American Natural History Museum to Present Margaret Mead Film Festival, 10/22

WHAT

With the theme "Thresholds," the 2015 Margaret Mead Film Festival presents stories that take us across boundaries and illuminate the depth and breadth of human existence: Uruguayan ballet dancers ignite stages at home and abroad; an Austrian village becomes a model for a Chinese utopia; an Indian girl sold into marriage escapes to become a thriving businesswoman; young adults with autism in Ohio experience their first dance. Such stories are emblematic of the legacy of Margaret Mead, whose pioneering work as an anthropologist at the Museum inspires us to consider what it means to cross thresholds into new cultures today.

Among the festival's wide selection of films this year are:

• Avant, directed byJuan Alvarez Neme (U.S. Premiere)

Julio Boca, one of the most revered ballet dancers of all time, took over the Ballet Nacional Sodre of Uruguay in 2010, when the company was in a state of precipitous decline. Bocca staked his reputation on elevating it to national and global prominence. The story that follows is both micro and macro-of a country striving for international significance and of a young, tight-knit group of dancers from varied backgrounds caught in the hope and drama of this pivotal moment.

• Banana Pancakes and the Children of Sticky Rice, directed by Daan Veldhuizen (New York Premiere)

Western backpackers arrive in a remote village in northern Laos searching for less modernity and more authenticity. But they feast on banana pancakes-almost entirely a Western delicacy-served up by local Laotians, who are no longer tied to harvesting sticky rice. Transversing real and illusory cultural expectations,the film becomes a delicate meditation on the shifting landscape of how we relate to others in a rapidly globalizing world.

• Double Happiness, directed by Ella Raidel (U.S. Premiere)

Near Huizhou, China, stands a replica of the idyllic mountain village of Hallstatt, Austria-a staging ground for provocative questions about tradition and innovation, copying and creativity, and what some in contemporary China's find most alluring about the West. Director Ella Raidel offers a film experience that is part sumptuously photographed essay and part docu-musical, recalling the iconic Austrian songspeil The Sound of Music (1965), the film takes a novel look at the building of a vision of utopia. .

• Exit Zero, directed by Chris Boebel (World Premiere)

The current crisis in American income inequality has firm roots in the devastation of Rust Best manufacturing in the 1980s, illuminated in the deeply personal story of Christine Walley, who was fourteen when the Southeast Chicago steel mill that employed her father closed. An anthropologist by profession, Walley narrates the impacts of de-industrialization on her family and friends, surfacing deep-seated cynicism and disappointment combined with hopefulness for the next generation in this quintessentially American story of post-industrial cities that could not be more timely.

For news and updates, please visit the Margaret Mead Film Festival website at amnh.org/mead.

The Margaret Mead Film Festival is proudly produced by the American Museum of Natural History.

WHEN

Thursday, October 22, to Sunday, October 25

WHERE

American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street
Samuel J. and Ethel LeFrak Theater, Kaufmann Theater, and the Linder Theater.

TICKETS

$15 opening- and closing-night screenings ($12 for Members, seniors, and students);
$12 all other screenings ($10 for Members, seniors, and students)
Tickets can be purchased by phone at 212-769-5200, online at amnh.org/mead, or at any of the American Museum of Natural History admission desks. For more information or to request a schedule by mail, the public should call 212-769-5305 or visit amnh.org/mead.