Re: Katmai Film To Be Shared Worldwide On Television

In a first for an NPS production, Katmai National Park & Preserve's new film “The Ends of the Earth–Alaska's Wild Peninsula” is being distributed worldwide on public television channels by PBS International, the international distribution arm of the Public Broadcasting Service.

Written and directed by HFC filmmaker John Grabowska in close collaboration with Katmai Chief of Interpretation Roy Wood, the film was planned and produced specifically for television broadcast because of the remote nature of the parks on the Alaska Peninsula, which is not on any road system. “The Ends of the Earth” was broadcast by PBS in 2013 as a national prime time special, reaching an audience of more than two million viewers in the United States. Grabowska has an established relationship with PBS, having made six films about national parks that PBS has broadcast nationally in prime time, featuring Wrangell-St Elias, El Malpais, Cape Lookout, Yellowstone, Bandelier, and Katmai. His work has extended the interpretive stories of those parks to tens of millions of viewers. Now with international distribution by PBS International, the natural history stories of Katmai and Aniakchak will reach television audiences around the world.

The Alaska Peninsula is a cloud-cloaked land of active volcanoes, rolling tundra and the greatest concentration of the largest bears on earth. “The Ends of the Earth–Alaska's Wild Peninsula” is a filmic essay on a landscape where bears outnumber people and the sockeye salmon run is the most prolific in the world. At the base of the peninsula lies Katmai National Park, a wilderness larger than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined. Farther down the peninsula a giant volcanic caldera emerges on the horizon, so remote that more people climb Everest in a year than visit Aniakchak.

PBS International featured the film in April in Cannes, France at the Marché International des Programmes de Télévision, one of the largest worldwide gatherings of television programmers. To emphasize the charismatic allure of Alaska, the international version has been retitled “Alaska's Wild Peninsula” but remains focused on the two remote national parks.

The film is narrated by N. Scott Momaday, the first American Indian to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature, and whose writings have dealt with the bear as a figure of power and influence representing indigenous America. The original orchestral score was composed by Academy Award winner Todd Boekelheide. Katmai's Roy Wood co-produced and filmed many of the images.

Ranger Roy Woods can often be found chatting and giving talks on the bear cams at www.explore.org. He is a great guy and very willing to take the time to answer questions.