Today CIFF announced the Opening and Closing Night Films for the 2012 Festival. The festival will open on September 27th with BETTING THE FARM and close on September 30th with CHASING ICE. More details on both these films can be found below. Both screenings will be followed by a Q&A with filmmakers and other special guests. The rest of the program is still being worked on, and will be announced at some point next week.
BETTING THE FARM chronicles a group of Maine dairy farmers, who after dropped by their national milk company, launch their own milk company, MOO Milk, in a bid to save their farms. BETTING THE FARM follows three farmers—Aaron Bell, Vaughn Chase, and Richard Lary—and their families through the tumultuous first two years of MOO Milk. With intimate access to their triumphs and disappointments, the film gives audiences a rare glimpse at the real lives of American farmers at a crossroads.
CHASING ICE follows National Geographic photographer James Balog on an Arctic adventure as he captures images to help tell the story of the Earth’s changing climate. With a band of young adventurers in tow, Balog creates the Extreme Ice Survey, and begins deploying revolutionary time-lapse cameras across the brutal Arctic, by helicopter, canoe, and dogsled, to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers. What his project captures are ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. CHASING ICE is a feature documentary about one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet.
