The Fargo premiere of documentary filmmaker Anne Aghion’s "Ice People" is planned for Tuesday, March 3, at the opening night of the 2009 Fargo Film Festival. The film features the research of NDSU scientists Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis and students Kelly Gorz and Andrew Podoll.
In celebration of “Ice People” and the opening night of the festival, NDSU landscape architecture students Kyle Slivnik, David Prom and Patrick Benson will create a snow sculpture in front of the Fargo Theatre. The students recently participated in the Festival du Voyageur 15th annual International Snow Sculpting Symposium.
Aghion spent four months at the U.S. research station McMurdo and camped out for seven weeks in the research field with Ashworth and the research crew while they studied fossilized vegetation in Antarctic lakebeds. The feature-length documentary explores the physical, emotional and spiritual adventure of living and conducting science in Antarctica.
“Ice People” first premiered at the 2008 San Francisco International Film Festival, has aired on ARTE in Europe and the Sundance Channel. The film also has been screened at science museums and film festivals in Australia, Vancouver, New York, Paris, San Francisco and Jerusalem and was featured in “Hollywood in Antarctica” in the Oct. 17, 2008, online issue of The Scientist.
Ashworth is an NDSU Distinguished Professor of geological sciences. He teaches and conducts research in paleontology and stratigraphy. His research in Antarctica includes collecting fossils of plants, mollusks and insects that help scientists determine climate changes that occurred millions of years ago.
Lewis is an assistant professor of geological sciences. He teaches and conducts research in glacial geology and long-term climate change. His research focuses on the growth of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and its influence on global climate evolution.
Aghion’s films have received Emmy and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Fellini Awards. She is a dual resident of New York and Paris. She began her career at The New York Times Paris bureau and at the International Herald Tribune. Moving into film, she worked as a cameraperson, line producer and post-production supervisor before producing and directing her own projects. Aghion holds a degree in Arab language and literature from Barnard College at Columbia University in New York.