PLEISTOCENE PARK: Salem Film Fest

Showing at the Peabody Essex Museum for Salem Film Fest

Seeking no one’s help and asking nobody’s permission, Russian geophysicist Sergey Zimov and his son Nikita are gathering any large wooly beast they can get their hands on and transporting them to the most remote corner of Siberia. They call their project Pleistocene Park. The goal: restore the Ice Age “mammoth steppe” ecosystem and avoid a catastrophic feedback loop leading to runaway global warming.

Nature doesn’t cooperate, equipment breaks, bureaucrats meddle, animals run away, and there is never enough money. The clock is ticking. Sergey and Nikita find alarming evidence that permafrost is reaching its tipping point now, rather than in thirty years as originally predicted. On a global scale, progress addressing the root cause of climate change – anthropogenic carbon emissions – is as elusive as ever.

Can these two Russian scientists stave off a worst case scenario of global environmental catastrophe and reshape humanity’s relationship with the natural world?

Luke Griswold-Tergis directed SMOKIN’ FISH, which screened at Salem Film Fest in 2012.

A Q&A with Director Luke Griswold-Tergis follows screening at the Peabody Essex Museum.