Boston Flora

Category: Movie Recommendations

  • One Seed at a Time

    This is story of the Polly Hill Arboretum internship program. In 1958 at age 50, Polly Hill began her arboretum by sowing a seed on her family’s summer property, then known as Barnard’s Inn Farm. She was always looking for plants that would grow out of latitude and thrive on Martha’s Vineyard and traveled extensively collected seeds from all over the world. In the 1990’s her beautiful private gardens became a public arboretum and shortly afterwards with her help and the efforts of David Smith and Sam Feldman the Internship Program was formed. Many young people have gone through either the summer or 9 month program and continued on with great success in the horticulture world. This is their story and the story of their remarkable mentor.  Watch a short, ten minute video by Marnie Stanton on the internship program, entitled One Seed at a Time, by clicking this link: http://vimeo.com/39297752.  Video funded by the Edey Foundation.

  • Sunday, March 25, 10:00 am – 10:00 pm – Project Native 2nd Environmental Film Festival

    Project Native 2nd Environmental Film Festival will take place on Sunday, March 25, 2012 at the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington, beginning at 10 am. All films will be free to the public. Last year over 600 people from 6 states attended the festival. Films on a variety of topics, from 90-minute features to a series of short films for children, will inspire, enrage, and motivate audiences to engage. This event is supported in part by a grant from the Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn Foundation.

    For additional information on sponsorship opportunities, please contact Karen Lyness LeBlanc at 413-274-3433 or projectnative@verizon.net.

  • Saturday, March 10, 11:00 am – 1:45 pm – Meaty Matters, and at 2:30 pm – American Meat

    Join The Museum of Science in the Gordon Current Science & Technology Center prior to the screening of the new documentary film, American Meat, as each of the individual panelists is interviewed in depth on the subject of sustainable meat agriculture and production. Discover the real difference between organic foods and their traditionally grown counterparts when it comes to nutrition, safety, and price. Talk with the experts during the question and answer sessions after each interview. Attend our Small Footprint, Big Flavor dinner and receive discounted Exhibit Halls admission for this program. Panelists include Jonathan D. Kemp, president, FoodEx/Organic Renaissance Food Exchange, New Bedford, MA | Dan Mandich, owner, Westminster Meats, Westminster Station, VT | Danielle Nierenberg, senior researcher and director, Nourishing the Planet Program, Worldwatch Institute | Theo Weening, global meat coordinator, Whole Foods Market | Nick Zigelbaum, livestock manager, Siena Farms, Sudbury, MA.

    At 2:30 pm, Food on Film presents American Meat. This new documentary chronicles America’s grassroots revolution in sustainable meat production. The film, an official selection of Food Day 2011, explains our current industrial meat system and shows the feedlots and confinement operations, not through hidden cameras but through the eyes of the farmers who live and work there. Featuring legendary sustainable farmer Joel Salatin, American Meat frames the debate on whether sustainable meat production could ever meet the needs of the consuming public and showcases the people who could change everything about the way meat reaches the American table.

    A discussion follows the screening about the sustainable meat industry and whether it can meet the needs of the world’s, and New England’s, growing population. Advance registration begins at 9:00 a.m., Saturday, February 25 (Wednesday, February 22 for Museum members) at mos.org/events.

    Admission is free thanks to the generosity of the Lowell Institute. Additional funding provided by the Richard S. Morse Fund.

  • Monday, October 3, 7:00 pm – The Little Shop of Horrors, With a Twist

    The Coolidge Corner Theatre kicks off a new season of its popular Science on Screen series on Monday, October 3 with a special showing of B-movie maestro Roger Corman’s 1960 horticultural cult classic The Little Shop of Horrors paired with a pre-screening talk on carnivorous plants by Aaron Ellison, Senior Research Fellow in Ecology at Harvard Forest. The program begins at 7:00 pm.

    The Little Shop of Horrors tells the tale of a hapless plant-shop clerk who breeds a new species of plant named Audrey Junior that not only talks, but also needs a special kind of food to survive: humans. Famous for having the shortest shooting schedule on record – two days and a night – this hilarious black comedy helped establish director Corman as an underground legend. Starring Jonathan Haze, Mel Welles, and Jackie Joseph, the film also features an iconic cameo by a young Jack Nicholson as a gleefully masochistic dental patient (possibly not a stretch theatrically.)

