Judith Malek-Mahdavi and Jens Schanze’s PLUG & PRAY kicks off annual Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th St.
November 11-14, $12-$40
212-769-5200
www.amnh.org/mead
The thirty-fourth annual Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival will present more than three dozen short and feature-length documentaries that span the globe, beginning with the opening-night selection, Judith Malek-Mahdavi and Jens Schanze’s PLUG & PRAY (VON COMPUTERN UND ADEREN MENSCHEN), which examines Joseph Weizenbaum’s work in artificial intelligence, through the closing-night film, Nicola Bellucci’s IN THE GARDEN OF SOUNDS (NEL GIARDINO DEI SUONI), which looks at Wolfgang’s Fasser’s forays into sound’s healing powers. This year’s festival features works from Israel, Greece, Russia, Peru, Cambodia, Brazil, Uganda, Afghanistan, and many other nations, investigating the petrochemical plants of Port Arthur, Texas (SHELTER IN PLACE), Chinese investment in Zambia (WHEN CHINA MET AFRICA), the South Pacific erosion of the Takuu homeland in Papua New Guinea (THERE ONCE WAS AN ISLAND), plutonium accidents in Chelyabinsk (TANKOGRAD), post-apartheid economic problems for black communities in South Africa (WHEN THE MOUNTAIN MEETS ITS SHADOW), Swiss artist Ernst Abei’s return to Mali (BAREFOOT TO TIMBUKTU: ERNSE AEBI – COME HELL OR HIGH WATER), and the Mursi fighting for survival in Ethiopia (SHOOTING WITH MURSI). There is also a special section on musician and photographer John Cohen and several works being shown in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History’s upcoming “Brain: The Inside Story” exhibition, including Nadav Harel’s THE ELECTRIC MIND, about cutting-edge neurosurgery techniques. The festival, which runs at the museum November 11-14, will also offer the opportunity to discover the story behind the institution’s forty thousand glass lantern slides in the special program “Lantern Slides: Looking Glass Through History” with AMNH archivist Barbara Mathé and historians Constance Areson Clarke and Alison Griffiths.