Out There: A National Parks Story, a documentary and love song to the United States’ national parks system, had its inaugural New York screening at The Explorer’s Club on the Upper East Side this past Thursday.
In attendance were the film’s director and SpaceX dearMoon crewmember Brendan Hall, and producer and educator Anthony Blake. The evening began with a reception in The Explorer’s Club banquet hall, and concluded with an audience Q&A with the director and producer, moderated by esteemed traveler and Way Out There author J.R. Harris, followed with a live performance from the film’s music composer, Elizabeth P.W. and her band.
The film follows Hall and Blake as they set forth on a roadtrip across the United States during the year of the national park system’s centennial, starting in Acadia, Maine and ending in The Redwoods Forest of San Francisco, California. They meet several characters from various walks of life, including singer Jack Gladstone and photographer QT Luong, as well as cameos from everyday families from a spectrum of backgrounds and identities all with one thing in common: an appreciation for the beauty and existence of the national parks. With its stunning cinematography and heartwarming interviews, Out There will have even the most city-bound of viewers rearing to pack up a camper and take in the great outdoors themselves.
“The people we filmed with along the way over those years, I think, became these really amazing, kind of wise characters in our lives,” Hall shared during the evening’s Q&A. “It’d be year five or six working on the film, and I’d be kind of down on myself as the filmmaker, and why is it taking so long? And Jack Gladstone will talk about the film being, or storytelling being a shadow dance that you’re always chasing, and a story that trusts itself to you, and it would keep me going.”
The film, which is currently in its distribution phase, has received numerous accolades during its 2023 film festival circuit, including Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature during its world premiere at the Florida Film Festival, The Grand Prize at SAFILM, and more that can be found on its website: www.outthere.film/
Photo credits: Brendan Hall
