Thursday, October 27th: Emmy Award Winner Richard Kahn Presents ‘An Arctic Wilderness Journey’

A lone caribou grazes on the Brooks Range in Northwestern Alaska. (Photo by Richard Kahn)    

Emmy award-winner and documentary filmmaker Richard Kahn offers “Travels by Canoe in Alaska’s Western Arctic,” a wilderness journey of words and photographs.

Schwartz Outdoor Leadership Center

Thursday, October 27th at 7:30 pm

Kahn has spent the last twelve summers paddling wilderness rivers in the Brooks Mountain Range and North Slope of Northwestern Alaska. He has traveled extensively in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, spending more than 300 days on the Colville River and its tributaries. Kahn’s photographs and journals record intense light, an ocean of unnamed mountains, crystal clear rivers, delicate wild flowers, and glimpses of the animals whose lives are woven into the fabric of the place.

His talk focuses on his time spent on these rivers, in an area with which few people are familiar. The inappropriately named National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) is 23.5 million acres of wilderness. It is home to the Western and Central Caribou herds, wolves, bears, wolverines and a rich assortment of raptors, songbirds and waterfowl. You might even be able to see some of these birds in your backyard right now during the fall migration. In 2012, the Bureau of Land Management will review the land management plans for the Reserve and Americans have an opportunity to take part in this important process.

An independent filmmaker, Kahn has had his work presented on WGBH-TV, Discovery Channel, CBS, and WBZ-TV in Boston, as well as Vermont Public Television. Kahn’s credits also include NOVA, Frontline, and Bill Moyers Journal. The filmmaker received an Emmy in 1983 for “7 North,” a documentary on nurses in a neurological unit and in 1973 for “A New Beginning,” about four teenage patients in a spinal cord injury unit. In 2009, Richard shot beautiful footage for Alaska Wilderness League’s short film “The Reserve”.

His visit is sponsored by Alaska Wilderness League. The event is free and open to the public.