New IMAX Movie @ Maritime Aquarium Norwalk

Celebrate the wonders of nature that we can find right outside our own homes – if we would just put down our devices – in “Backyard Wilderness,” a gorgeous new IMAX^®  at The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk.

In The Maritime Aquarium’s 30-year history, “Backyard Wilderness” may be the IMAX movie that is most relevant to Aquarium audiences – and not only because the movie was filmed just over the state line in Westchester County, N.Y. The movie shows how we are so absorbed in the digital realm that we overlook a menagerie of real wildlife right outside our back door, including deer, coyotes, wood ducks, frogs, salamanders, raccoons, hummingbirds and more.

Through June 29, show times are 11 a.m. and 1 & 3 p.m. Times will change June 30.
It will play in the largest IMAX Theater in Connecticut, with a screen that’s six stories high and eight stories wide. But there’s more to the movie than just the IMAX format’s enormous scale, image clarity and surround sound. “Backyard Wilderness” captures the beauty of a suburban wilderness in rare intimacy – with IMAX cameras mounted inside dens and nests, moving along forest floor and pond bottom, and (through time-lapse and slow-motion) revealing marvels of nature unavailable to the human eye.

The story of “Backyard Wilderness” follows a young girl and her modern family, who are blind to the real-life spectacle around them; who instead are absorbed by an array of electronic devices in their busy lives. When the girl gradually discovers the intricate secrets that nature has hidden so close to her front door, audiences experience the joy she finds in her interactions with this new world.

The film reminds us that Wi-Fi is not the only connection that matters and that, sometimes, in ordinary places, you can uncover extraordinary things that can transform you forever – you just need to step outside.

Educators can find classroom resources and learn how the movie can help to fulfill U.S. Next Generation Science Standards at www.backyardwildernessfilm.com.

“Backyard Wilderness” is an SK Films release of an Arise Media/Archipelago Films production. Based in Ossining, N.Y., Archipelago Films was created by Academy Award-nominated, Emmy-Award-winning filmmakers Susan Todd and Andrew Young. Their non-profit company, Arise Media, was formed to make innovative media about the most urgent social and environmental challenges facing the planet, and to inspire a new appreciation for our own interconnected role in nature.

Get more information about “Backyard Wilderness,” watch the trailer, buy tickets and more at www.maritimeaquarium.org.

“Because the movie was filmed in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., its geography and animal life will be familiar to anyone in Connecticut and eastern New York who has ever walked in a forest park – or their own wooded backyard,” said Aquarium spokesman Dave Sigworth. “But the movie lets us see into these animals’ lives in intimate ways – which is a neat trick: creating an intimate feeling on a six-story screen.”