Grand Canyon Adventure 3D

People thought filmmaker Greg MacGillivray was crazy to carry expensive and delicate movie equipment, including a 350–pound IMAX camera, onto the rough and racing Colorado River. But that’s what he did to capture the images in Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk 3D. For four wet and exhilarating weeks, MacGillivray and company filmed environmental advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his daughter Kick, and author/explorer Wade Davis and his daughter Tara, as they made their way down the Colorado. Their guide, Shana Watahomigie, shows them the river in all its many moods: whirling white-water rapids, lush waterfalls, tranquil pools and stretches of bubbling streams. And MacGillivray shoots the Colorado from every imaginable angle, from -vertigo-inducing aerial shots to otherworldly underwater views.

But as beautiful as it is, Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk 3D is also serious. Suffering from a mega-drought that scientists fear will last into the next century, the Colorado has significantly lower water levels every year, endangering not only the river but the seven states that rely on it for water. (Those lower water levels cause more white-water rapids, thrilling thousands of adventure seekers who are unaware that the increase in rapids is actually a sign that something’s very wrong.)

Narrated by Robert Redford, who is well known as an environmental advocate, with rousing music by the Dave Matthews Band, Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk 3D. Through August 18. Houston Museum of Natural Science, One Hermann Circle Drive. For tickets and information, call 713-639-4629 or visit www.hmns.org. $6 to $10.
May 30-Aug. 18, 12, 3 & 6 p.m., 2008