'Gray Matter' Screening at Margaret Mead Film Festival
Gray Matter, the latest film by Joe Berlinger (Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Paradise Lost, Brother's Keeper) will screen this Sunday, November 14th at 2:00pm as part of the Margaret Mead Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History.
In the spring of 2002, Berlinger traveled to Vienna to witness the burial of the preserved brains of over 700 children killed at a Nazi "euthanasia" clinic. Gray Matter chronicles the filmmaker's personal journey as he searches for Dr. Heinrich Gross—known as the "Austrian Dr. Mengele"—who allegedly participated in these killings. Along the way Berlinger meets survivors of the clinic as well as other remarkable individuals who are confronting a nation that has only begun to grapple with its denial of this horrific legacy. "As Berlinger walks among jarred brains, one can't help musing on the enduring ability of populations to ignore atrocity, shift blame, and spin convenient myth," says The Village Voice. Time Out New York calls Gray Matter, "a spooky journey... dark and unsparing."
The longest-runnning showcase for international documentaries in the U.S., the Margaret Mead Film Festival encompasses a broad spectrum of work, from indigenous community media to experimental nonfiction. Titles screened at the Festival tackle diverse and challenging subjects, representing a range of issues and perspectives. This special screening of Gray Matter is in anticipation of the film's showing on Cinemax in the spring of 2005, and will feature a discussion with the filmmakers following the screening.
Festival tickets are available online at http://www.amnh.org/programs/mead/index.html.
In the spring of 2002, Berlinger traveled to Vienna to witness the burial of the preserved brains of over 700 children killed at a Nazi "euthanasia" clinic. Gray Matter chronicles the filmmaker's personal journey as he searches for Dr. Heinrich Gross—known as the "Austrian Dr. Mengele"—who allegedly participated in these killings. Along the way Berlinger meets survivors of the clinic as well as other remarkable individuals who are confronting a nation that has only begun to grapple with its denial of this horrific legacy. "As Berlinger walks among jarred brains, one can't help musing on the enduring ability of populations to ignore atrocity, shift blame, and spin convenient myth," says The Village Voice. Time Out New York calls Gray Matter, "a spooky journey... dark and unsparing."
The longest-runnning showcase for international documentaries in the U.S., the Margaret Mead Film Festival encompasses a broad spectrum of work, from indigenous community media to experimental nonfiction. Titles screened at the Festival tackle diverse and challenging subjects, representing a range of issues and perspectives. This special screening of Gray Matter is in anticipation of the film's showing on Cinemax in the spring of 2005, and will feature a discussion with the filmmakers following the screening.
Festival tickets are available online at http://www.amnh.org/programs/mead/index.html.
