Friday, May 12, 5:00 PM, Charles Theatre 1
Sunday, May 14, 11:30 AM, Charles Theatre 5

Director: James Burke

Cast: Joshua Jackson, Donald Sutherland, Juliette Lewis, Louise Fletcher, Steven Pasquale, Zack Ward, Tyler Labine, Diego Fuentes, Timm Sharp

Country: USA
Year: 2005
Running Time: 109:00 minutes
Format: 35mm

On the surface, Duncan Shorter is a prototypical slacker. Unable to hold a job and lacking ambition, he is able to barely scrape by on his charm. As his friends have moved on to lives of responsibility, Duncan is still haunted by the unresolved death of his father years ago and has not been able to move on. When his grandfather’s health begins to fail quickly, Duncan takes a job as a handyman at the senior residence to be close to him. His relationship with his ailing grandfather as well as a romance he strikes up with his grandfather’s free-spirited nurse force Duncan to examine his past and present and begin to look towards the future.

Aurora Borealis features a stellar cast led by Joshua Jackson as Duncan and the inimitable Donald Sutherland as his grandfather. It also manages to touch on some hot button subjects without coming across as an “issue movie” by concentrating on how they affect these particular characters without worrying about any broader political stances. Aurora Borealis has played at many film festivals since debuting at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival, picking up multiple jury, audience, and acting awards.

-- Dan Krovich

Presented By: James Burke, Scott Disharoon

As part of his company, entitled entertainment, James Burke served as executive producer on Thirteen Conversations about One Thing and Levity, both of which were released by Sony Pictures Classics in 2002 and 2003, respectively. He was also part of the producer team on the Tony award winning Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day’s Journey into Night starring Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Dennehy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman and director of the short film Borderline, written by John Bishop, which won awards at the Charleston World/Fest and the Houston Film Festival.
Producer Scott Disharoon has a distinguished background producing for theater and film, having produced over 20 plays and several feature films. Currently, he is supervising the development of Getting Blue, written by Peter Gethers and to be directed by Bill Duke. Other feature film credits include Illusion, the dark comedy Critics and Cold Sweat. Some of his theater credits include award winning productions of He Who Gets Slapped, Angels Twice Descending, Burn This, the James Burke directed Waiting for the Parade, Elektra, the West Coast premieres of Lee Blessing's Down the Road, John Bishop's Legacies, and the world premiere of David Stevens' The Sum of Us, for which he served as co-producer.