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November 27, 2007
Yesterday, the official word went out to the general public: Mountainfilm has hired David Holbrooke as the new festival director. Not wasting any time, David is already in the office and cranking hard for next year’s festival. If you’re on our emailing list, this news is already old news (that’s soooo yesterday). If not, check out this link for more details, and go here to get added to our online community.
David Holbrooke. And a seal.
Exactly six months from today, the 30th Mountainfilm festival will be over. In the meantime, the staff is extremely excited to welcome David to our humble main street office. (Unfortunately, the desk we picked out for him was a wee bit small…his knees are knocking the middle drawer. We’re told this isn’t our fault; it’s a common problem for 6 feet 6 inches tall David. Drew, our new tour staff member, doesn’t have the same problem.)
Posted by Emily Long
November 27, 2007
Regular MF Blog readers may have noticed some recent updates to the web site. Today, we are officially launching our new title: The Conversation. MF will always be our favorite acronym for the festival, but after a year of on-again off-again postings we are ready to take this blog to a new level.
We’ve already started by folding the Mountainfilm on Tour blog “On the Road” in with this one, and in the coming months we’ll be inviting guest bloggers to be a part of the conversation by posting updates and stories from all corners of the world. We expect the first guest blog post shortly after the new year. We’d also like to invite you, the readers, to join in the conversation by posting comments (naughty or nice, we welcome them alike) whenever you feel moved.
Posted by Emily Long
November 27, 2007
Signature Mountainfilm prayer flags in WaterColor, Florida. Photo by Ben Knight
We recently made the pages (screen?) of Felt Soul Media’s blog, The Wire:
If anyone was curious as to why the three of us were in Florida: The Telluride Mountainfilm Festival has a tour show In WaterColor, a small ritzy beach community on Florida’s panhandle. They were kind enough to invite us for the two-day event so we could introduce Running Down the Man and show the Red Gold trailer….read more.
A quick google of “Mountainfilm” and “David Holbrooke” revealed an article David wrote for the Huffington Post in April, 2007. He describes the effect of a surprising question during the Q&A for his film Shiva’s Dance Floor at Mountainfilm several years ago:
The conversation that followed was exhilarating for everyone in the room. Filmmakers work very hard to get every single moment right but with his diatribe, the hostile stage manager had quickly unraveled our finished product. There was nothing in the ether; it was all right there in that room that day, making the whole film experience, richer and deeper….read more.
Another kindred spirit—The Poverty Jet Set—released some kind words into the blogosphere about us:
One of my favorite film festivals in the world is Mountainfilm…read more.
We’re tickled pink. Thanks, Mark.
Posted by Emily Long
We’re just finishing up the first leg of our 2007/2008 tour schedule and I couldn’t be more excited. In 2007 we completed some fantastic new shows and improved some of our existing shows as well. Our audiences are growing all the time and the amount of money we help raise for non-profits is going up as well. Since June we’ve been from Colorado to Norway & Canada to Chile and all points in between. While we have about 5 presenters that hit the road each year, I try to get out when I can to meet new people and see new places – this is, after all, one of the perks of being the Director of the Tour.
Keep an eye on the blog for location specific entries from the road. My hope is to share the trials, tribulations and joys of the road.
2008 is shaping up to be one of our biggest years on tour yet. After humble beginnings, Mountainfilm on Tour will make approximately 120 stops on 5 continents in 2007/2008! This is a huge accomplishment for us this year since we’ve been hovering around 95 shows for the past 3 years.
Check for the tour making these stops in January!
Breckenridge, CO (Jan 7)
Anchorage, AK (Jan 11 – 13)
Homer, AK (Jan 15 & 17)
Girdwood, AK (Jan TBD)
Haines, AK (Jan TBD)
Wenatchee, WA (Jan 15)
New York, NY ( Jan 16)
Santa Fe, NM (Jan 17)
Winona, MN (Jan 24 – 27)
Los Angeles, CA (Jan 24 – 26)
Portland, OR (Jan 31)
Sewell, NJ (Jan 31)
Visit http://www.mountainfilm.org/tour/schedule for more information
Cheers,
Justin
November 20, 2007
There’s news, I just can’t tell you right now.
