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"Let’s celebrate the spirit of adventure and exploration."

I’ve been fascinated by ocean exploration since before I even saw an ocean. When I was a kid in Canada, I lived, I think, 600 miles from the sea. But I watched Jacques Cousteau’s specials on TV, and I thought they were absolutely incredible...

Extract from the documentary

Explorers: From the Titanic to the Moon,

premiered and introduced by James Cameron

at the Shrine Auditorium, October, 6, 2006.

James Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. He grew up in Chippawa, Ontario, and in 1971 his family moved to Brea, California. There he studied physics at Cal State-Fullerton, but his passion for filmmaking would draw him to the film archive of UCLA at every opportunity.

He started in the film industry as a screenwriter, then moved into art direction and effects for films such as Battle Beyond the Stars and Escape from New York. Working with producer Roger Corman, Cameron landed his first directorial job in 1981 for the film Piranha II: The Spawning, shot at Grand Cayman Island for the underwater diving sequences and in Rome, Italy for most of the interior scenes. During film post-production he was fired, and the final cut was decided by executive producer, Ovidio G. Assonitis.

James Cameron’s highlights as a director:
1984: The Terminator
1986: Aliens
1989: The Abyss
1991: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
1994: True Lies
1997: Titanic

2009: Avatar

Cameron’s recent projects include undersea documentaries on the Bismarck: Expedition: Bismarck (2002), and the Titanic: Ghosts of the Abyss, in IMAX 3D 2003. In July 2005, Cameron confirmed his long-rumoured film adaptation of the manga series Battle Angel Alita. He will shoot the film in stereoscopic digital 3-D with a cast almost entirely composed of animated CG, using an improved "performance capture" technique similar (but reportedly more advanced) to what was first used by director Robert Zemeckis in The Polar Express. However, Cameron has recently confirmed that he will first direct his rumoured Project 880 (Avatar). He is also attached to 2 other projects, including The Dive. Among A-list directors, Cameron is a leading advocate for 3D stereo films. He plans to create a 3-D project about the first trip to Mars, and he is on the science team for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory. Recently, Cameron co-produced The Exodus Decoded. It was shown in Canada and Israel in 2005, and just made it’s debut on The History Channel on 20 August, 2006.

The Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival proudly welcomes James Cameron at the Shrine Auditorium in the occasion of the Launch-Event, October, 6, 2006.

Ernest Borgnine was born Ermes Effron Borgnino on January 24, 1917, in Hamden, Connecticut. His parents were Charles who had emigrated from Ottiglio (AL), Italy and Anna who had emigrated from Carpi (MO), Italy. As an only child, Ernest enjoyed most sports, especially boxing, but took no real interest in acting. At 18, after graduating from high school in New Haven, and undecided about his future career, he joined the navy, where he stayed for ten years until leaving in 1945. After a few factory jobs, his mother suggested that his forceful personality could make him suitable for a career in acting, and Borgnine promptly enrolled at the Randall School of Drama in Hartford.

After completing the course he joined Robert Porterfield's famous Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia, staying there for four years, undertaking odd jobs and playing every type of role imaginable. His big break came in 1949, when he made his acting debut on Broadway playing a male nurse in "Harvey". In 1951 Borgnine moved to Los Angeles to pursue a movie career, and made his film debut as Bill Street in The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951). His career took off in 1953 when he was cast in the role of Sgt. "Fatso" Judson in From Here to Eternity (1953). This memorable performance led to numerous supporting roles as "heavies" in a steady string of dramas and westerns. He played against type in 1955 by securing the lead role of Marty Piletti, a shy and sensitive butcher, in Marty (1955). He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, despite strong competition from Spencer Tracy, Frank Sinatra, James Dean and James Cagney.

She is the ultimate “Hitchcock Blonde” : cool, often calculating, concealing fiery depths sufficient to melt her own icy façade while exuding plenty of steam. Although she made just two films for the Master of Suspense-The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964)-that duo has earned her a place in cinema history cemented by the tensile delicacy of her acting. As critic David Thomson wrote, “Marnie is an actress’s triumph as well as a director’s, and the way in which Tippi Hedren mutters ‘There...there now’ when she shoots her horse is typical of the insight and pathos she brings to the sexually inhibited thief.”

