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The Anthropologist

The Anthropologist

At this point no documentarian can possibly have a fresh take on climate change, right? Wrong. “The Anthropologist,” a stealthily insightful film by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy Newberger, improbably mixes that topic with a mother-daughter story to produce a distinctive study of change and human adaptability.

The film follows Susan Crate, an anthropologist at George Mason University, and her daughter, Katie Yegorov-Crate, as they globe-hop to places where climate change is having a dramatic effect. In Siberia, they see hayfields that are underwater because of the thawing of the permafrost layer. In Kiribati in the South Pacific, they talk to residents grappling with the possibility that their islands will disappear into the sea. (“Right here was the most-populated village on the island,” a man tells Ms. Crate as they stand in water up to the breastbone.)

But this patient film, by the same directors behind a well-regarded 2008 documentary called “The Linguists,” isn’t interested in merely checking in on environments under duress. It was shot over a period of years — Katie, 14 when we first meet her, is entering college by the film’s end — and captures the subtle evolution in the relationship between mother and daughter. The filmmakers enhance the portrait with comments from the cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of Margaret Mead; Mead’s pioneering anthropological work is seen in archival vignettes.

You may spend much of “The Anthropologist” wondering what exactly the filmmakers are getting at, but by the end you realize they have teased out the idea that a defining human attribute is our ability to adjust to change, whether rising seawater or simply the growing up of our own children. It’s an expertly rendered juxtaposition, all the more effective for being unstated.

— Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times

The Anthropologist

Thu February 23, 2017, 7:30 PM, Muenzinger Auditorium

Russia, 2015, in English, Color, 78 min

recommend

Tickets

10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission. $7 w/UCB student ID, $7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.

Parking

Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.

RTD Bus

Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus

International Film Series

(Originally called The University Film Commission)
Established 1941 by James Sandoe.

First Person Cinema

(Originally called The Experimental Cinema Group)
Established 1955 by Carla Selby, Gladney Oakley, Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage.

C.U. Film Program

(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil Grillo.

Celebrating Stan

Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.

C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

Established 2017 by Chair Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz.

Thank you, sponsors!
Boulder International Film Festival
Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

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