Chevy Chase Filmmaker Featured at DC Environmental Film Festival

The 21st Environmental Film Festival takes place this month in Washington, DC, with 190 "diverse and arresting films" from 50 countries, according to the festival's website.

One of those films—which screens at the National Museum of Natural History at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 21—was directed by filmmaker David Clark of Chevy Chase. 

Clark's film—Titans of the Ice Age—is a three-dimensional film "set at the end of the last ice age (about 20,000 years ago) and realistically depicts creatures that lived during this time, including woolly mammoths, columbian mammoths, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and giant ground sloths," Clark told Patch.

"The film also explores why about 70 percent of the world's largest mammals, including all of the animals mentioned [in the last paragraph], went extinct at the end of this ice age," he added.  

Clark and his production team "wanted to make this film because the ice age and all its incredible creatures had never been depicted in giant screen IMAX and in 3D."

"This giant screen format is well suited for showing huge animals like mammoths. But the film is also a cautionary tale about climate change and extinction that happened 20,000 years ago and may have parallels to our world today," Clark added.

Clark spent about a year and a half on the 40-minute film, but a few years of research and development preceded production. Clark was assisted by more than 200 people working on the film, including 30 computer animators, he said.

"We filmed ice age archaeological dig sites at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles and at Hot Springs, SD. Other locations included Yellowstone National Park and Utah. We also filmed the mummified baby woolly mammoth named Lyuba that is 42,000 years old and completely in tact. It was preserved by being frozen in ice when it died," Clark explained.

Several months of filming were followed by about eight months of editing. The computer animators spent about a year creating the ice-age creatures.

Academy Award-winning actor Christopher Plummer narrated the film, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra recorded the musical score, Clark said.

The film was released in February, and soon will be playing in IMAX and digital three-dimensional theaters across the U.S. and in other countries.

"We've received great feedback for the film to date. After all, who wouldn't love woolly mammoths?"

Clark will introduce the film on Thursday evening, and a discussion with Clark and National Museum of Natural History Curator Dennis Stanford will follow the screening. 

General admission tickets are $13, and tickets for children under 10 are $7. Call 202-633-3030 to reserve tickets, or reserve online at www.smithsonianassociates.org.

Find out more information about the film and view the trailer at the film's website.

Find out more about the Environmental Film Festival—and see a schedule of the films—on the festival's website.