It seems significant that Hedren made her much-lauded debut in a film about creatures of the air, and that Thomson cites a scene from Marnie in which she interacts, albeit tragically, with the one thing on earth her character loves : an animal. Because animals-which Hedren views as our planetary co-habitants-are, perhaps, the only things that could have seduced her away from her burgeoning acting career. Hedren admits to being an animal lover from birth-“Call it a birth effect,” she says-but acknowledges that her movie-making experiences encouraged that innate passion.

After her Hitchcock films, she made two movies in Africa, Satan’s Harvest (1970) and Mister Kingstreet’s War (1973) ; her encounters there engendered the 1981 film, Roar, a family adventure about the big cats of Africa. Although the film’s production difficulties came in for the lion’s share, as it were, of its notoriety, it led to Hedren’s establishment of the Shambala Preserve for wildlife, the crowning achievement of her life’s work on behalf of animals.

Shambala-Hindi for higher or heavenly place-is a wildlife sanctuary giving lifetime residence and care to exotic animals born in captivity : often purchased as infant “pets” and then abandoned, or utilized and then discarded by the entertainment industry-in films, television, carnivals, or circuses. Says Hedren, “It’s always a major problem trying to raise the money because, you know, the costs are around $50,000 a month. Any time it gets really, really rough I start walking around the preserve and I look at the animals. I think about the abuse they have suffered and how happy they are now due to the people who work with me and share my philosophy. Then I’m ready to get back to work.”

Hedren’s good works are not all devoted to animals ; she labors, also, as a volunteer International Relief Coordinator for Food for the Hungry, traveling worldwide to set up relief programs in the aftermath of earthquakes, hurricanes, famine, and war. But her primary efforts remain focused on the creatures who share our planet and cannot speak for themselves. She has served as a board member of The Wildlife Safari and the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal, and is currently president of the American Sanctuary Association, and of The Roar Foundation.

Tonight, Jules Verne Adventures is honored to present the Jules Verne Nature Award to Tippi Hedren, a model-in both the imaginative realm of cinema and in the real world-of style, elegance, and compassionate intelligence.

Host of the Jules Verne Adventure Festival,
Opening Ceremony, Thursday, Dec.6th, 6pm
Jules Verne Awards Ceremony, Sunday, Dec. 9th

British actor Malcolm McDowell was born Malcolm John Taylor on June 13, 1943, in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Possibly best known for his portrayal of Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange (1971), Malcolm McDowell began his professional life serving drinks in his parents’ pub and then as a coffee salesman. While enrolled in Cannock House School, he began taking acting classes, and eventually he secured work as an extra with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He made his screen debut in Poor Cow (1967) - although his 2-min. scene was ultimately cut from the completed film - followed by If (1968) by Lindsay Anderson, The Raging Moon (1970) and Figures in a Landscape (1970).

"I want this guy !" Kubrick said
His performances caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick, who cast him as the lead in A Clockwork Orange. Despite winning great acclaim (nominated for Best Actor by the New York Film Critics Circle) for his role as the leader of a gang of futuristic toughs, the role created a characterization so unforgettable that the public had a hard time separating actor from character.
He rejoined Lindsay Anderson for the ambitious O Lucky Man (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982) and starred in Royal Flash (1975). McDowell regularly turned up on British Television productions in the early 1970s in adaptations of theatre classics. He co-starred in Voyage of the Damned (1976) and made a favourable Hollywood-movie debut as H.G. Wells in Time after Time (1979). McDowell played mainly villainous parts in the late 1970s and 1980s - none more notorious than the title character in the controversial Caligula (1979). He also appeared in the 1982 remake of Cat People.

The man who killed Captain Kirk
He is also well known in Star Trek circles as "the man who killed Captain Kirk" in the film Star Trek : Generations (1994), in which he played the mad scientist Dr. Tolian Soran. Incidentally, McDowell is also the uncle of Star Trek : Deep Space Nine cast member Alexander Siddig. He was back on the track playing villains again...
McDowell played himself in Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), appearing in a cameo role in which he chastises protagonist Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) for badmouthing him behind his back. McDowell also had a part in the computer games Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV as Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn, co-starring next to Mark Hamill. He also played Mr. Roarke (formely played by Ricardo Montalban) in the short lived 1998 remake of Fantasy Island. Teaming up with Altman once again in 2003, McDowell convincingly portrayed fictional artistic director Alberto Antonelli in The Company, an intimate portrait of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. In 2005 McDowell played vicious agency owner Terence in the HBO series Entourage. Terence returns from retirement to try to lure the show’s main character, Vincent Chase, from his current agent and Terence’s partner, Ari Gold.