The programming department has gone underground, trying to search out the best content—films, presenters, artists, characters—for our 30th festival. Even information on who runs the programming department—our new festival director—isn’t public knowledge yet. (I’ll give you a hint: he’s a filmmaker from New York who has had several films featured at Mountainfilm in the past.) You won’t have to wait long for the news to come out, don’t worry.
We do have some news I can tell you. In addition to the new festival director, we also have a new year-round staff member on the tour. Drew Ludwig started yesterday as the assistant director, doubling the manpower in that department. Drew has worked for the festival for quite a few years, holding positions such as volunteer coordinator and most recently as a presenter for the tour.
Drew Ludwig
We may not have much to report just yet, but things are starting to get exciting here in the office.
Have a great Thanksgiving!
Posted by Emily Long
THE MOMENT: The filmmaking team of Darius Goes West desperately wanted to get in touch with Oprah Winfrey, hoping that an appearance on her show would dramatically raise awareness of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), the number one genetic killer of children worldwide. During their packed house post-screening Q&A, they handed out pre-addressed postcards to Oprah and asked the audience to fill them out and forward on their behalf.
THE RESULT: An independent filmmaker in the audience, who had previously worked closely with Oprah, refused to forward the card. Instead, he gave the team her direct phone number. Then a major Hollywood director, after making a generous financial donation to the fight against DMD, invited the team, including Darius and his mother, to an all-expenses-paid visit to Beverly Hills and to the premiere of his latest film. The team accepted the invitation and took advantage of the exposure they were afforded while in Hollywood to push closer to the goal of eradicating DMD.
Darius and his crew at Universal Studios, Los Angeles.
Read more about the Domino Effect here.
November 7, 2007
Playing with darkness & silence, the films at the Banff Mountain Film Festival this year delved into survival versus death through intense profiles of the core psychology of people whose lives are defined by pushing the boundaries. For these people, life is a series of adventures sought and attained. Each new success brings the adventurer that much closer to danger and possible death, and therefore that much closer to the ecstasy of truly living.
Sometimes even success is sullied by the lives left on the mountain. In The Beckoning Silence, the German mountaineer Toni Kurz is left swinging on a rope within sight of rescuers, but unable to repel any further down because of a knot. Reinhold Messner’s decision to leave his brother Guenther behind on Nanga Parbat is called into question in Death on Nanga Parbat. John Harlin III follows his father up a route on the North Face of the Eiger, 40 years after that mountain took his father’s life, a trip chronicled by the film The Alps.
John Harlin III climbing the Eiger. From the film The Alps.
Some don’t succeed. But for those who do, what brings them back from the edge of the precipice over oblivion is memories of love. Words like remnants, death, lost, silence, & last chance—pulled from titles of films in the festival this year—impart a dark and scary ambience to a life lived in the mountains. But other films talked about light & joy, and my favorite title (although not my favorite film) was Wings on Your Feet.
I don’t understand the the urge that keeps pushing mountaineers and adventurers higher & further, because I simply don’t have it. But it might be close to the same feeling that drove me to join the Peace Corps and give up hot water showers (among other things) for two years. It’s got everything to do with sucking the “marrow from the bones of life.” Thoreau said he went into the woods to “live deliberately” and to “not come to the end of life, and discover that I had not lived.” Deprivation of our senses hones them to sharp acuity, and separation from our friends & family makes lingering nostalgia into a sweet drug upon reuniting.
The question still remains—a question that many films addressed this year but one that may never be answered—whether the pursuit of adventure is a selfish & cruel endeavor. My favorite film of the festival, 20 Seconds of Joy, explored this issue deeply. The film follows BASE jumper Karina Hollekim through several years of her unique career. In an interview, one of Karina’s close friends says “people say that you don’t really live if you don’t go to the extreme,” and that that sentiment is, in her opinion, “completely bullshit.”
The preview for the film 20 Seconds of Joy
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoANL1N-5l8[/youtube]
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
—Dylan Thomas
Posted by Emily Long
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