Doors open for exhibition viewing: 4:30 PM
Film screening: 5:30 PM
Inundation District Film Screening
January 24, 2024 | $10 for General Public or $5 for Members
Join us for the screening of Inundation District, a film by David Abel and Ted Blanco.
In a time of rising seas and intensifying storms, one of the world’s wealthiest, most-educated cities made a fateful decision to spend billions of dollars erecting a new district along its coast — on landfill, at sea level. Unlike other places imperiled by climate change, this neighborhood of glass towers housing some of the world’s largest companies was built well after scientists began warning of the threats, including many at its renowned universities. The city, which already has more high-tide flooding than nearly any other in the United States, called its new quarter the Innovation District. But with seas rising inexorably, and at an accelerating rate, others are calling the neighborhood by a different name: Inundation District. The 79-minute film, a production by The Boston Globe, was released in the fall of 2023.
This film is presented in conversation with the upcoming exhibition Framing the Domestic Sea: photographs by Jeffery C. Becton, a new body of work by this celebrated Maine artist. The exhibition will be on view at the New Bedford Whaling Museum's Wattles Gallery from January 12, 2024 – May 5, 2024.
Becton's digital photographic collages are surreal and panoramic in scope. The layered visual images evoke the past, New England’s varied histories, the maritime world, and contemporary environmental concerns. Learn more HERE.
Abel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who covers climate change for The Boston Globe. He is also a professor of the practice at Boston University. Abel’s work has won an Edward R. Murrow Award, the Ernie Pyle Award from the Scripps Howard Foundation, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Feature Reporting. His most recent film, “Entangled,” which was broadcast by PBS’s World Channel, was nominated for a 2022 Emmy, won a Jackson Wild award, known as the Oscars of nature films, and Best Feature Film at the International Wildlife Film Festival, among other awards. Abel previously co-directed and produced “Sacred Cod,” which was broadcast by the Discovery Channel. He also directed and produced two films about the Boston Marathon bombings, which were broadcast on BBC World News and Discovery Life. His other films include “Lobster War,” which won “Best New England Film'' at the Mystic Film Festival, and “Gladesmen: The Last of the Sawgrass Cowboys,” which won the Miami Film Festival’s Knight Made in Miami Award. Abel, who began learning to make films as a Nieman fellow at Harvard University, is INUNDATION DISTRICT’s producer, director, writer, and cinematographer.
Blanco is an editor, animator, cinematographer, licensed drone pilot, producer, and director. He has spent years creating content for TV, social media, and news publications to educate the public on climate change, traveling as far as Antarctica to tell stories. He has produced work for organizations including The Weather Channel, PBS, CNN, NOVA, The Style Network, Kraft, Google, COP 21, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and Mashable. His work has been aired on broadcast networks in China, India and the Philippines. Blanco is INUNDATION DISTRICT's producer, editor, animator, and sound designer.
