Note: the film was shown at the Parish Hall at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church at 7:30 pm, instead of at the Museum’s office.

The first Friday of each month, the Wildling Art Museum in Los Olivos, a museum devoted to the art of America’s wilderness, screens notable films about nature or art and invites the public to come see them free of charge. The Museum also provides free popcorn and cookies, wine, water, and soft drinks. Reservations are not required, but space is limited and seats are available on a first come, first served basis.

The Free Friday Flicks are underwritten by a generous grant from The Valley Foundation.

“Arctic Expedition” “Desperate Measures: The Dilemma of the South African Elephant”

A discussion following the screening was led by Dr. Osherenko and included one of the students who produced the film on the elephants.

The Wildling Art Museum’s “Free Friday Flicks” on June 6 featured two documentaries screened at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival last year that were produced by local filmmakers. These short films explore the human impact on two very different ecosystems, the Arctic north and South Africa. “Arctic Expedition,” was filmed and produced by Gail Osherenko, a Project Scientist with he Marine Science Institute at UCSB. “Desperate Measures: The Dilemma of the South African Elephant” was produced and filmed by five Santa Barbara high school students. The screenings will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Stacy Hall at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2901 Nojoqui Street in Los Olivos.

“Arctic Expedition,” (16 minutes) was filmed in August 2006 when Osherenko accompanied the Ruby expedition to Svalbard, an archipelago of islands north of Norway. It is an entertaining, family-friendly film, capturing spectacular images of polar bears, walrus, humpback whales, and waterfalls flowing from the polar ice cap, but it addresses the serious issue of global warming caused by human dependence on burning carbon fuels that is melting the sea ice and threatening the survival of the polar bears.

The film “Desperate Measures” ( 22 minutes), which won an award at the 2007 U.S. International Film and Video Festival in Hollywood, is based on a trip the students took to South Africa in the summer of 2006. The students included Freddy Meyer of Santa Barbara High School, Bradley Lonson and Freddie Weston-Smith of Laguna Blanca School, Spencer Spottiswoode from San Roque High School, and Toby Eversole, a college student in Oregon. Their film, which is much less suited to a family audience, explores the several solutions of how to deal with elephant over-population in Kruger National Park from culling, to translocation, to birth control for female elephants and vasectomies for males. It includes interviews with conservationists in South Africa and the U.S., including Rich Block, the Director of the Santa Barbara Zoo and local resident, the actor John Cleese.