From the producers of the widely-acclaimed movie “Inside Story” comes a new feature-length film, THE LUCKY SPECIALS, a highly entertaining musical drama about a band’s journey to create a new musical sound and catapult their small-time group to the big stage.
Recently re-broadcast by PBS, “Spillover” explains the science behind how viruses like Corona, Zika, SARS and Ebola are transmitted from animals to humans – often with devastating results. In the last half-century the number of spillover viruses has quadrupled, costing countless lives. Typically, people learn about outbreaks as sudden disconnected flare ups. But these viruses have much in common: where they come from, how they maim and kill, and how they can be controlled.
Here’s something you won’t find on ancestry.com: Your inner ear comes from the jawbone of a prehistoric fish. Your skin and hair can be traced to a shrew-like mammal that lived around165 million years ago. As for your trick knee — well, you can thank your primate ancestors for that.
It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. How did it become the complicated, quirky and amazing machine it is today?
Diseases that were largely eradicated in the United States a generation ago – whooping cough, measles, mumps – are returning, in part because nervous parents are skipping their children’s shots. VACCINES – CALLING THE SHOTS takes viewers around the world to track epidemics, explore the science behind vaccinations, and shed light on the risks of opting out.
It’s a mystery on a global scale: five times in Earth’s past, life has been nearly extinguished, the vast majority of plant and animal species annihilated in a geologic instant. What triggered these dramatic events? And what might they tell us about the fate of our world?
JOHNSON CITY — It’s not uncommon to see a white-tailed deer herd or a doe with her fawns crossing from one side of the road to the other. For some kids, that’s as close as they get to Mother Nature, which is a travesty to Maggie Goodman, librarian at the Johnson City Library .“All they do is sit with whatever kind of game they play,” she said. “It’s sensory deprivation. I think this is an important mission, to make sure kids learn how inspiring nature is.”Goodman is taking action with “Backyard Wilderness,” the library’s latest exhibit. It opens for a two-month-long stay at 10 a.m.
The festival will close with another double bill: “Serengeti Rules” and “She Is the Ocean.” “ ‘Serengeti’ is one of the most beautiful, visually stunning documentaries I’ve ever seen,” says Rivers. “They shot in the Serengeti but also in the Aleutian Islands, the Pacific Northwest and Peru, and it’s all about our need to preserve the balance of life on Earth. It’s an extremely hopeful film. ‘She Is the Ocean’ is a wonderful documentary about nine women and their relationship to the ocean, and the second part of a trilogy from director Innesse Biohina.”
A heartening work on climate change came in Nicolas Brown’s The Serengeti Rules. Five largely unknown heroes of modern ecology headed into international wildernesses decades ago, driven by curiosity about how nature functions.
CHEVY CHASE, MD (APRIL 27, 2018) — HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, the award winning film production unit of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in association with Fishbowl Films, Motto Pictures, 19340 Productions, Shark Island Institute and Glassbreaker Films is pleased to announce that INVENTING TOMORROW will screen at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival, North America’s largest documentary festival.
In March, I had the opportunity to attend an early screening of a new IMAX documentary, Backyard Wilderness, that is screening in science centers and other specialty IMAX theaters nationally. The film's central message encourages kids and adults to explore the natural world all around them just outside their door—and disconnect from electronic devices that keep them inside. When I had the opportunity to speak with her after a screening, Susan Todd, the writer, director, and a producer of the film, affirmed her goal for the film was to support outdoor exploration by every child.