Some actors play King Arthur, others do Merlin. He is both !
In 2006 he was a special guest star on Law and Order : Criminal Intent as radio mogul Jonas Slaughter, who admits to killing one of his sons and manipulates the other into a dying declaration confession to save his own life. He also appeared in Monk as an arrogant fashion photographer who committed cold blooded murder. He is one of only two actors to portray both King Arthur and Merlin in a movie based on Arthurian legend (the other is Sir John Gielgud).

The Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival is proud to have legendary actor Malcolm McDowell host the first edition at the Shrine Auditorium, Dec. 5th to 15th

William Shatner, legendary Captain of the Enterprise in the original Star Trek series.

With courage, wit, and intelligence, William Shatner deals on a daily basis with every actor’s nightmare (and secret dream) : his own Frankenstein-like creation of a character so indelible, so larger-than-life, so gosh-darn popular that it threatens to overwhelm every other attempt at accomplishment. Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk is the elephant in Shatner’s room, and he has learned not so much to ignore it as to boldly point it out, have a gracious laugh over it, and move on.

It doesn’t hurt that Shatner has shrewdly managed to parlay his success as Kirk into one of the most varied, enduring, and, yes, distinguished careers in creative annals. This Renaissance Man has made his mark as an actor of stage, screen, and television ; as a prolific screenwriter, playwright, director, and producer ; as a recording artist of undaunted out-there-ness ; as a memoirist and best-selling science fiction novelist ; and as an unforgettably amusing commercial pitchman. He is a multiple Emmy nominee, and has won twice, for portraying the same character-brazen, belligerent, but somehow poignant über-attorney Denny Crane-in two different TV series, The Practice and Boston Legal. And all this indefatigable activity has earned him a place-in America and around the world-as one of contemporary culture’s most recognizable icons.

What most people don’t know about Shatner is that he is an equestrian of considerable prowess and a longtime breeder of American Quarter and Saddlebred horses-and that this passion has led him to some unusual philanthropic pursuits. For nearly two decades, he has hosted the annual Hollywood Charity Horse Show, which benefits a number of children’s charities, including AHEAD With Horses, offering physically and mentally challenged children the confidence-boosting thrill of riding. Similarly, Shatner and his wife are the founders of the William & Elizabeth Shatner/Jewish National Fund Therapeutic Riding Consortium Endowment for Israel, a venture that brings together war-ravaged Bedouin, Palestinian, Jordanian, and Israeli children to ride, to heal, and to take the first steps towards understanding and hoped-for peace. He has managed to find time, also, to devote himself to environmental organizations-Save the Whales and Greenpeace, among them-and has lately been a vocal advocate for veterans receiving sub-par health care at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

In essence, what we have-and treasure-in William Shatner is a man of many parts : charismatic yet self-deprecating, high-rolling yet poetically inclined, proud of yet modest about his accomplishments, a serious artist who nevertheless refuses to take himself too seriously. A man, in fact, not unlike the character he has incarnated through three seasons of television and seven feature films, to the delight of fans worldwide : the swashbuckling, bumptious, brilliant, goofy, immortal Captain Kirk. Shatner, in typical fashion, may be quick to point out the differences between character and creator-“Jim was just about perfect and I, of course, am perfect.”-but we know the truth : somewhere along the line, there’s been a most effective mind-meld.

Patrick Stewart belongs to a rare kind of actors able to bring their charisma and elegance to their screen characters. He has inspired an all generation, enbodying one of the most important heroes on screen, the captain of the Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard, in Star Trek the Next Generation.

His seductive voice, commanding physical presence, and compelling dramatic gifts have made him a star on stage, on television, and in motion pictures. And he’s had both the luck and the wit to make not one, but two iconic heroes of science fiction and fantasy his own : Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men trilogy, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard in 177 TV episodes of Star Trek : The Next Generation and its handful of highly successful cinematic follow-ups. If contemporary sci-fi/fantasy has a face (and...well...a skull), it certainly belongs to the formidable Patrick Stewart.

His legions of fans may not be aware, however, that Stewart-an actor from his Yorkshire adolescence-is a renowned Shakespearean (he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for some three decades), an Emmy and Golden Globe nominee, and a Drama Desk Award winner. He has played Othello and Captain Ahab, Prospero and Ebenezer Scrooge. Perhaps even more significantly for JVA Film Festival-goers, in 2005, he starred as Captain Nemo in a film version of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island.

