The Bozeman Doc Series afforded us the opportunity to interview the filmmaker of the film, of THE LAKE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD, Kathy Kasic, and the ‘main character,’ Professor of Ecology in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at MSU Bozeman, John Priscu.

He has been organizing expeditions since 1984. He is a principal investigator in the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project and SALSA, the Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access project, which is the subject of this film. His work, and the work of his teams, have revolutionized our understanding of our Earth, as well as the diversity of life on our planet and beyond.

Kathy Kasic is a director/cinematographer and Associate Professor at California State University Sacramento. Twenty years ago she traded researching evolutionary biology in the Ecuadorian Amazon for filmmaking. Since then her artistic vision and craving for adventure have brought her to film off the bow of a ship, underwater in wild mountain rivers, and on the ice fields of Greenland and Antarctica. Using a sensorial emphasis on place to unveil the human relationship with the natural world, her 100+ productions have appeared at international festivals, on television (BBC, Discovery, Smithsonian, PBS, National Geographic), art galleries, museums (The Hirshhorn, Portland Art Museum, The Crocker), and won numerous awards. Most recently, Kasic field directed for BBC’s Earth Shot: Repairing Our Planet (feat. David Attenborough and Prince William) and directed The Lake at the Bottom of the World, a sensory vérité feature film about an international team of scientists exploring a subglacial lake 3,600 feet beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. She has been part of three National Science Foundation grants and mentored 12 graduate students. She believes that filmmaking is a way to give voice to what is not voiced, to see and hear more deeply, and to foster compassion across cultures. 

THE LAKE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD will be screening at the Emerson Crawford Theater on Sunday, April 30th, 2023 at 7pm.

You can find out more here: http://www.bozemandocseries.org

Q&A: Sac State film professor Kathy Kasic returns from Antarctic expedition https://statehornet.com/2019/02/qa-sac-state-film-professor-kathy-kasic-returns-from-antarctic-expedition/

The Lake at the Bottom of the World site: https://www.antarcticlakefilm.com/