The Underwater Forest documentary will have its Montgomery premiere Monday, Dec. 4 at the Capri Theatre.

Tickets are on sale now at the Capri box office or from the Alabama Coastal Foundation here. Tickets are $10 each, and include the film screening and a Q&A with me, the film's director, Ben Raines. Those attending will also signal their support to have the area designated a marine sanctuary. The goal is to protect the ancient trees from salvage loggers who wish to pull them from the sea and sell them.

The film was co-produced by the Alabama Coastal Foundation and AL.com's This is Alabama. It was written and directed by Al.com's Ben Raines.

"This is such a wonderful educational opportunity. I encourage anybody who's interested in watching it to purchase their tickets in advance because we have sold out on every show that ACF (the Alabama Coastal Foundation) has organized," said Mark Berte, executive director of the Alabama Coastal Foundation. "And this is the Montgomery theatrical premeire. They can go on the ACF website and get tickets, or they can physically go to the Capri."

The Underwater Forest won Best Ecological Short

The film has won several awards at film festivals, including Best Ecological Short Film from the American Filmatic Awards, and Best Alabama Short Film at the Fairhope Film Festival. Several screenings in Mobile have sold out. The film will be screened for a second time on the IMAX screen at the Gulf Coast Exploreum on Thursday, January 18, at 5:30 p.m. You can purchase tickets for that screening at www.exploreum.com .

The film documents the work of a team of scientists who have explored the ancient cypress forest found 60 feet underwater in the Gulf of Mexico, due south of Gulf Shores, Ala., is about 60,000 years old, says a team of scientists who have studied the site.



The forest appears to be a wholly unique relic of our planet's past, the only known site where a coastal ice age forest this old has been preserved in place, with thousands of trees still rooted in the dirt they were growing millennia ago. It is considered a treasure trove of information, providing new insights into everything from climate in the region to annual rainfall, insect populations, and the types of plants that inhabited the Gulf Coast before humans arrived in the new world. Scientific analysis of the site is ongoing. One of the key things the forest might hint at is a world where the seas rose even more quickly than the worst-case predictions for the near future.