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 eighth 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 2019/20 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!
INTELLIGENT TREES
Trees talk, know family ties and care for their young? Is this too fantastic to be true? German forester Peter Wohlleben (‘The Hidden Life of Trees’) and scientist Suzanne Simard (The University of British Columbia, Canada) have been observing and investigating the communication between trees over decades. And their findings are most astounding.
‘Intelligent Trees’ features the main observations that are covered in Peter Wohlleben’s book such as the stump that has been kept alive by it’s neighboring trees, the old tree-couple that looks after each other, the Mother Trees that suckle their offspring, etc… Special about this film is, however, that it goes beyond observations and claims, but match them with the latest underlying Forest Science Research.
Trees are so much more than rows of wood waiting to be turned into furniture, buildings or firewood. They are more than organisms producing oxygen or cleaning the air for us. They are individual beings that have feelings, know friendship have a common language and look after each other. This documentary explores the various ways that trees communicate with each other- from a forester’s observations as well as through the microscope of a scientist.
The film centers around the groundbreaking scientific discoveries that Suzanne Simard has been making in the Canadian Wilderness since the 1990s and that seem to be valid for all natural forests around the world!
FREE TRIP TO EGYPT
FREE TRIP TO EGYPT takes audiences on a remarkable journey, in which an unlikely group of travelers to the Middle East find themselves transformed by the power of human connection.
Tarek Mounib, a Canadian-Egyptian entrepreneur living in Switzerland, is troubled by a world that seems ever more divided and polarised. In response to increasing levels of anger and hatred towards “the other” on American social and broadcast media, he resolves to reach out to the very people who fear his culture, with an intriguing idea.
With the aim of trying to build mutual understanding, Tarek travels across the USA in order to find Americans who feel threatened by Islam and offer them a Free Trip to Egypt.
The initial reactions range from disbelief to hostility, but eventually, a diverse group is selected. These characters are a cross-section of contemporary America: including a teacher, a police officer, a Marine veteran, a single mom, a preacher and a beauty pageant queen.
All have their preconceptions but all are receptive and courageous enough to embark on the adventure of a lifetime.
TONY ROBBINS: I Am Not Your Guru
TONY ROBBINS: I AM NOT YOUR GURU, a film about internationally renowned life and business strategist Tony Robbins goes behind the scenes of his mammoth seminar “Date With Destiny,” attended by over 2,500 people in Boca Raton, Florida, each year, to give an insider look at how one man can affect millions.
Granted never before seen access to the behind the scenes modus operandi of this enormous event, this film captures both the immense effort of producing this live seminar, as well as the life-changing transformations of the participants in real time. Embedding with Tony Robbins and his team over the course of six days, Academy Award nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger turns an unflinching eye on Tony Robbins’ powerful and uncompromising approach to achieving success, ensuring the attendees leave “Date With Destiny” with new perspective on the forces, thoughts, and feelings that motivate their behavior and help them take control of their lives.
TONY ROBBINS is an emotional tour de force that unveils the inner-workings of this mega event, the zealous participants and the man himself.
CHEF’S TABLE: Asma Khan
The Asma Khan episode of CHEF’S TABLE tells a fascinating life story, punctuated by mesmerizing cooking sequences and sweeping shots of rural India. When chef and restaurateur Asma Khan was born in Kolkata, the second daughter to a royal Indian family, her parents lamented. “It’s a patriarchal society,” she says. “ The second daughter arrives at a time when the household is hoping that they will finally get a boy, their heir.” This problem extends far beyond royalty, however; as Khan explains, “there is a deafening silence on this issue in India”.
The majority of the all-female team working at her Soho-based restaurants – the Darjeeling Express and the newly opened Calcutta Canteen – are second daughters. None of them are professionally trained chefs, but they are all excellent home cooks, having learnt their craft by observing their mothers creating traditional fare in the kitchen growing up. “It’s not something you would normally be able to eat in London,” Khan states. “It’s the food that you would only get if you knew an Indian family who cooked well.”
The restaurants support the Second Daughters’ Fund, founded by Khan to commemorate the births of these girls in India by delivering packages to their families.
OWNED: A Tale of Two Americas
OWNED: A Tale of Two Americas is a fever dream vision into the dark history behind the US housing economy. Tracking its overtly racist beginnings to its unbridled commoditization, this documetary exposes a foundational story few Americans understand as their own.
The US postwar housing policy created the world’s largest middle class, but also set America on two divergent paths — one of imagined wealth, the other systematically defunded, segregated communities, where “the American dream” feels hopelessly out of reach.
In 2008, the US housing market became the epicenter of an unprecedented global crisis. The crash of suburbia and urban unrest are two sides of the same coin.
Through the stories of a retired New York City cop, an eccentric Orange County realtor, and an aspiring real estate developer in Baltimore, OWNED explores the promise of US housing policies, the systematic oppression in many of America’s “chocolate cities,” and the communities that these systems have created. The film suggests that ultimately, these communities have more in common than they might expect.
VASANT LADD: The Doctor From India
THE DOCTOR FROM INDIA is a meditative and immersive portrait of the life and work of Dr. Vasant Lad, the holistic health pioneer who first brought the ancient medical practice of Ayurveda from India to the west in the late 1970s. Integrating his gifts as both a healer and a mystic, Dr. Lad has dedicated his life to sharing what is considered the oldest healthcare system on earth in the complex medical landscape of the United States.
This is the beautiful and inspiring story of a man who has for decades been quietly at the center of a revolutionary movement to change the way we care for our bodies and our spirits. Directed by Jeremy Frindel (One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das) with an elegant musical score by Rachel Grimes, and featuring Deepak Chopra, Robert Svoboda, David Frawley, and Claudia Welch.
THE DOCTOR FROM INDIA had its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 2, 2018 and opened in New York on June 1, 2018.