Natural Wonders

Olden, Norway might not be a place you have ever heard of or know anything about but it is located in one of the most stunning and pristine natural settings on the planet. Situated at the mouth of the Oldeelva River and close to the Jostedal glacier, the largest inland glacier in Europe, the small village of less than 600 inhabitants is nonetheless a top travel destination for tourists who travel to Norway. It is also the childhood home of filmmaker Margreth Olin, who has made a film about it entitled Fedrelandet (English title: Songs of Earth, 2023) except it is no conventional documentary. Although it does showcase the awe-inspiring beauty of the region, it is much more intimate in scope since the emphasis is on Olin’s relationship with her parents and how growing up in Olden affected her feelings about nature and her place in the world.

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Rachel Carson vs. Irwin Allen

You wouldn’t think there would be a connection between these two people but they were linked forever in 1953 over the film adaptation of Rachel L. Carson’s award-winning book, The Sea Around Us. Carson was a respected marine biologist and an unusually eloquent nature writer whose first book, Under the Sea Wind, received critical acclaim in 1941. Irwin Allen, on the other hand, was relatively unknown at the time. A journalism graduate of Columbia University, he was trying to break into the film industry and wasn’t yet famous as the producer of such sci-fi TV series as Lost in Space and disaster genre films like The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974).   Continue reading