A New England Forests film, directed by naturalist, local nature documentary filmmaker, and friend of Real Art Ways, Ray Asselin. Old Growth Forest: Nature’s Biotic Water Pump is the next film in Asselin’s New England Forests series for America 250.
The free screening will take place on Monday, February 23, at Simsbury Public Library and is co-sponsored by the Simsbury Grange and Simsbury Land Trust.
The film will be followed by a Q&A with Ray Asselin and Trinity College Professor and Hartford County’s Old Growth Forest Network Coordinator, Susan A. Masino.
Register here to attend.
Ray has screened various projects at RAW over the years, including MARVEL OF SEEDS, THE LOST FORESTS OF NEW ENGLAND, and the BEAVER POND WILDLIFE series.
Have you ever thought about where fresh water comes from? How it gets here? Yes, rainfall brings it, but do you know how and why rain falls across the breadth of the land? Or possibly, why it doesn’t?
For decades now, we’ve been hearing considerable discussion of how greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, cause climate change. What has been almost totally ignored is the effect that alteration of land cover has on our climate. It’s not just about carbon, and never was. The greenhouse gas effect is just one half of the climate change story. Land cover change is the other half, and just as important.
Keeping the land hydrated is crucial to terrestrial life, but that lesson has been learned the hard way. Many cultures have destroyed the very thing that makes the land habitable… forests. Places such as Egypt, Africa, Australia, and others have become deserts because their forests were cut to the point where the hydrological cycle was disrupted; the soil dried out and could not recover on its own (ie, it became a “landscape trap”).
That destructive behavior is still happening today in places like Canada, America, Chile, and the Amazon, putting those places also on the trajectory to desertification.
This film, together with “The Return of Old Growth Forests,” explains the role that forests play in making Earth a place where life thrives.
You’re invited to the 2nd annual Hartford Film Showcase!
Presented by The Hartford Film Foundation, hosted at Cinestudio, in partnership with Real Art Ways, the showcase is an all-day event featuring some of Hartford’s filmmaking talent!
Hartford Film Company presents short and feature films spanning various styles and genres, made in Hartford or by filmmakers in the Hartford area. Stay for a filmmaker panel and talkback to learn how these films were made and get to know some of the creative talent in this region.
Cinestudio, 300 Summit Street, Hartford
Saturday, February 7, Noon-8 pm
While the event is free and open to the public, we recommend that you reserve your tickets in advance.
Learn more about the showcase and RSVP here.
This showcase is made possible by the generous support of the Greater Hartford Arts Council.
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Program schedule:
11:30a – Doors Open
12:00p – Short Films Block
Finding Pa by Enrique Lebron
Flashing Lights by Madonna Lewis
Seguimos Aqui by Jon Cruz
This Is for the Best by Derrick Christie
Weight of a Warrior by Roodley Merilo
Mag 2 – Do Not Open by Wally Sample
The Mask by Octavius McGhee-Kelly
The Knock Knock Game by Mac Hendrickson
2:00p – Short Films Discussion Moderated by Hartford’s Director of Arts and Culture Taneisha Duggan
2:30p – Free lunch provided by Red Rock Tavern in Hamlin Hall
3:30p – Screening Episodes 1 + 2 of The Artist, followed by a talkback, moderated by TJ Noel-Sullivan
6:00p – “Special Sneak Peek Screening”
8:00p – Event Ends
For the 21st consecutive year, ShortsTV presents the Oscar-Nominated Short Films! This year, we will be showing the full program at Cinestudio in Hartford.
With all three categories – Animated, Live Action and Documentary – this is your chance to predict the winners and have the edge in your Oscar pool)! An annual hit with audiences around the world, don’t miss this year’s selection of shorts. The Academy Awards take place on Sunday, March 15, 7-10 pm. Mark your calendar to watch and see who wins!
2026 DOCUMENTARY PROGRAM
ALL THE EMPTY ROOMS by Joshua Seftel
ARMED ONLY WITH A CAMERA: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BRENT RENAUD by Craig Renaud & Brent Renaud
CHILDREN NO MORE: “WERE AND ARE GONE” by Hilla Medalia
THE DEVIL IS BUSY by Geeta Gandbhir & Christalyn Hampton
PERFECTLY A STRANGENESS by Alison McAlpine
For the 21st consecutive year, ShortsTV presents the Oscar-Nominated Short Films! This year, we will be showing the full program at Cinestudio in Hartford.
With all three categories – Animated, Live Action and Documentary – this is your chance to predict the winners and have the edge in your Oscar pool)! An annual hit with audiences around the world, don’t miss this year’s selection of shorts. The Academy Awards take place on Sunday, March 15, 7-10 pm. Mark your calendar to watch and see who wins!
