The 41 North Film Festival (formerly Northern Lights Film Festival) celebrates its 10th anniversary with a name change and an outstanding slate of recent award-winning films and special guests. It will be held from October 23-26 in the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts on the Michigan Tech campus.
10/23, 7:00 p.m.
Kicking off the festival this year will be director Mark Levinson and his documentary Particle Fever. Particle Fever follows six scientists involved in the launch of the Large Hadron Collider — the biggest and most expensive experiment in the history of the planet. The film provides an unprecedented window into this major scientific breakthrough as it happened. Edited by Academy-Award winner Walter Murch, the film celebrates human discovery and raises important questions about the limits of human knowledge.
Mark Levinson, has worked closely with directors such as Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) and on films including Se7en, Cold Mountain, and The Pledge. He also has a PhD in Physics from UC-Berkeley. He will be on hand for a Q&A following the film. Thursday, 10/23, 7 p.m.
On Friday, 10/24, at 7:30 p.m., director/actor Ravi Patel and his father, Michigan Tech alum Vasant Patel (Mechanical Engineering, class of 70), will present the new documetary, Meet the Patels. When Ravi, the son of Indian immigrants, finds himself at a romantic crossroads in his late 20s, love becomes a family affair and an adventure in cross-cultural understanding. The film recently won the Founders Grand Prize for best film at the Traverse City Film Festival.
10/24, 7:30 p.m.
As an actor, Ravi is most recognized for his work on SCRUBS, IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, TRANSFORMERS, POWDER BLUE, and THE NEW NORMAL. In 2013, he co-founded THIS BAR SAVES LIVES – with actors Ryan Devlin, Todd Grinnell, and Kristen Bell – which gives a meal to a starving child for every granola bar they sell. Ravi also co-manages an investment group which focuses primarily on health, wellness, and social enterprise startups. Prior to joining the entertainment industry, Ravi was an investment banker and later founded the popular poker magazine ALL IN. He graduated from The University of North Carolina with double majors in Economics and International Studies.
In addition to these featured events, the festival will offer a great selection of independent films including the critically acclaimed Boyhood (Linklater, 2014), The Overnighters (Moss, 2014), which won the 2014 Sundance Jury Prize for Intuitive Filmmaking, Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity (Gund, 2014), Alive Inside (Michael Rossato-Bennett), and the indie sci-fi film, Coherence (2014). There will also be shorts programs and other great events for festival goers.
The event is sponsored by the Humanities Department, the Visual and Performing Arts Department, the Office of Institutional Equity, the College of Sciences and Arts, CinOptic Enterprise Team, and the Visiting Women & Minority Lecturer/Scholar Series (VWMLS) which is funded by a grant to the Office of Institutional Equity from the State of Michigan’s King-Chavez-Parks Initiative. It is free and open to the community. For the full line-up, visit the festival website at http://41northfilmfest.org. Contact Erin Smith at 906-487-3263 or ersmith@mtu.edu for more information.