Roll cameras! Our World-Underwater is showcasing a two-day film festival at this year’s show Feb. 17 – 19 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, just outside Chicago. This year some of the best shooters and producers in world will get together to display their work to a packed audience.
Friday night is dedicated to shipwrecks. This year’s festival will include some HD footage of Truk Lagoon from veteran shooters Michael Salvarezza and Christopher Weaver who have shot footage from the arctic to the caves of Mexico. Professional cameraman Rick Morris will also premiere a piece on the struggles and triumphs of a wounded Iraqi veteran on his road to recovery.
Subsea explorer Dr. Phil Nuytten will emcee Friday evening. Dr. Nuytten is the inventor of the NEWTSUIT and has worked from punching out saturation dives as a commercial diver to working with Hollywood greats like James Cameron. As emcee, Dr. Nuytten will introduce a stunning piece from five high school students who worked with Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary in the discovery and filming of two new shipwrecks.
Friday will also include work from shipwreck hunter David Trotter exploring three-shipwrecks in Lake Huron and Jim & Pat Stayer with a piece focusing on the “plane wreck” of a Tuskegee airman’s P-39 Aircobra.
Saturday evening’s film festival will center on the marine environment. Legendary photographer Ernie Brooks will host the evening’s events and provide the audience with a presentation of Our World. Emmy award winner Jonathan Bird and internationally acclaimed filmmaker Leandro Blanco will headline the evening. Leandro will present a vignette of his lifelong passion of diving. Jonathan will offer a look at one of his 24 new segments for his award winning public television program Jonathan Bird’s Blue World.
Our World-Underwater Award Recipient Dr. Nuytten will present “A Personal Journey” and Danielle Alary and Michel Gilbert, recipients of the Canadian Diving Achievement Award, will share their piece My Coral Garden.
Our World-Underwater will offer the work of Annie Crawley on hammerheads and Rick Morris’s piece on the Philippines, Alien Anilao. Partners Bill Fisher and Joe Romeiro will offer a look at the blue water environment in Azul. Saturday evening will also feature the work of Kathy Johnson and Greg Lashbrook and their piece Freshwater Booty.
Whether your interest lay in the shallows of the Caribbean or the clear cold deep water wrecks of the Great Lakes, the Our World-Underwater and its film festivals are not to be missed. ■
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