The summer film season heats up
Area festivals are just the start of cool offerings
You've probably wailed about last week's 90-degree-plus heat wave, fired up the barbecue, and been out to see one of the summer blockbusters - "Indiana Jones," maybe, or "Sex and the City." So the last sign you'll need that summer has arrived is the opening this week of two beach-town film festivals: The Provincetown International Film Festival, at the tip of the Cape, and the Nantucket Film Festival, out on the island (see stories, N9).
Local festival touches include Alice Cox's "Ana's Time," a 25-minute film described by the director as a "meditation on writing and remembrance." It was shot in Cambridge and Somerville two and a half years ago and among the locales are the 1369 cafe, Toscanini's ice cream shop, People's Republik bar, and PA's Lounge. It plays in Provincetown on Thursday at 2 p.m.
If it's still crazy-hot, the best pick at P-Town might be Werner Herzog's "Encounters at the End of the World," about what it takes to live in Antarctica. Who wouldn't want to sit in an air-conditioned theater watching a pile of ice in this kind of weather?
But if you can't make it to those festivals, there's another ice-themed movie playing right here in town.
In 1881, Newburyport-born Adolphus Greely took a team of 24 men to the Arctic to build a research station. Greely was an Army man and his task was to collect meteorological data and conduct scientific experiments during what was called the First International Polar Year.
The first year went fine, but the supply ship to bring the men back home never arrived. After another year and no ship, Greely decided to execute the pre-arranged Plan B: Leave the station in small, open boats, and travel over moving ice to a location hundreds of miles south.
The trip took two months and there was no food at that site. The men had to spend the winter of 1883-1884 with zero food or equipment. Nineteen men died before a relief ship finally tracked down what was left of the group: Greely and five men.
The ill-fated voyage was profiled in Alden Todd's 1961 book, "Abandoned: The Story of the Greely Arctic Expedition." It's now been made into a movie, "Abandoned in the Arctic," which gets its Cambridge premiere on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Harvard's Science Center Hall B, One Oxford St., Cambridge.
Director Gino Del Guercio, an adjunct professor of journalism at Boston University, will be on hand for a discussion. He'll be joined by the great-great-grandson of Greely, James Shedd, who took part in a trip in 2004 to retrace the steps of the voyage, and by executive producer Geoffrey Clark, who traveled in 1988 to Greely's original base station and started the ball rolling on the film project.
It's all hosted by the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Details are at hmnh.harvard.edu and 617-495-2773.
CONVERSATIONS WITH: Boston filmmaker Ian Cheney will talk about "King Corn," the movie he co-produced, co-wrote, and is featured in, on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Framingham Public Library. The film follows a grand experiment by Cheney and his friend Curt Ellis: What would happen if they moved to Iowa, planted an acre of corn, and tried to get their crop into the high-fructose corn syrup production chain? The evening is co-sponsored by
The Center for Independent Documentary is bringing Sandra Schulberg from New York for a filmmakers workshop Wednesday and Thursday on domestic and international film financing. Schulberg is executive director of a private German fund that helped to finance "Quills," "Safe," "I Shot Andy Warhol," and "Angels & Insects" among other movies.
CID workshops have been held in the past at the Bernard Toale Gallery, but with changes at the gallery this summer, the workshops are moving to a temporary space in West Newton, reports CID executive director Susi Walsh. Details at documentaries.org and 781-784-3627.
NEWS AND NOTES: Ruby Dee will be at the Roxbury Film Festival in August. She's in a film called "Steam" that will play on Aug. 3. The festival schedule will be posted at roxburyfilmfestival.org in July.
WGBH will be producing the official film of the 2008 Paralympic Games, which are being held in Beijing in September. Producers will select a handful of athletes to follow during pre-Paralympic Games competitions and at trials, at sports camps, and at home. The movie will be broadcast on PBS next winter.
NEW CINEMA FROM SPAIN: A 10-day program of 13 films from Spain comes to the Museum of Fine Arts this month. Among the highlights: the Boston premiere of the satiric "The Contestant," Rodrigo Cortés's imagining of all the ways that winning a huge game show prize and joining the ranks of the nouveau rich can bring a guy down (Friday at 8:15 p.m. and next Sunday at 4:10 p.m.). Full schedule is online at mfa.org/film, or call 617-267-9300.
Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. 