IN THE WHALE
The Greatest Fish Story Ever Told
Friday, March 1 at 7 PM
In Person: Filmmaker David Abel
$18 Public | $12 Members
From award-winning filmmaker David Abel, an amazing documentary chronicling the journey of
Michael Packard, a Cape Cod lobster diver who survived to tell the tale
of being swallowed by a humpback whale, and the events that followed when the
reclusive fisherman was thrust into the international limelight. Ultimately,
it’s a love story — how a fisherman's love for the sea and a father's love for
his family helped him survive in the whale and has helped him survive in
another whale, his depression.
In
the shark-filled waters off Cape Cod, Michael Packard has long tempted fate.
For several months a year, Packard and his longtime mate, Josiah Mayo, cast off
nearly every morning around dawn and navigate through the half-light to their
diving grounds off Provincetown, the idiosyncratic, isolated community where
they grew up at the tip of the Cape. Packard buckles on his scuba tank and
plunges into the cold waters to hunt on the seafloor.
As
the region’s last-remaining commercial lobster diver, the aging father has had
his share of harrowing experiences, which include close encounters with great
whites, nearly drowning, and having to pull up the body of a fellow diver. He
even survived a plane crash in the jungles of Costa Rica, where he ran a
charter fishing business. But what happened to him on a routine dive during a
clear June morning was something he never imagined possible, and many around
the world refused to believe.
In
an experience of biblical proportions, Packard was engulfed by a humpback
whale, caught in the watery cavity of its massive mouth. The publicity was
similarly dizzying for the reclusive fisherman, whose survival story spread
around the world in news dispatches. But what came after the limelight dimmed
was even more significant for Packard. (USA,
2023, 81 mins, color, DCP)
David
Abel is a Pulitzer
Prize-winning reporter who covers environmental issues for The Boston Globe.
He is also a professor of the practice at Boston University. Abel’s work
has won an Edward R. Murrow Award, the Ernie Pyle Award from the
Scripps Howard Foundation, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Feature
Reporting. His most recent film, “Entangled,” which was broadcast by
PBS’s World Channel, was nominated for a 2022 Emmy, won a Jackson Wild award,
known as the Oscars of nature films, and Best Feature Film at the International
Wildlife Film Festival, among other awards. Abel previously co-directed and
produced “Sacred Cod,” which was broadcast by the Discovery Channel. He
also directed and produced two films about the Boston Marathon bombings, which
were broadcast on BBC World News and Discovery Life. His other films include “Lobster
War,” which won “Best New England Film'' at the Mystic Film Festival, and “Gladesmen:
The Last of the Sawgrass Cowboys,” which won the Miami Film Festival’s
Knight Made in Miami Award. Abel, who began learning to make films as a Nieman
fellow at Harvard University, is IN THE WHALE’s producer,
director, writer, and cinematographer.
