Cinema Series

Unsalted: A Great Lakes Experience is a 56-minute film documenting four decades of lake surfing on the Great Lakes, directed by Vince Deur. The film begins with videotape footage Deur recorded in November 1990, when he nearly drowned while surfing Lake Superior near Whitefish Point. Described as “one part obsession, one part addiction,” this film [...]

Big Brownie: The O’fish’al Story follows the forty year run of the Michigan Brown Trout Festival, the country’s longest running blue water festival. The documentary explores the obstacles the festival, the fishermen, and the community overcome to keep a festival running whose namesake is on the brink of extinction.

Come to the sanctuary’s latest in the Sanctuary Cinema Series! Lake Huron, one of the five parts comprising the Great Lakes, has been hit with numerous exotic species invasions over the last century.  Each invasion changes the ecosystem in ways we can’t predict. Fish populations have collapsed, the entire food web completely altered, and a [...]

Adventure enthusiasts Gary and Ely Irving are back with a new season, highlighting four locations in Northern Michigan that are a must to check off on your outdoor sports bucket list. From snorkeling 19th-century shipwrecks to cross-country skiing in the dead of winter, these trips take you through the four seasons of Michigan and give you a guided [...]

Come to the sanctuary’s latest in the Sanctuary Cinema Series!  Narrated by maritime author Frederick Stonehouse, this documentary film explores Great Lakes lighthouse hauntings at Whitefish Point, Big Bay Point, Old Presque Isle, and Seul Choix Point! (1999 & 2003 film by Don Hermanson, 60 minutes, no rating) Free and open to the public.

Crossing Superior follows a riveting 60-mile journey three men took with their paddle boards across a lake that is often a force to be reckoned with. Eleven-time Emmy award winner Corey Adkins tagged along to document the 22-hour journey with Stand Up for Great Lakes, including humored encounters with freighters, a permit to do something [...]

Come to the sanctuary’s latest in the Sanctuary Cinema Series! November 22, 1912: The schooner Rouse Simmons departs upper Michigan ferrying 5,000 Christmas trees to Chicago.  The ship disappears, and for 60 years there’s no trace of it. In 1971 a scuba diver discovers the legendary, lost  “Christmas Tree Ship.” (2013, 50 minutes, no rating) [...]