Free Showing of Downeast at Historic Park

The Dock-U-Mentaries Film Series continues Friday, November 16th at 7 PM with Downeast. Dock-U-Mentaries is a co-production of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park and the Working Waterfront Festival. Films about the working waterfront are screened on the third Friday of each month beginning at 7:00 PM in the theater of the Corson Maritime Learning Center, located at 33 William Street in downtown New Bedford. All programs are open to the public and presented free of charge.

The film unfolds over the course of a year-and-a-half in the small lobster village of Prospect Harbor, Maine. A few months after the closing of the last remaining sardine cannery in the United States, Boston-based entrepreneur Antonio Bussone purchases the plant, hoping to establish a lobster processing facility and rehire the laid-off sardine workers. Antonio’s troubles begin from the day he arrives. During a town-hall meeting, local politicians oppose his vision of rebuilding the factory. Undeterred, Antonio moves forward, determined to build and operate one of the first lobster factories in the United States. Downeast premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival and has been well received. Eric Kohn of Indiewire called it “a highly contained, personable work that renders vast industrial problems on a profoundly intimate scale.”