Join the American Museum of Natural History November 10-13th for their 35th Annual Margaret Mead Film Festival.

The festival will feature more 35 films, including 7 U.S. features picked from over 1,000 international and national submissions! There will also live musical performances and a listening party at Hayden Planetarium. It's going to be an action packed 4 days! Opening and closing night tickets are only $15. Screening tickets are $12. Here are more details:

Festival Opening and Closing Nights

The opening night film on Thursday, November 10, is the New York premiere of Grande Hotel, directed by Lotte Stoops. The Grande Hotel in the West African seaside town of Beira, Mozambique, was once the most opulent resort on the continent. Now, it is home to an estimated 3,000 squatters. Living in this outsize shell of former luxury, those on the margins of society create a self-enclosed community as the place they call home crumbles around them. As one voice in the film observes, the history of the hotel is the history of the country.

            Closing night will feature the New York festival premiere of Flames of God, directed by Meshakai Wolf, on Sunday, November 13. The film follows Romani songwriter and poet Muzafer Bislim on his journey from Macedonia to France for the International Biennial of Poets in Paris. While seeking to publish his opus, a handwritten, 25,000-word dictionary containing what he believes to be some of the oldest and most obscure words in the Romani language, Bislim reunites with long-lost friends and family.

 

Mead Festival Special Series and Panels

The 35th Anniversary Retrospective Series presents a program of short films and several feature documentaries from the festival’s past: N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman by John Marshall, Adrienne Miesmer, and Sue Cabezas; A Wife among Wives from David and Judith MacDougall’s Turkana Conversations Trilogy; and Alanis Obomsawin’s Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance. Featured films also include Trance and Dance in Bali by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, Les Maitres Fous by Jean Rouch, and Jero on Jero: A Balinese Trance Séance Observed by Linda Connor and Patsy and Timothy Asch.

 The special panel discussion How Do We Look will focus on the history of documentary and its 40-year trajectory from the academic realm of visual anthropology to the living room as primetime entertainment. Technological changes continue to play a crucial role in the how documentaries are made, as increasingly portable and affordable tools influence form and multiple channels opening up the potential to reach wider audiences.

The Margaret Mead Filmmaker Awards

      The Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award recognizes documentary filmmakers whose work displays artistic excellence and originality of technique while offering a new perspective on a culture or community remote from the majority of the festival audiences’ experience. The seven contenders for this year’s Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award, presenting U.S. premieres at the festival, are:

·         Vit Klusák for All for the Good of the World and Nošovice

·         Bettina Büttner for Kids

·         Robert Nugent for Memoirs of a Plague

·         Floris-Jan van Luyn for Rainmakers

·         Caroline Leitner, Daniel Mazza, and Guiseppe Tedeschi for Small Kingdom of Lo

·         Marian Kiss for Space Sailors, and

·         Yuanchen Liu for To the Light

      The Mead Award jury is led by Academy Award-nominated director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler), who will be joined by Karen Cooper, director of New York City’s Film Forum; Liz Garbus, Academy Award-nominated director (Bobby Fischer Against the World, The Farm: Angola, USA) and 2002 MacArthur Fellow Stanley Nelson, director of the Emmy-winning documentary The Murder of Emmett Till. The Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award winner will be announced on closing night.

Live Performances

Following the screening of Skydancer on Sunday, November 13, is a performance and discussion of traditional Mohawk songs by Bear Fox and Katsitsionni Fox, who appear in the documentary, and Robby Baier, who composed the film’s score.

          
Festival Information and Tickets

All screenings take place at the American Museum of Natural History. Opening and closing night tickets are $15. All other screenings are $12. Members/students/senior citizens should call or check online for discounted rates. Shorter films may be grouped together in single programs. The Friend of the Festival Pass (opening night film and reception for two, plus six other programs) is $99 (a $150 value). Please note the Mead Festival has eliminated the ticket service charge. Attendees can now save money when ordering tickets in advance by phone or online. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 212-769-5200, online at amnh.org/mead, or at any of the Museum’s admission desks. For more information, the public should call 212-769-5305 or visit amnh.org/mead.

Full film descriptions and trailers can be found online at amnh.org/mead. The public can purchase tickets and create a personalized film schedule at mead2011.sched.org. For festival highlights or daily updates, information can be found on Facebook at facebook.com/MeadFilmFestival or Twitter using #MeadFilmFest.