Ark

August 23, 2010 3:18 AM

"If, through this deluge, there emerges a last man, a Noah to carry on, that Noah must be all of us. Even then the outcome is uncertain. All we know for sure is that the 40 days and 40 nights of this deluge of pollution and erosion began centuries ago. Now we are living through--and dying through--its last hours on this Ark."

If you grew up in the United States in the 1970s, odds are Rolf Forsberg's short film "Ark" was screened during one of your middle-school science classes. (The film often left a strong impression among its young viewers.)

Long unavailable and extremely hard to find, it has (finally!) surfaced on youtube. Part 1 Part 2

(Rolf's son, Eric Forsberg, whose filmography is a studied contrast to his father's, has an interesting account of growing up with the mercurial Christian filmmaker.)

posted by maxwelton (5 comments total)

This is great...a few years ago I was talking to a few friends about this film, and even though they were around the same age they hadn't seen it. It was one of the films that I can still replay in the Bell and Howell 16mm projector of my mind, along with Powers of Ten and Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land. The Ark was rather more depressing though.

My friends thought I was crazy when I described it, because it was pretty bleak. It didn't even have an IMDB entry at the time, and there wasn't much else I could find out about it. I also discovered from IMDB that he was a writer on the film version of The Late Great Planet Earth, and his son was in the film as well. I remember reading the book, it came out around the same time Chariots of the Gods came out.

Wowee wow wow, what a blast from the 70's...must go listen to something on a Wollensak tape player and watch a filmstrip now...

(beeeeeep)
posted by foonly at 6:38 AM on August 23, 2010

Rolf was an avid Buddhist and I was so in awe of him that I wanted to be a Buddhist also. He showed me how to meditate and gasho and sit Za Zen and clean the tanks. Rolf was known in some circles as "Chicago's north side Yoga guru". He had practiced a number of religions, born Lutheran, converted to Catholic, then converted to Hindu, and then landing permanently on Zen Buddhist with his teacher and Master, Reverend Kabosi.

I'm not sure "Christian filmmaker" is really the correct way to describe Rolf Forsberg, based on his son's account.
posted by hippybear at 7:44 AM on August 23, 2010

I'm guessing the first minute had a huge influence on David Lynch (the soundtrack at least).
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:05 AM on August 23, 2010

In quasi-related news, The Brick Testament posted two chapters of the Noah's Ark story today
posted by jtron at 10:37 AM on August 23, 2010

Yeah, sorry hippybear, I think I meant "religious" but missed it on my final edit.
posted by maxwelton at 10:40 AM on August 23, 2010