Stewart has distinguished himself in other, more private pursuits. He has managed to work with numerous activist organizations, including Amnesty International, where he has established the Patrick Stewart Human Rights Scholarship, awarded to student activists for summer internships and short-term human rights projects ; Doctors Without Borders ; and the Ocean Alliance, an organization whose mission-the conservation of whales and their ocean environment-dovetails perfectly with that of Jules Verne Adventures.

Honoree at the Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival, October 6th, 2006

Jane Goodall began her landmark study of chimpanzees in Tanzania in June 1960, under the mentorship of anthropologist and paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey. Her work at the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve would become the foundation of future primatological research and redefine the relationship between humans and animals.

In 1977, Goodall established the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), which continues the Gombe research and is a global leader in the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. The Institute also is widely recognized for establishing innovative, community-centered conservation and development programs in Africa, and the Roots & Shoots education program in more than 80 countries.

Dr. Goodall travels an average 300 days per year, speaking about the threats facing chimpanzees, other environmental crises, and her reasons for hope that humankind will solve the problems it has imposed on the earth. She continually urges her audiences to recognize their personal responsibility and ability to effect change through consumer action, lifestyle change and activism.

Dr. Goodall’s scores of honors include the Medal of Tanzania, the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal, Japan’s prestigious Kyoto Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research 2003, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, and the Gandhi/King Award for Nonviolence. In April 2002 Secretary-General Annan named Dr. Goodall a United Nations "Messenger of Peace." In 2003, Queen Elizabeth II named Dr. Goodall a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, the equivalent of knighthood. In 2006, French President Chirac presented her with the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest award.

Her list of publications includes two overviews of her work at Gombe - In the Shadow of Man and Through a Window - as well as two autobiographies in letters, the spiritual autobiography Reasons for Hope and many children’s books. The Chimpanzees of Gombe : Patterns of Behavior is the definitive scientific work on chimpanzees and is the culmination of Jane Goodall’s scientific career. She has been the subject of numerous television documentaries and is featured in the large-screen format film, Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees (2002).

Her first film with Discovery Communications for Animal Planet, Jane Goodall’s Return to Gombe, aired in the U.S. March 8, 2004. It was premiered in Europe at the Festival du Film Jules Verne Aventures, March 12, 2004, and introduced by Dr. Jane Goodall, in the occasion of this exceptional meeting with the audience.

On October 6, at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, the First Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival proudly welcomes and presents Dame Jane Goodall with a Jules Verne Life Achievement Award.

WWW.JANEGOODALL.ORG

Honoree at the Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival, October 6th, 2006

Harrison Ford’s father was Irish, his mother Russian-Jewish. He was a lackluster student at Maine Township High School East in Park Ridge Illinois. After dropping out of Ripon College in Wisconsin, where he did some acting and later summer stock, he signed a Hollywood contract with Columbia and later Universal. His roles in movies and TV ("Ironside" in 1967, "The Virginian" in 1962) remained secondary and, discouraged, he turned to a career in professional carpentry. He came back big four years later, however, as Bob Falfa in George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973).

From Star Wars to stardom
Four years after that, he reached colossal fame with the role of Han Solo in George Lucas’ legendary Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope (1977). Another four years and Ford was Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Still another four years and he received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his role as John Book in Witness (1985). All he managed four years after that was his third starring success as Indiana Jones. In fact, many of his earlier successful roles led to sequels as did his more recent portrayal of Jack Ryan in Patriot Games (1992). Another Golden Globe nomination came his way for the part of Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive (1993). Ford has also been the star of many high grossing Hollywood blockbusters such as Air Force One which have distanced him from his famous Star Wars and Indiana Jones roles.

A real-life adventurer
Harrison Ford is also a real-life adventurer : he is an experienced pilot of both planes and helicopters. He also maintains an 800-acre ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, approximately half of which he has donated as a nature reserve. On several occasions, he has personally provided emergency helicopter services at the behest of local authorities, in one instance rescuing a hiker overcome by dehydration. He is the current Chairman of the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Young Eagles program. Very close to nature and concerned with environmental problems, Harrison Ford is an Honorary Chair of the Indianapolis Prize, the world’s leading award for animal conservation. It includes a US$100,000 cash award and the Lilly Medal, which are presented every two years to a conservationist who has made substantial contributions toward the sustainability of an animal species or group of species.

The first Jules Verne Adventure Film Festival is proud to pay tribute to his tremendous career as an actor and to salute his commitment in Environmental Conservation by presenting him with the Jules Verne Award - Spirit of Nature.