Frozen in Time
Award-winning Canadian anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson brings usFrozen in Time, his newest film exploring the mysteries of evolution through the story of Natalia Rybczynski. A star in the field of paleontology, a traumatic brain injury stopped the scientist in her tracks. Before her injury, Natalia made fascinating discoveries in the Arctic, including the land-walking ancestor of seals, the first appearance of dam-building beavers, even the evolutionary origins of desert camels in Arctic snows. Her work suggests the Arctic was once a kind of evolutionary hub for species we now associate with much warmer climates. Despite her damaged brain, Natalia has never lost her curiosity and continues to study the high Arctic, once a rich forest world full of surprising creatures that thrived there before the Ice Age.
Director/s
Niobe Thompson
Niobe Thompson
A native of Alberta, Canada, where he grew up in a Cree community, NIOBE THOMPSON is an anthropologist as well as filmmaker whose documentaries explore evolution, human origins, and the environment. He is a two-time News & Documentary Emmy nominee for episodes of Nova and a three-time winner of Canadian Screen Awards’ Rob Stewart Award, given to science and nature documentaries.
Expected Guests
NIOBE THOMPSON: Director
Films showing in this session:
Passionate Native Alaskan biologist Shayla researches the connection between climate change and mussels, a staple cultural food in her Unangax̂ community that has become toxic.
A Swedish couple tag migrating birds while working a day job at the last manual weather station, recording the weather day and night, seven days a week, for 36 years.