AIFF 2015: The Man Who Proved Horses Leave The Ground While Running Comes To Anchorage Tonight

Well, not exactly in the flesh - he's been dead over a 100 years - but appropriately, in a film about his life.  From the National Museum of American History:

"Expatriate Englishman Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), a brilliant and eccentric photographer, gained worldwide fame photographing animal and human movement imperceptible to the human eye. Hired by railroad baron Leland Stanford in 1872, Muybridge used photography to prove that there was a moment in a horse’s gallop when all four hooves were off the ground at once. He spent much of his later career at the University of Pennsylvania, producing thousands of images that capture progressive movements within fractions of a second."

The film itself begins at 8pm, but it will be proceeded by the opening gala of the Anchorage International Film Festival.

The film is Canadian and simply titled Eadweard.   Kyle Rideout, the director will be there for questions afterward.

Looks like a good start for the festival.

With the Gala and all, it's a little pricey, but includes some food, and a chance to meet some of the filmmakers in town for the festival.  And, of course, ask the filmmaker about the film right after you watch it.

A discount version (regular festival prices) will Wednesday night at the Museum.


I''d add an additional note.  This is a feature film, but it is not in competition.  Most films are submitted to the festival by the filmmakers.  Some of these are recruited by the festival programmers who hear about good films or see them at other festivals.  Some are invited, for various reasons, to show, but not be part of the competition.  I'm assuming that that is the case here.

This is a good thing, because in the past, there were several years in a row where the opening night film ended up as the award winning feature.  That didn't seem like a great idea to a number of us who regularly attend the festival.

And here's the trailer:




He was a bit of a character, but perhaps that says more about the rest of society and how it imposes rules on all of us, than it says about him.