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NCTC to Host Film

By Staff | Jul 18, 2011

On Wednesday July 20, at 7 p.m. The National Conservation Training Center will screen the film “Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy”. Filmmaker Randy Olson will introduce his film and take questions from the audience. The screening will take place at the National Conservation Training Center, on Shepherd Grade Road, outside of Shepherdstown.

Sizzle is a unique and original mixture of three genres: mockumentary, documentary, and reality. It is the story of a scientist-turned-filmmaker (Olson) forced to team up with two fabulous but flaky Hollywood producers who give him a crew that includes a global warming skeptic. Olson valiantly leads his ragtag crew through a series of interviews with top climate scientists as well as a half dozen major global warming skeptics. After realizing his interviews fail to provide enough material for a documentary, Olson and his soundman journey to New Orleans in search of “the human face of global warming,” in time for the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. What they encounter in the Lower Ninth Ward provides a somber, stark contrast to the silliness of making a documentary feature, and calls into question whether even the wealthiest nation on earth is ready to deal with major climate events predicted by global warming. The content of this film is for an adult audience.

Randy Olson was a professor of marine biology at the University of New Hampshire. Despite his Harvard Ph.D., four years of post-doctoral research in Australia and Florida, and years of diving around the world from the Great Barrier Reef to Antarctica, he tossed it all in, resigned from his tenured professorship and moved to Hollywood to explore film as a medium for communicating science. Today he is an independent filmmaker and author of the book Don’t Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style.

The presentation is free and open to the public. No tickets or reservations are required. It is part of a monthly series of “NCTC Conservation Lectures” held at the National Conservation Training Center. For more information please contact Mark Madison at 304-876-7276 or mark_madison@fws.gov

or check out our Web page at: http://training.fws.gov/history/publiclectures.html