    Unlike Audrey Junior, carnivorous plants in nature don’t actually devour people – or bellow “Feed Me!” But because these plants grow in habitats where soil nutrients are in short supply, they must rely on animal prey for sustenance. They catch their dinner using a variety of strategies, from snapping their leaves shut on unsuspecting insects to snagging snacks with sticky tentacles to sucking in their prey like a vacuum cleaner.

    Before the film, Dr. Ellison sheds light on the curious world of carnivorous plants and on how these fabulously complex plants can further our understanding of how a complete, functioning natural ecosystem works.

    At Harvard Forest, Harvard University’s 3,500-acre outdoor classroom and ecological research laboratory in Petersham, Mass., Dr. Ellison studies the evolutionary ecology of carnivorous plants, food web dynamics and community ecology of wetlands and forests, and other phenomena. He has received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Faculty Fellow award for excellence in research and teaching.

    Science on Screen is co-presented by The Museum of Science, Boston and made possible by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Tickets are $9.75 general admission, $7.75 for students, seniors, and Museum of Science members, and free for Coolidge Corner Theatre members. For more information and to purchase tickets online, visit www.coolidge.org/science. Tickets are also available at the Coolidge Corner Theatre box office, located at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline. Phone: 617/734-2500.

  • Wednesday, August 24 6:00 pm – Superbat: A Documentary Screening

    Harvard’s Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford Street in Cambridge,  will screen Superbat on Wednesday, August 24 beginning at 6 pm. This 48-minute documentary explores the world of bats and the scientists who study them – including the late Donald Griffin, a Harvard zoologist who was the first to describe their echolocation ability in the 1940s. Using 3-D graphics to recreate the bats’ acoustic vision and shooting with infra-red and high-speed cameras, this film offers an exhilarating “bats-eye” journey into the night.

    Screening to be followed by a discussion by Professor Thomas Kunz of Boston University, one of the world’s leading bat experts. Kunz will answer audience questions and discuss some of his current research on bat biology, aeroecology and behavior, including the latest on the White-Nose Fungal Disease that has devastated bat populations in the Northeast.  Part of Summer Nights at the Museum. Free with museum admission.  For more information log on to www.hmnh.harvard.edu, or call 617-495-3045.  Thank you Julie Newmar for the image below, which has nothing whatsoever to do with White-Nose Fungal Disease, but I’ll bet you read the post.

  • Monday, June 27, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Mother Nature’s Child: Growing Outside in the Media Age

    The film, Mother Nature’s Child, explores nature’s powerful role in children’s health and development through the experience of toddlers, children in middle childhood, and adolescents. Mother Nature’s Child asks the questions: Why do children need unstructured time outside? What is the place of risk-taking in healthy child development? How is play a form of learning? The June 27  Arnold Arboretum screening in the Hunnewell Building will be followed by an informal discussion. (The film runs 57 minutes.) To learn more about the film, visit www.mothernaturesmovie.com.  Free, but registration is encouraged at www.arboretum.harvard.edu.

  • Thursday, May 12, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – The Olmsted Legacy: America’s Urban Parks

    The Arnold Arboretum, in conjunction with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, will offer an evening of film and discussion on Thursday, May 12 in the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum, from 7 – 8:30 pm.  The documentary The Olmsted Legacy: America’s Urban Parks explores the formation of America’s great city parks, including Boston’s own Emerald Necklace, through the eyes of 19th Century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.   The film traces the life of Olmsted: his early struggles in school. his personal tragedies and his unorthodox career path.  Olmsted and his firm carried out more than 500 commissions, nearly 100 of which were public parks.  His work includes the linear park system that stretches from the Back Bay Fens to Franklin Park known as the Emerald Necklace.  A Q & A session will follow the screening.  For more information on the documentary, visit www.theolmstedlegacy.org.  The admission fee is $10, and you may sign up by logging in to www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu.

  • Saturday, April 30, 12:00 noon – Grand Opening of the Emerald Necklace Visitor Center

    Celebrate the grand opening of the Emerald Necklace Visitor Center at 125 The Fenway, Boston, on Saturday, April 30 and Sunday, May 1.  All events are free and open to the public.  At noon, Mayor Thomas M. Menino will cut the ribbon along with special guests.  From noon until 3:30, a very special Art in Bloom floral arrangement inspired by the Back Bay Fens will be on display, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  From 12:30 until 2, Gerry Wright will appear in his “other” persona, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the Park Rangers Mounted Unit “Adopt a Horse” program will be featured.  At 2, 2:30 and 3, there will be screenings of Stories from the Emerald Necklace, a documentary film depicting the variety of visitor stories found in the Necklace.  Also, between 12:30 and 1:15, artist Dustan Knight will talk about the creative process as Dustan works in watercolors to capture the special Art in Bloom floral arrangement on paper.

