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08/03/2007
'Arctic Tale' debuts hereFree children's admission with paying parentsTRAVERSE CITY — The Traverse City Film Festival is striking out in new territory with its children's matinee, "The Arctic Tale.” Opened in limited release on July 25, the National Geographic/Paramount film won't hit local screens until Aug. 17 — making it a coup for the festival, said festival manager Deb Lake. "Any time you have a premiere it is,” she added. Starbucks also will publicize the movie and sell the DVD in its stores. The film, free to kids 18 and under, follows the lives of Nanu, a young polar bear, and Seela, a baby walrus, as they experience life in an environment threatened by global warming (at the current rate, it's estimated that the ice will vanish from the Arctic by the year 2040). It will be shown twice on Saturday: at 10 a.m. at the State Theatre and at 10:30 a.m. at Lars Hockstad Auditorium. Shot by husband-and-wife filmmaking team Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson over several years, the $10 million "documentary” is actually a fictional, family-friendly fable created from footage of several walruses and polar bears. Narrated by Queen Latifah, it's a cross between "March of the Penguins” and Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore's daughter, Kristin, was one of its screenwriters. Like the others, it features stunning footage, including a mother polar bear and her newborns inside an ice cave and a 2,000-pound walrus swimming in the freezing deep (besides a degree in marine biology, Ravetch has a background in underwater photography). As is inevitable in such documentaries, it also shows a disturbing image or two — like a bear cub starving to death. In adding children's programming to its schedule, the Traverse City Film Festival joins prominent festivals like the Toronto International Film Festival, which screened contemporary international children's cinema for the first time last year, according to TIFF communications assistant Alma Parvizian. This September the festival's Sprockets Family Zone program will feature six children's films, from drama to documentaries to animation. ”One of the major reasons why we created this program was so that adult Festivalgoers could bring along their young friends and family and enjoy these capitvating, engaging and delightful films from all around the world,” said Jane Schoettle, director of Sprockets, which also runs a separate film festival for children earlier in the year. Adult tickets for "The Arctic Tale” are $8.50 at the festival box office; tickets are free to kids on a first-come, first-served basis at the theater. Space is available on about a 1:2 ratio, Lake said. While adult tickets for the State Theatre screening are already sold out, she said there will be a stand-by line. "And if (people) can't get in, they can just hop on a shuttle to Lars, which will be showing the same film,” she said.
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