“Tuesdays at the Palm” presents DUMA (2005)

Tuesday, February 12 at 2:15pm

Michael D. Palm Theatre for the Performing Arts

Rated PG ● Running time 100 minutes ● FREE TO ALL
Tuesdays at the Palm presented by The Telluride Film Festival and Palm Arts.

The award-winning director, Carroll Ballard’s (THE BLACK STALLION, NEVER CRY WOLF, FLY AWAY HOME) DUMA will screen at this month’s Tuesdays at the Palm series, an exciting collaboration between Palm Arts and the Telluride Film Festival. On February 12, students, families and community members will be treated to a free screening at the Michael D. Palm Theatre for the Performing Arts.

“Visually panoramic,” wrote the Washington Post, “A film that revels in making the expanse of a beautiful place palpable.” “An enchanting coming-of-age story for kids,” hails Common Sense Media.

The beloved film, about a young South African boy's friendship with an orphaned cheetah, is inspired by true events and is based on the book How It Was with Dooms by Carol Cawthra Hopcraft and Xan Hopcraft. Xan (Alexander Michaeletos) finds the young cub on the side of the road with his father Peter (Campbell Scott), and he asks his dad to take it home.  They take in the young animal and name him Duma, Swahili for “cheetah.” Xan raises the cat to adulthood and the two friends undertake a series of hardships, joys, and wild adventures.

“A superior all-ages adventure pic made by a filmmaker who knows more than a thing or two about the genre. Confidently blending the elements that have traditionally served Ballard well — kids, animals and epic landscapes — this (is an) intelligent, beautifully made production,” hailed Variety, “The movie is marked by ecstatic depictions of figures against a treacherously beautiful landscape, and by its ability to engage the imaginations of the young and young-at-heart without ever insulting their collective intelligence. Indeed, in every way that a lesser filmmaker might have allowed Duma to slip into convention, Ballard defies expectations.”