2024 SEASON SNAPSHOT
2024 PROGRAMS:
Films - Free Admission/Lectures - $8 (Free for Members)
LUMBERJACK SKY PILOT
June 13, 7 PM
Film Showing
Classic and nostalgic footage by Reverend Frank Reed, one of many itinerant preachers, or "sky pilots," who visited lumber camps in the North Country. He shares his 16mm film which is a historic portrayal of lumberjacks at work in the Adirondacks and Tug Hill during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Film by Frank Reed, 2005, 69 mins.
ETHNIC NOTIONS
June 20, 7 PM
Film Showing
In his first major work, a brilliant and disturbing deconstruction of the ways in which anti-Black stereotypes have permeated nearly every aspect of popular culture, Marlon Riggs brings viewers face-to-face with the insidious images that have shaped America’s racial mythologies. Through razor-sharp historical analysis and powerfully deployed imagery, Ethnic Notions illuminates, with devastating clarity, how dehumanizing caricatures of Black people—seen everywhere from children’s books to films to household products—have been used to uphold white supremacy and to justify slavery, segregation, and the continuing oppression of African Americans. In its refusal to look away, this Emmy-winning documentary, narrated by actor Esther Rolle, has become an essential text for understanding the origins of American racism.
Directed by Marlon Riggs, 1987, 56 mins.
THE BLACK WOODS
June 27, 7 PM
Lecture/Presentation
AMY GODINE
The Black Woods chronicles the history of Black pioneers in New York's northern wilderness. From the late 1840s into the 1860s, they migrated to the Adirondacks to build farms and to vote. On their new-worked land, they could meet the $250 property requirement New York's constitution imposed on Black voters in 1821, and claim the rights of citizenship.
Three thousand Black New Yorkers were gifted with 120,000 acres of Adirondack land by Gerrit Smith, an upstate abolitionist and heir to an immense land fortune.
In The Black Woods, Amy Godine recovers a robust history of Black pioneers who carved from the wilderness a future for their families and their civic rights. Her immersive story returns the Black pioneers and their descendants to their rightful place at the center of this history. With stirring accounts of racial justice, and no shortage of heroes, The Black Woods amplifies the unique significance of the Adirondacks in the American imagination.
RENAMING, RECLAIMING HISTORY
July 18, 7 PM
Lecture/Presentation
CONNER WILLIAMS
The lead historian for the Congressionally mandated Renaming Commission brings a depth and immediacy to our society's examination of what history we honor and why. Williams, who lives in Westport with his family, is a student of African-American history as well as Adirondack history.
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WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY FROM AROUND THE WORLD
July 25, 7 PM
Lecture/Presentation
LARRY MASTER
This year’s Rosenberg Gallery featured artist, Larry Master, will give a presentation about his long career in wildlife conservation. Master, a resident of Keene, NY, is a conservation biologist, zoologist, and currently dedicates his time to conservation photography. He has been photographing wildlife and natural history subjects for more than 70 years. He has traveled to the ends of the earth to photograph wild things, from polar bears hunting in Svalbard and Churchill, to birds of paradise strutting in New Guinea, to grizzlies fishing in Alaska’s Katmai National Park, to jaguars crunching caimans in Brazil’s Pantanal, to the curious cheetah that this year climbed onto his safari vehicle in Tanzania.
WHERE TRACKS ARE DRAGGED: Indigenous Women's trade through the 18th century Adirondacks
August 1, 7 PM
Lecture/Presentation
MAEVE KANE
When Agnese, a Kahnawà:ke Mohawk woman, traveled through the Adirondacks in the summer of 1742, she connected two colonial centers of trade across imperial borders and through traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) territories. Agnese carried a pack of beaver pelts down from Montreal and returned with red fabric and fine laces. This trade was illegal for Agnese's trade partners—one a French widow, the other a future mayor of Albany--but for Agnese, that colonial border between Canada and New York and the colonial jurisdiction that attempted to regulate it simply did not exist. This talk will discuss the Indigenous women who conducted trade between Albany, Montreal, and Haudenosaunee territories, the things they bought and carried, and what it means for Haudenosaunee sovereignty and the right to free travel in the 21st century.
RUSSELL BANKS: I WRITE IN ORDER TO BE A BETTER PERSON
August 8, 7 PM
Film Showing
A documentary film, shot in vivid HD accompanied by stills, archival footage, and theatrical films that bring audiences face to face with the celebrated author Russell Banks. This film presents a fascinating study of how Banks’ creative process led him to question his own biases and cultural assumptions and serves as an example of how one can generate the empathy and compassion required to recognize the full, shared humanity of those with backgrounds and outlooks different from our own. In final production. Filmmaker will be in attendance for Q & A session.
Produced/Directed by Denis Mueller, 90 mins.
LOGGING THE HIGH PEAKS
August 15, 7 PM
Lecture/Presentation
SHARP SWAN
Lumbering the highest mountains in New York State was a dangerous and precarious job, where everything had to be worked by brute manpower and horses. Deep snows and frigid winter temperatures, mountains over 4000 feet with 45-degree slopes, logging camps high in the mountains dozens of miles away from civilization, and swollen rivers filled with log jams, all made being a lumberjack a tough occupation. Sharp Swan will share the story of the people who worked the Adirondack High Peaks bringing timber off the slopes to market.
A DISCUSSION WITH THE ADIRONDACK COUNCIL
August 22, 7 PM
Lecture/Presentation
RAUL AGUIRRE
The new (2023) director of the venerable Adirondack Council discusses the challenges facing his organization and the public-private Park that ecompasses the Adiorondacks. A hunter, fisherman, conservationist, former wilderness ranger and firefighter, Aguirre considers what it will mean to preserve, protect and prosper in the future.
NANOOK OF THE NORTH REVISITED
August 29, 7 PM
Film Showing
Film with lecture and discussion led by Gerry Zahavi, Suny Albany, about the controversies around Nanook of the North, a film by Robert Flaherty that sought to document a fading indigenous culture, as well as the birth of documentary filmmaking in the 1920s. Selections from the original film and recent colorized release, followed by the full retrospective documentary film about Nanook's production - Nanook Revisited, which examines how contemporary Inuit view Flaherty and his work.
Directed by Claude Massot, 1990, 50 mins.
SALT OF THE EARTH
September 5, 7 PM
Film Showing
Follow acclaimed photographer Sebastião Salgado in his quest to document the planet’s most arresting landscapes and their inhabitants. Salgado, who has documented international conflicts, starvation, and exodus, now embarks on a search for wild, pristine landscapes as a tribute to the planet’s beauty.
Directed by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado & Wim Wenders, 2014,
110 mins.
LOVING VINCENT
September 12, 7 PM (rescheduled date)
Film Showing
Loving Vincent is the world’s first fully painted film. The semi-fictional story about the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh is depicted in oil-painted animation by a team of 100 artists with 65,000 frames on over 1,000 canvases in the style of Van Gogh’s renowned oil paintings. This film posits a potential explanation for the circumstances of Van Gogh’s mysterious 1890 death. While we may never know for certain how and why Van Gogh died, this film is a visually stunning interpretation of the events surrounding his death. The film was nominated for the 2018 Oscars for best-animated film.
Directed by DK Welchman & Hugh Welchman, 2017, 91 mins.
