Film: "The Observers"
A meditation on the life and work of the climatologists at NH’s Mt. Washington Weather Observatory.
Discussion follows with filmmaker Jacqueline Goss
Jacqueline Goss makes movies about scientific systems and how they change the ways we think about ourselves. Here, she portrays a climatologist’s life atop Mount Washington, site of the most forbidding conditions on the planet. In 1938, a 236-mph wind hit the summit: a world record for wind speed recorded by a human being.
Extreme and unpredictable, the New Hampshire land and sky form a varying frame for a climatologist as she goes about the solitary and steadfast work of the crew of the Mount Washington Weather Observatory—one of the oldest weather stations in the world where staff members have taken hourly readings of the wind speed and temperature since 1932. “Ms. Goss’s film suggests a lament for a time ... when perhaps it was possible to record the weather in this place and feel as if you were the last human on earth” (New York Times).
D: Jacqueline Goss, US, 2011, Runtime: 1h2m
