Reception: 6:00-6:30 PM~ Program: 6:30-8:00 PM<
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*Free to NY NATAS Members!
$15 for those without current NY
NATAS membership
The story of the construction of the
Panama Canalis one of the most amazing &ldquo\;truth is stranger than fict
ion&rdquo\; events in modern history. It involved two larger than life fig
ures: the first, Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French aristocrat who had previou
sly built the Suez Canal\; the second, our own Teddy Roosevelt, who foment
ed a revolution in Colombiawhen its then-ruling junta refused to sign a tr
eaty most favorable to the U.S. Colombia at that time owned the Isthmus of
Panama.
De Lesseps,
aged 60, formed a French company, raised millions of French Francs and be
gan his attack on the Panamanian peninsula in 1881. But by 1889, his effor
ts, plagued by disease, had caused the deaths of almost 22,000 men due to
malaria and yellow fever. This massive failure almost caused the financial
collapse of the French Empire.
In 1904, after Teddy Roosevelt had become President due to the
assassination of President William McKinley, he purchased all the equipme
nt, homes and other structures abandoned by the French, and hired William
Gorgas as chief medical officer, and John Stevens, the expert railroad man
who had built the &ldquo\;Great Northern,&rdquo\; as chief engineer. Gorg
as suspected that the mosquito was the carrier of the two deadly diseases
and he made an all-out effort to eliminate the mosquito. Within five month
s, both malaria and yellow fever totally disappeared. The digging began ap
ace. After the digging was completed, locks on both the Atlanticand Pacifi
c sides were constructed, a huge artificial lake was made as well as the e
normous Gatun Dam which kept the water level on the lake higher than all t
he locks thus enabling all the locks to be filled and emptied by gravity a
lone. The engineering of this enormous event was a mark of pure genius. Th
e complete story was written by David McCullough in his incredible book &l
dquo\;The Path Between the Seas.&rdquo\;
Sumner Jules Glimcher was a lecturer
on a luxury cruise liner transiting the Canal on a cruise that ended up i
n Alaska. After shooting his transit on video, he read McCullough&rsquo\;s
book and then spent months in the Library of Congress researching still i
mages depicting the work of digging the Canal, installing the locks, creat
ing one of the largest artificial lakes and dams in history and completing
the Canal in 1914. The result is: &ldquo\;The Panama Canal: \; Histor
y &\; Operation.&rdquo\;
Mr. Glimcher began his career at NBC, then worked for Radio Free E
urope in Munich\; pioneered in creating the first independent internationa
l broadcast news service, the precursor of CNN\; worked for WOR &\; RKO
General\; taught at Harvard, Columbia and most recently as the Director o
f the Film Department at NYU&rsquo\;s School of Continuing Education\; and
has made scores of documentaries which have been awarded more than three
dozen major national and international awards. He has lectured on eleven l
uxury cruise liners, and has been a consultant to the President of Harvard
, to the United Nations, and for more than twenty years to the Consulate G
eneral of Japan.
\;
R
ESERVATIONS REQUIRED DUE TO BUILDING SECURITY. ALL NAMES MUST BE ON THE GU
EST LIST.
Please RSVP via
email to info@nyemmys.org to reserve a seat. Use film title "\;The Pa
nama Canal"\; in subject line of email.
<
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Pro
duced &\; Moderated by Sumner Jules Glimcher
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