Join wildlife researcher Dr. Mark Ditmer for a special screening of Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, paired with a discussion on bear behavior and their evolving environmental landscape.
Filmmaker Werner Herzog adds another real-life character to his growing pantheon of people who walk a fine line between visionary genius and madness in this documentary. Timothy Treadwell was a self-styled authority on bears who, starting in 1990, would spend as much time as possible each year in Alaska, camping out near a grizzly bear habitat. While Treadwell claimed to love the bears and felt as one with them, he had no formal training in their behavior, and while familiarizing himself with the creatures he would walk within a few feet of them with a video camera in hand. To many, Treadwell seemed part man of nature, part conjuror, and part self-promotion expert, but the part that guided his kinship with the bears failed him in 2003, when he and his girlfriend were killed in a grizzly attack. Treadwell shot hundreds of hours of footage of himself and the grizzlies, and Herzog has used this footage as the core of Grizzly Man, a documentary look at Treadwell's life and death, while also including interviews with people who knew him, animal experts, and scientists. Acclaimed British guitarist Richard Thompson composed and performed the film's musical score.
GUEST SPEAKER
Mark Ditmer, PhD., University of Minnesota in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology
Dr. Mark Ditmer is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology. Mark's journey into wildlife research is a circuitous one. Prior to doing a total career 180 and moving to MN to begin his PhD at the University of Minnesota, he received his bachelor's in economics and finance from Villanova University and subsequently worked as economic consultant in midtown Manhattan and an energy consultant in Washington, DC. Less than a year after quitting his job in DC presenting analyses in front of CEOs of energy companies he was collaring American black bears in northwestern MN to study bear behavior, ecology and physiology. Through unlikely collaborations in the medical field, Mark has been utilizing the latest technologies to understand how wildlife respond to human actions and changes to the landscape. He will share some findings from his research and stories from the field.
SCIENCE ON SCREEN
Creative pairings of classic, cult, and documentary films with lively introductions by notable figures from the world of science, technology, and medicine.
This series is made possible through a grant by the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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