October Dock-u-mentary: Saving the Ocean – Swordfish
Friday, October 18 | 7:00 PM | New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park (33 William Street) | Free
New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is pleased to announce the return of its Dock-u-mentary series, hosted in partnership with New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. Dock-u-mentaries is a free film series hosted at the National Park auditorium at 33 William Street in downtown New Bedford on every third Friday at 7:00pm from October through March. These films have explored a variety of themes and topics related to the commercial fishing industry and the working waterfront.
On Friday, October 18, we will be screening the documentary film Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina: Swordfish. For a few weeks of the year, fishermen from the remote villages of southern Nova Scotia take their small boats a hundred miles offshore to the fishing grounds of Georges Bank. Join host Carl Safina on the swordfish grounds with Larry, skipper of the Four Ladies, and his crew Hoss and Shawn. From Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina. Courtesy of The Chedd-Angier Production Company. Total runtime: 53 min
Click Here to Register for Free
FallFest at FHC
Saturday, October 19 | 12:00-3:00 PM | Fishing Heritage Center | Free!
dNB FallFest is a free, family-friendly event held annually in downtown New Bedford! FallFest includes live music, Halloween performers, fall-themed activities for ages, and of course trick or treating for the kiddos! Stop by the Fishing Heritage Center in your Halloween costume for some trick-or-treating! While you’re here, you can also make your own spooky sea monster using a recycled plastic bottle.
November AHA! Night: Casting A Wider Net
Thursday, November 14 | 5:00 PM | Fishing Heritage Center | Free
Our next Gallery Exhibit explores the rich immigrant voices of New Bedford’s working waterfront. This exhibit is the culmination of Casting A Wider Net, a community oral history project developed by New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center to collect and share stories of Cape Verdean, Vietnamese, Mexican, Central American, and Puerto Rican members of the fishing community. The resulting photographs, recordings, and transcripts will also become part of FHC’s archive and uploaded to the NOAA Voices web-based archive. Stop by FHC to explore our new exhibit and meet some of the program participants.
Casting A Wider Net is funded in part by a Wicked Cool Places grant from New Bedford Creative and an Expanding Massachusetts Stories grant from Mass Humanities, which received support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
November Dock-u-mentary: Last Season: Portrait of a Trawler
Friday, November 15 | 7:00 PM | New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park (33 William Street) | Free
Join us for our next Dock-umentary film screening! Hosted in partnership with New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, Dock-u-mentaries is a free film series that explores themes and topics related to the commercial fishing industry and the working waterfront.
On Friday, November 15, we will be screening the documentary film Last Season: Portrait of a Trawler. Last Season is a portrait of the groundfish trawler Isabel S. from New Bedford, MA. Jeff, the captain, learned fishing from his father, local legend ‘Fearless Freddy’ Hatfield. Brian, the cook, is a biker and a recovering alcoholic. Lo, the deckhand, is a refugee from Vietnam who has rediscovered Buddhism. We accompany them to the once-ample fishing areas of Georges Bank and the Nantucket Shoals, where they haul in nets, and do the backbreaking and bloody work of hand-cutting thousands of pounds of cod and other fish on a pitching trawl deck. The boat is revealed as a social microcosm. Captain Jeff, the son of an esteemed local captain, is at the top of the order, and Lo, who arrived in the U.S. after a harrowing escape from a Viet Cong jail, is at the bottom. Fishing is a complicated and sometimes deadly business. Detailed knowledge of the ocean floor and the habits of fish is crucial to success. But, as Captain Jeff acknowledges as the Isabel S. returns with its catch, “Sometimes a lot of it is a little luck”. Total runtime: 28 minutes
Click Here to Register for Free
December AHA! Night: Season’s Greetings from FHC
Thursday, December 12 | 5:00-7:00 PM | Fishing Heritage Center | Free
Season’s greetings from the Fishing Heritage Center! Stop by the Center from 5pm to 7pm to decorate scallop shells (perfect for holiday ornaments) and enjoy free hot chocolate. Then, do some last minute holiday shopping in our gift shop, which features wonderful items including clothing, books, jewelry, and more. As always, admission to the Center is free for AHA! Night.
December Dock-u-mentary: Charlotte: A Wooden Boat Story
Friday, December 20 | 7:00 PM | New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park (33 William Street) | Free
Join us for our next Dock-umentary film screening! Hosted in partnership with New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, Dock-u-mentaries is a free film series that explores themes and topics related to the commercial fishing industry and the working waterfront.
On December 20, FHC will be screening Charlotte: A Wooden Boat Story. Charlotte is a film about an extraordinary boatyard, the Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway, located on Martha’s Vineyard. Ross Gannon and Nat Benjamin established the boatyard in 1980 with the purpose of designing, building, and maintaining traditionally built wooden boats, and in the process they transformed Vineyard Haven harbor into a mecca for wooden boat owners and enthusiasts. After a long career of designing and constructing boats for others, Nat embarks on building a 50 foot gaff rigged schooner for use by his family and friends – her name is Charlotte. Through close observation of the everyday activities of the boatyard, the film emerges as a meditation on tradition, craftsmanship, family, community, our relationship to nature, and love of the sea. Total runtime: 1 hour 36 minutes