    From 12:45 – 3 pm, you may meet the gardeners at the Fenway Victory Gardens and visit the newly renovated Special Needs Garden, as well as participate in hands-on workshops.  From 1 – 2:30, Alan Banks, Supervisory Park Ranger, will lead an interpretive walk through the Back Bay Fens beginning at the Visitor Center entitled “Garden in the Machine.”  For the athletes, join a fun run with 3, 5 and 7 mile options led by Mark Lowenstein, author of Great Runs in Boston, with a route starting at the Visitor Center, continuing along the Necklace out to Jamaica Pond, and returning to the Visitor Center, starting at 1:15 pm.

    Over at the Wentworth Institute, Frederick Law Olmsted, a one-man play written by performed by Gerry Wright, will begin at 3 pm, followed by a short reception, and at 4:30, in the same venue, there will be a screening of The Olmsted Legacy: America’s Urban Parks documentary.  If you prefer, at 3 pm you may join Conservancy president Julie Crockford and City Councilor Mike Ross for a bike ride to Franklin park, and stay for the 4 pm Weeds as Feed walk led by a Franklin Park coalition naturalist.  For complete times and directions, log on to www.emeraldnecklace.org/visitorcentergrandopening/.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Thursday, April 28, 6:30 pm – Ghost Bird

    To kick-off the 6th annual Birds and Bards Festival, The Arnold Arboretum, the Boston Nature Center, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Franklin Park Coalition will screen the movie Ghost Bird —a fascinating look at the controversial “rediscovery” of the extinct (or is it?) Ivory-billed woodpecker.

    The screening will take place at 6:30pm on Thursday, April 28th at the Boston Nature Center, 500 Walk Hill Street, Mattapan, Massachusetts 02126.

    In 2005, scientists announced that the Ivory-billed woodpecker, a species thought to be extinct for 60 years, had been found in the swamps of Eastern Arkansas. Other creatures have wrongly been presumed extinct, but the reappearance of the Ivory-bill was celebrated around the world as the rediscovery of a lifetime, prompting the largest recovery effort ever undertaken for a lost species. Millions of dollars poured in from the government while ornithologists and birders flooded the swamps to find the rare bird.

    Down the road, the town of Brinkley, Arkansas – itself on the brink of extinction – was transformed by the hope, commerce and controversy surrounding their feathered friend. But continued sightings by expert birders only highlighted the mysterious absence of credible evidence. Now six years later, the woodpecker remains as elusive as ever. Ghost Bird brings the Ivory-bill’s blurry rediscovery into focus revealing our uneasy relationship with nature and the increasing uncertainty of our place within it.

    Following the film, there will be a panel discussion about the state of conservation and endangered species in Massachusetts and around the world. Experts from three of the leading conservation organizations in MA will be available to answer questions:

    Pearl Yusuf, Asst. Curator of the Hooves and Horns, Franklin Park Zoo

    Joan Walsh, Director of Bird Monitoring, Mass Audubon

    Wayne Klockner, Director of the Massachusetts Program of The Nature Conservancy

    For more info visit

    http://ghostbirdmovie.com/

    http://arboretum.harvard.edu/news-events/birds-and-bards/

    http://www.massaudubon.org/Nature_Connection/Sanctuaries/Boston/news.php?id=1430&event=no

    Contact: Marc Devokaitis 617.384.5209 marc_devokaitis@harvard.edu

  • Tuesday, April 26, 7:30 pm – Bag It

    Whole Foods sponsors the Do Something Reel Film Festival, and a screening of Bag It will take place at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street in Brookline on Tuesday, April 26 at 7:30 pm.  Ticket price is $9, and you may buy tickets on line at www.dosomethingreel.com, or at the theatre.  This highly entertaining and eye-opening film follows everyman Jeb Berrier as he navigates our plastic-reliant world.  Jeb is not a radical environmentalist, but an average American who decides to take a closer look at our cultural love affair with plastics.  The filmmaker Suzan Beraza was born in Jamaica and raised in Puerto Rico and in the Dominican Republic.  Her thought provoking films challenge viewers to examine their lives and consider the impact of their choices.