Banff Mountain Film Festival 2009
Posted March 28th, 2009 by shawn
Well, went to the first night last night. I actually did enjoy the movies.
Last year my beef was that there was too much about the people (i.e., "Oh, look at me how amazing I am that I'm training this hard and that I'm so incredible..." ...that's when I dozed off) and not about the sports. Don't get me wrong... I like good people stories, and I know that, well, there wouldn't be the sports without the people, but last year's films seemed way too heavy to me into the self-grandisation arena, and the sports took the back-seat. Not so last night. Last night's films were a bit more about, "This is why I do what I do," as opposed to, "This is why I'm so great."
Started off with "Red Helmet", which was a cute five-minute short about a little kid's fear about jumping in a lake with other kids. After making a dash to escape the situation, we see him walking through a forest where he finds a red helmet, which he dons. Once on his head, he (and we) see visions of extreme sports types, all wearing red helmets, and doing some pretty cool stuff. That gives him both a sense of wonder over all that he envisions, and enough courage to go back to that very benign lake and take the plunge! A nice metaphor perhaps for LGBT folks and particularly youth when thinking about climbing, and potentially getting involved with Crag Crux!
The rest of the films were good too, from the interesting look at a dying culture in Borneo to the insanely difficult climbing of a couple of British kids (and the climbing was insane too... the boy was so far above their one bit of pro in the one problem that if he fell, he'd have decked... "Why bother using the ropes?" as Ken said), to an unscheduled one for guys poking about mountain tops looking for places to ski.
Anyway, off to see night #2 tonight. Hopefully all just as good!
I went to the two screenings in Waterloo this year, and really enjoyed the red helmet as well. Personally I thought the Borneo one was kind of boring, which is a shame, because I typically find white water paddling to be quite fascinating.
There were a number of climbing films shown; Grit Kids was cool, and the heel hook was pretty impressive, but I think I enjoyed the Sharp End more (don't know if you will see that tonight). It features some of that insane East Germany/Czech climbing on soft gear.
My favourite film of the festival this year was Journey to the Centre, a film about base jumping (incidentally, my favourite from last year was also a base jumping one, though you may not have liked it since it was more of a biopic). I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat by the end.
I have to say, the Toronto screenings seem a little bit late in the year. The nice thing about the late January screening is that I'm just entering the winter doldrums, and the BMFF really does give me a bit of a perk and get me excited and looking forward to spring climbing and tripping. I'm already excited and looking forward to all that stuff by this time of year (and doing all that stuff, now that I think about it).
Did indeed see "The Sharp End" last night, the climbing style of which, in my humble opinion, is FRICKIN' INSANE!!! Having taken a fall on trad gear being 10 feet above my last piece, with the resulting four fractures to my calcaneus, the run-outs they had were making me sweat buckets from my palms! And then to top it all off, using a stick to poke in a knot and hoping that was going to catch?!? You'll not be seeing me up there!
I like the skiing film. It almost has no close-up shoot of people's face. It is about the sport. Yet it says so much about the people doing it.
I have mixed feelings about the dying culture film. I feel that those normads will eventually settle down to become farmers even without outside interference. My ancesters did so in China thousands years ago.