History, and Environment.
The festival, set for Nov. 2-4 in three downtown venues – the Orpheum Theatre, 216 State St.; the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St.; and UW Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave. – will feature more than 20 films from around the world. Each will be introduced by a special guest, and many will conclude with audience discussions.
Admission to all festival events is free, on a first-come, first-served basis. Donations are encouraged and will be accepted at the door.
Screenings of several new documentaries by award-winning directors will be among the festival’s highlights, as will a presentation by New Zealand filmmaker and penguin biologist Lloyd Spencer Davis about the history of penguins in movies.
Featured films include "Flock of Dodos" (2006), the first documentary to present both sides of the intelligent design/evolution clash; "Manufactured Landscapes" (2006), which captures the world and work of renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky as he travels across China, shooting the evidence and effects of its massive industrial revolution; and "Everything's Cool" (2007), a comedic, character-driven, behind-the-scenes look at the hottest environmental problem of our time, global warming.
Environmental writer Bill McKibben, whose books include The End of Nature and, most recently, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, will open the weekend with a lecture, "The Nature of Hope," at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2, in the Orpheum Theatre. The Madison premiere of "Everything’s Cool," in which McKibben appears, will follow. Directors Judith Helfand and Daniel Gold will discuss the production afterward.
Films in Tales From Planet Earth will be organized around four themes: surreal worlds, close encounters, animating nature, and consuming lives. Mitman says the films were chosen for their effectiveness at communicating issues of science and the environment through creative storytelling. Films in the "animating nature" group, to be shown Sunday, Nov. 4, at the Orpheum, will appeal especially to families with young children. (See sidebar.)
Mitman, a UW-Madison professor and author of the book, Reel Nature: America’s Romance With Wildlife on Film, credits good storytelling for the box-office and critical successes of two recent movies with environmental messages, "March of the Penguins" and "An Inconvenient Truth."
"The response to 'An Inconvenient Truth' had less to do with Al Gore’s slide lecture and more to do with the ways in which the slide presentation was woven into his own personal and family story," says Mitman. "The decision by Gore’s father to quit tobacco farming, for example, after his daughter died of lung cancer had a deeply moving effect on audiences that brought an emotional dimension to what in the hands of another filmmaker might be a very dry subject."
Tales from Planet Earth is the first public event of the Nelson Institute's new Center for Culture, History, and Environment. The center brings together faculty and staff members, graduate students, and others from a wide array of academic fields to explore changing relationships between people and environment over time.
More than a dozen co-sponsors at UW-Madison are supporting the festival, as are the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission, with additional funds from the Overture Foundation and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation; the Madison Arts Commission, with additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board; the Bradshaw-Knight Foundation; the Evjue Foundation; Arketype; Cascade Asset Management; Isthmus; and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
For a complete list of films to be shown, all scheduled screenings, and other information, visit the Tales from Planet Earth Web site at www.nelson.wisc.edu/tales.