Entries RSSAdventure Film Festival, presented by Patagonia and Intrepid
Nov. 6-8, 2008
Boulder, Colorado
Learn more at: adventurefilm.org
By Ali Geiser
Action, adventure, ambition, anarchy; yeah, there was plenty of the hot and wild to go around at this year’s Adventure Film Festival, plenty of thrills and chills and big air and sketchy gear placements and ridiculously cold-looking white water. But the heart of AFF-now an international gig, with showing not only in its hometown of Boulder but Chamonix, France, and Chile as well-was filled with more than adrenaline.
In each and every wily big-screen ride lay a call to action. And if not every call was as spelled out as Allison Gannett’s “Global Cooling Ski Adventure Show,” which featured far more take-personal-responsibility-for-climate-change how and why than actual skiing, then they were certainly all as clear. In Conflict Tiger we cringed and cried for both the starving poacher and the starving poached, as man and tiger fought over a disappearing environment. A Map for Saturday made us want to stop buying all this stuff from Ikea and live like gypsies, exploring and celebrating the beauty of the world. In its simplicity, Ice, Anarchy, and the Pursuit of Madness-a short film chronicling Steve House, Marko Prezelj, and Vince Anderson’s first ascent of K7 West-demonstrated effortlessly the incredibly light, fast, low-impact, and reverently respectful method that these elite alpinists embrace, leaving the mountain clean and pristine for the rest of us.
The films were all good, damn good, creating the problem of trying to see them all; obviously an impossibility, given that there were four venues and three days and overlapping showtimes (Yowza! Go Jonny Copp and the rest of you fabulous organizers and sponsors!). This kept me from getting blood clots in my legs, and kept the crowds from becoming overwhelming; instead they were full and friendly and warm, rife with hoots and hell-yeahs and fists in the air for bad-ass one-armed Willy hopping stumps on his mountain bike (Armed for the Challenge); eyes wetting and silence thick and liquid before the image of a pink-clad two-year-old napping face-down in a black garbage bag, surrounded by mountains of methane-breathing trash (Recycled Life).
Take all these good people and powerful messages, throw in afterparties, intermission entertainment, door prizes (I won a Siggä-totally sick!-but someone else won Intrepid’s trip to Vietnam . . .damn. . .), film-making workshops, live interviews, and that fact that almost every show was introduced by its director and/or producer, and you’ve got a festival to make our little city of Boulder proud.
Ok, enough of the gushing. There was something missing from this festival, and the last adventure film festival I went to (Utah’s High Adventure Mountain Film Festival), and the one before that (Reel Rock Tour). Where are the bad-ass women??? If the ladies made a strong showing anywhere it was in the activism department, with Leslie Iwerks directing the brilliant Recycled Life, an Oscar-nominated documentary of the impoverished ‘guajeros’ who live off of the Guatemala City Garbage Dump; Conviction, starring three middle-aged nuns risking life and livelihood “to act out against war . . . against the illegal, criminal actions of their [American] government;” and Everest E.R. taking us to Dr. Luanne Freer’s 17,500-foot medical clinic.
But where are my sisters in crampons? On mountain bikes? Banging down waterfalls in their kayaks and getting their running shoes soaked though with mud? Yeah, it’s fun watching to boys get all wild in their wingsuits, and I like it when they take their shirts off and are all sweaty and dirty, but enough of the testeserone already. I know that there are ladies out there with big ideas and big muscles-what say we give ‘em some love-turn the cameras on, hand over the grants and sponsorships, and help them show our mothers and daughters that adventure sports aren’t just for men. Get out there and do like the Adventure Film crew says and “Make Your Own Legends.” I’ll be watching for them next year.
