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Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Destination cinema at Michigan Tech: 41 North Film Festival Oct. 23-26

The 41 North Film Festival brings award-winning films and filmmakers to Michigan Tech Oct. 23-26. (Image courtesy Michigan Tech University)

HOUGHTON -- The 41 North Film Festival (formerly Northern Lights) celebrates its 10th anniversary with a name change and an outstanding slate of recent
award-winning films and special guests. It will be held from Thursday, Oct. 23, to Sunday, Oct. 26, in the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts on the Michigan Tech campus. The festival is free and open to the community.

At 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23, kicking off the festival this year will be director Mark Levinson and his documentary Particle Fever, which follows six scientists involved in the launch of the Large Hadron Collider -- the biggest and most expensive experiment in the history of the planet. The film provides an unprecedented window into this major scientific breakthrough as it happened.

Edited by Academy-Award winner Walter Murch, the film celebrates human discovery and raises important questions about the limits of human knowledge.

Mark Levinson, has worked closely with directors such as Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) and on films including Se7en, Cold Mountain, and The Pledge. He also has a PhD in Physics from UC-Berkeley. He will be on hand for a Q and A following the film.

At 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 24, filmmaker, actor and entrepreneur Ravi Patel and his father, Michigan Tech alum Vasant Patel (Mechanical Engineering, class of 1970), will present the new documentary, Meet the Patels. When Ravi Patel, the son of Indian immigrants, finds himself at a romantic crossroads in his late 20s, love becomes a family affair and an adventure in cross-cultural understanding. The film recently won the Founders Grand Prize for best film at the Traverse City Film Festival. It was produced by Geralyn Dreyfous, who was here at the film festival in 2008 with the Academy-Award-winning Born into Brothels.

In addition to these featured events, the festival will offer a great selection of independent films, including the critically acclaimed Boyhood (Linklater, 2014); The Overnighters (Moss, 2014), which won the 2014 Sundance Jury Prize for Intuitive Filmmaking; Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity (Gund, 2014), and the indie sci-fi film, Coherence (2014). There will also be shorts programs and other great events for festival goers.

The event is sponsored by Michigan Tech's Humanities Department, the Visual and Performing Arts Department, and the College of Sciences and Arts. For the full schedule, visit http://41northfilmfest.org. Contact Erin Smith at 906-487-3263 or ersmith@mtu.edu for more information.

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