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Becoming Cousteau

Sunday, October 10th, 2021
1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
Details
USA | 2021 | 93 min | English
Category
2021 VT International Film Festival
Film Type
Documentary
Cost
Early Bird: $10/$5; During Festival: $12/$6
Location
Savoy Theater
26 Main Street
Montpelier, Vermont

Get Tickets Festival Pass

Director
Liz Garbus 
Source
 National Geographic
Sponsors
Jane Kramer

Also showing: Sat, Oct 16 | 11:30 am | BB
Not available on Virtual

Tickets are on sale now for Members and Pass purchasers and will be on sale to individual ticket purchasers at 10am, Wednesday, September 29.

Explorer, inventor, father, filmmaker — Jacques-Yves Cousteau was all of these things and more. This documentary from National Geographic recounts how the man came to be: from aviation officer to deep-sea diver; from oil surveyor to ocean conservationist. It is the story of an adventurer whose profound love for the natural world would ultimately reveal to him a planet in crisis. Diving into the treasure trove of The Cousteau Society’s archives, Emmy-winning director Liz Garbus (All In: The Fight for Democracy; What Happened, Miss Simone?) brings to the surface reel after reel of the astounding footage that made Cousteau a legend. The result is a visual banquet of underwater wonders. Becoming Cousteau honors Cousteau-the-filmmaker as much as it does Cousteau-the-naturalist. ~ Travis Weedon

In Becoming Cousteau, two-time Academy Award nominee Liz Garbus (All In: The Fight for Democracy, What Happened, Miss Simone? and The Farm: Angola, USA) worked with almost 550 hours of archival footage. This included over 240 hours of Cousteau’s videos as well as footage from The Cousteau Society, which contains nearly 100 hours of rarely-seen footage from before he became one of the most important environmental figures of the 20th century. Additionally, over 100 hours of Cousteau’s audio journals, interviews and conversations with cohorts and friends help make Becoming Cousteau an intimate and immersive experience into the life of the French explorer. Garbus eschews talking-head interviews in favor of an intricately knit pastiche of Cousteau’s own words with archival and present-day audio interviews of those who knew him best in order to live and breathe in his visual world for the entirety of the film.