2026 ANIMATED PROGRAM
PAPILLON (BUTTERFLY) by Florence Miailhe
FOREVERGREEN by Nathan Engelhardt & Jeremy Spears
LA JEUNE FILLE QUI PLEURAIT DES PERLES (THE GIRL WHO CRIED PEARLS) by Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski
RETIREMENT PLAN by John Kelly
THE THREE SISTERS by Timur Kognov
For the 21st consecutive year, ShortsTV presents the Oscar-Nominated Short Films! This year, we will be showing the full program at Cinestudio in Hartford.
With all three categories – Animated, Live Action and Documentary – this is your chance to predict the winners and have the edge in your Oscar pool)! An annual hit with audiences around the world, don’t miss this year’s selection of shorts. The Academy Awards take place on Sunday, March 15, 7-10 pm. Mark your calendar to watch and see who wins!
2026 LIVE ACTION PROGRAM
BUTCHER’S STAIN by Meyer Levinson-Blount
A FRIEND OF DOROTHY by Lee Knight
JANE AUSTEN’S PERIOD DRAMA by Steve Pinder & Julia Aks
THE SINGERS by Sam Davis
TWO PEOPLE EXCHANGING SALIVA by Alexandre Singh & Natalie Musteata
Tickets for this animated film screening include a cereal buffet. Come get your fix of nostalgic favorites…cut fruit and milk will be available. Coffee and tea (for exhausted parents) will be sold separately.
This is a family-friendly event – feel free to come in your pajamas. All ages are welcome!
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“The lessons of The Wild Robot are simple, but the artistry it uses to get there is anything but. It’s the kind of kids movie that feels all too rare with its painterly backdrops and genuine earnestness. The whole family is likely to fall in love.” – The Daily Beast
“Family audiences rejoice! The Oscar for Best Animated Film belongs right here in this enchanting tale of a robot, voiced by the amazing Lupita Nyong’o, who finds herself playing mother to a baby goose. The result is spectacular in every sense of the word.” – ABC News (2024)
“It’s a breathtakingly human film — about a bird and a bot.” – New York Post
97% on Rotten Tomatoes
The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot–ROZZUM unit 7134, “Roz” for short – that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.
A New England Forests film, directed by naturalist, local nature documentary filmmaker, and friend of Real Art Ways, Ray Asselin.
This will be the theater premiere of Old Forest or Young Meadow – The Marvel of Seeds, and will kick off a series of Ray’s screenings for America 250 in the region. Ray has screened various projects at RAW over the years, including THE LOST FORESTS OF NEW ENGLAND and the BEAVER POND WILDLIFE series.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Ray Asselin and Trinity College Professor and Hartford County’s Old Growth Forest Network Coordinator, Susan A. Masino.
Have you ever thought about how, almost magically, a brown, bulldozed piece of land turns green with plants again? How do all those plants get there so quickly? Where did they come from? It’s amazing that nature has developed this process of having new plants always ready to go, in tiny embryonic packages.
Seeds allow us to readily raise crops. They replenish the forests we take down. They make burned habitat or lava-covered ground productive again.
Plants, like all life forms, do not live forever, so they must reproduce. They cast themselves into the future via the seeds they produce, which can wait out poor or impossible growth conditions until such time as conditions become favorable. That could be days, weeks, years, even millennia.
Since the parent plant can’t move around to place seeds here and there, it has to have some other way to get the seeds dispersed. And that’s the subject of the new film, Old Forest or Young Meadow – the Marvel of Seeds.
Plants have evolved over many millions of years. In that time, nature has devised some fascinating methods for them to colonize new sites. Some are rather mundane, but others are intriguing; some are surprising and quite entertaining.
This film describes the evolution of plants on Earth, and features many of the fascinating ways seeds are dispersed. Some are curious, some are downright delightful. Some, we guarantee, you have never witnessed.
This is the last movie we will show at Real Art Ways before we begin construction in 2026.
You’re invited to enjoy this classic Italian film with our staff and community of movie lovers in our cinema.
A “farewell” affogato will be available for purchase.
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“Still rapturous after all these years, Cinema Paradiso stands as one of the great films about movie love.” – Washington Post
“A cinema-lover’s delight.” – Metro (UK)
“Where the original release was an essay in childish delight and adolescent longing, topped off by a muted coda implying that you really can go home again, the reissue is a fully realized epic of the heart.” – Boston Globe
“In the director’s cut, the film is not only a love song to the movies but it also is more fully an example of the kind of lush, all-enveloping movie experience it rhapsodizes.” – Houston Chronicle
Won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 62nd Academy Awards in 1990.
90% on Rotten Tomatoes
Young Salvatore Di Vita (Salvatore Cascio) discovers the perfect escape from life in his war-torn Sicilian village: the Cinema Paradiso movie house, where projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) instills in the boy a deep love of films. When Salvatore grows up, falls in love with a beautiful local girl (Agnese Nano) and takes over as the Paradiso’s projectionist, Alfredo must convince Salvatore to leave his small town and pursue his passion for filmmaking.
