The Storyteller Series at Bantam Cinema & Arts Center continues March 26 with a screening of the 2024 documentary feature The Shepherd and the Bear, followed by a conversation on Zoom after the film with its director, writer, and producer Max Keegan.
The one-night-only screening begins at 7 p.m. The Shepherd and the Bear is presented in French with English subtitles and has a running time of 1 hour, 41minutes.
Purchase tickets here: https://www.bantamcinema.org/movie/storyteller-series-the-shepherd-and-the-bear
Set high in the majestic French Pyrenees, The Shepherd and the Bear explores a conflict provoked by the reintroduction of brown bears in the midst of a traditional shepherding community. The film follows an aging shepherd who struggles to find a successor as bears prey on his flock, and a teenage boy who becomes obsessed with tracking the bears. Through its breathtaking cinematography and immersive storytelling, The Shepherd and the Bear is a modern folktale about tradition, community and humanity’s relationship with a vanishing natural world.
Max Keegan is a British-Irish filmmaker from West-Sussex. In order to make this film, Max learned to speak French from scratch and spent three years in France.
The Bantam Cinema & Arts Center originally opened in 1927 as The Rivoli in the era when silent films transitioned to “talkies.” By the mid-20th century, the theater had rebranded as Bantam Cinema and established a niche by favoring independent, foreign, and art-house films.
Like many independent theaters, the Bantam Cinema faced significant financial headwinds with the rise of streaming services. During the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the theater closed. The prospect of losing the historic landmark sparked a community-led effort to save it. A group of local residents formed a nonprofit organization to purchase and revive the theater as the Bantam Cinema & Arts Center.