Since 2012 I have collaborated with the Nantucket Atheneum Library to present a documentary film series that explores new ideas and perspectives related to wellness. This is our seventh series and I think our best ever. The thing I love most is that the Think Different Series challenges the audience to consider new ways of perceiving life and generates some great conversations.
Here’s our 2018/19 series. The movies are 7pm on Fridays in the Nantucket Atheneum Library Great Hall (where speakers including Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau have presented over the years). I hope you can join us!
Admission is FREE and open to all!
IDO PORTAL: Just Move
‘Ido is a man obsessed with human movement.’ So begins this documentary on Ido Portal, who started training in martial arts and Capoeira as a teen and has gone on to create a fitness revolution called the Movement Culture.
Portal lizard-crawled into the popular consciousness in 2015, when he was recruited as the “movement coach” of soon-to-be UFC champion, mixed martial artist, Conor McGregor.
But Ido’s moves aren’t just for professional atheletes in peak condition, they are for everyone. His mantra is …
‘Move. Move with more understanding. Move better. Move. Move. Just Move!’
TOMORROW
TOMORROW is an upbeat documentary about the complex, interrelated, and potentially apocalyptic issues facing our globalized world. This educational, continent-hopping investigation was a surprise hit, winning the 2016 César for Best Documentary, and becoming the focal point for a gathering movement of citizens committed to putting its practical, inspiring, think-global-act-local solutions into practice.
Tomorrowidentifiesinitiatives that have proven themselves in ten countries around the world: concrete examples of solutions to environmental and social challenges of the twenty-first century, be it agriculture, energy, economy, education and governance.
The film was prompted by co-directors’ Mélanie Laurent and Cyril Dion coming across a scientific study in Naturemagazine that stated that at current rates of population expansion, resource consumption and environmental damage, humanity could be in the throes of an extinction-level event by the end of this century. But arresting though that thought certainly is, the year 2100 is an almost luxurious consideration if you’re in some doubt as to whether we’re going to make it to the end of next week.
SPARK: A Burning Man Story
Deep in the dusty expanse of the Nevada desert, over 60,000 people from around the world join together in a weeklong bacchanalia of art, self-expression and music. The once forsaken landscape is transformed into a temporary Shangri-La that doesn’t end until a towering effigy is set alight and burned to the ground in a ritual frenzy.
This is Burning Man. Originally imagined as an experiment in creating a utopia where the restrictions of modern life — the nine-to-five rat race, laws and confining societal norms -— vanish, the event’s popularity and scope has now exceeded even the creators’ wildest dreams.
Spark: A Burning Man Story brings audiences behind-the-scenes of the legendary celebration, shining a light on the triumphs and challenges of the artists fighting harsh realities to keep their ideals of unbridled freedom and community alive.
VAXXED: From Cover-up to Catastrophe
In 2013, biologist Dr. Brian Hooker received a call from a Senior Scientist at the CDC’s 2004 study on the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and its link to autism.
The scientist, Dr. William Thompson, confessed that the CDC had omitted crucial data in their final report that revealed a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. Over several months, Dr. Hooker records the phone calls made to him by Dr. Thompson who provides the confidential data destroyed by his colleagues at the CDC.
Dr. Hooker enlists the help of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the British gastroenterologist falsely accused of starting the anti-vax movement when he first reported in 1998 that the MMR vaccine may cause autism. In his ongoing effort to advocate for children’s health, Wakefield directs this documentary examining the evidence behind an appalling cover-up committed by the government agency charged with protecting the health of American citizens.
Interviews with pharmaceutical insiders, doctors, politicians, and parents of vaccine-injured children reveal an alarming deception that has contributed to skyrocketing autism.
HARE KRISHNA! The Mantra, the Movement and the Swami Who Started It All
Hare Krishna! The Mantra, the Movement and the Swami Who Started It All is a documentary on the life of Srila Prabhupada — the 70-year-old Indian Swami who arrived in America without support or money in the turbulent 1960s. It explores how he ignited the worldwide cultural revolution of spiritual consciousness and controversy, known as the Hare Krishna movement.
As chronicled by director John Griesser, it wasn’t all rose petals and hand cymbals when the former pharmacist arrived in America by cargo ship in 1965 without sponsors or suitable winter clothing. Eventually, hippies, in pursuit of an alternate reality that wasn’t drug-induced, began trickling into his East Village storefront, and, within a few years, Using never-before-seen archival verite, Prabhupada’s own recorded words, and interviews with his early followers, the film takes the audience behind-the-scenes of a cultural movement born in the artistic and intellectual scene of New York’s Bowery, the hippie mecca of Haight Ashbury, and the Beatle mania of London, to meet the Swami who started it all. Featuring the quiet Beatle, George Harrison, as well as adherents Allen Ginsberg and, later, Boy George, the film effectively summons an evocative moment in time.
AWAKE: A Dream from Standing Rock
AWAKE: A Dream from Standing Rock is the record of the massive peaceful resistance led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to the Dakota Access Pipeline through their land and underneath the Missouri River, a source of drinking water for over 18 million people. Pipeline leaks are commonplace. Since 2010 over 3,300 oil spills and leaks have been reported.
Moving from summer 2016, when demonstrations over the DAP’s demolishing of sacred Native burial grounds began, to the current and disheartening pipeline status, AWAKE is a powerful visual poem in three parts that uncovers complex hidden truths with simplicity. The film is a collaboration between indigenous filmmakers: Director Myron Dewey and Executive Producer Doug Good Feather; and environmental Oscar-nominated filmmakers Josh Fox and James Spione.
The Water Protectors at Standing Rock captured world attention through their peaceful resistance. The film documents the story of Native-led defiance that has forever changed the fight for clean water, our environment and the future of our planet. It asks: “Are you ready to join the fight?”