LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Soper Reese Theater, Sierra Club Lake Group and Middletown Art Center invite the public to a special screening and conversation with filmmaker Luke Grisworld-Tergis about his award winning documentary film, “Pleistocene Park.”

The screening will take place on Sunday, Jan 29, at 2:30 p.m. at the Soper Reese Theatre.

Get tickets in advance at Soperreesetheatre.com, free/by donation, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Griswold-Tregis, an award-winning filmmaker and graduate from Lower Lake High School, studied cultural anthropology and ethnographic film at University of California, Santa Cruz.

“Pleistocene Park,” recently released, has already won prestigious awards at numerous film festivals.

“Pleistocene Park” tells the story of “a Russian Geophysicist Sergey Zimov and his son Nikita – part genius, part madman — a vanished ice age ecosystem, a climatic timebomb, and a crazy plan to save the world.”

In the movie the men call their project Pleistocene Park and its goal is to restore the Ice Age "mammoth steppe" ecosystem and avoid a catastrophic feedback loop leading to runaway global warming.

This daring and controversial experiment elicits many questions which Griswold will discuss with us Jan 29. He also presents the theory in his Tedx Talk, “Can Wooly Mammoths Save the World.”

In Griswold-Tregis’s own words: “My approach, in making this film, is to follow the characters as they navigate this controversy. They face nearly insurmountable odds. Their physical/logistical/financial struggles to create Pleistocene Park are matched by their scientific struggles to demonstrate that the theory works as advertised. As heroes, Sergey and Nikita are complicated and fallible. This is what makes it a good story. This film isn’t advocacy promoting Pleistocene Park. It will treat the main characters empathically, while critically engaging their claims. Whether they are successful or not, the quixotic attempt is still heroic.”

As audience member Kevin White said after viewing the film: "I love this film! It has folly, it has beauty, defeat, perseverance, despair, and success–like life."

We hope this will be the first in a series “Creative Thinkers of Lake County, CA” highlighting home-grown artists, scientists, engineers, educators and innovators who will share their work and accomplishments with the community to inspire others.