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Mieraf, the 11 year old Ethiopian girl that Rick Hodes (Making the Crooked Straight) treated with money from the Moving Mountain Prize, has returned home to Ghana with a straightened spine. Her surgery and recovery was a particular ordeal but as you can see from the picture below (Mieraf is second from the left in the front row), she is well and smiling.–David
Our annual holiday fundraiser screening of The Wildest Dream was a smashing success, with only a few small hiccups. One of those being the eternal bane of holiday travel. Conrad Anker’s connecting flight left without him, so he had an epic travel day. He ended up renting a car in Salt Lake City and driving down to Telluride–thankfully the weather was sunny and not blizzard conditions–just in time to catch the after-party at the Sheridan lounge.
We were able to schedule a morning talk with Conrad the morning after, which in many ways was even better than a post-screening theater Q&A. The Camel’s Garden Hotel was generous enough to allow us to use their lobby area. More than a couple hotel guests in full ski gear stopped and caught some of the discussion, which ranged from whether or not Conrad believes Mallory made the summit of Everest (probably not) to what makes a great mountaineer (a large quota of luck, among other things).
Conrad is so smart and thoughtful with a wide range of knowledge. When asked if he was sorry to miss the great Age of Exploration, he said that he thought the future edge of exploration would be in science. Almost nano-exploration in the effort to combat climate change and species loss.
If you made it to the screening, thanks for coming out.
The Hoffmans, Erik Fallenius, Chris Hanson and others dropped in for Conrad's talk
Conrad and David hold court in front of a roaring fire
Standing room only
The guys at Felt Soul Media (The Hatch, MF05; Running Down the Man, MF07; and Red Gold, MF08) are working on a new short film. This one was filmed in remote Kamchatka, Russia. They make fly fishing sexy.
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/3074182[/vimeo]
With the climate conference Cop15 happening, it seemed a likely place for the Yes Men to to pull something off. Canada took the hit on this one, which seemed to trump many of their other efforts in its elaborateness.
With the UN Climate Summit unfolding in Copenhagen, there is an unusual amount of news out there on climate change. If you want to dig in to it, check out the website, Solve Climate, which provides daily climate news and analysis.
THE PEOPLE SPEAK–the long awaited documentary film inspired by Howard Zinn’s books A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States–will air on History on Sunday, December 13 at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central. In 2009, Mountainfilm and SquidShow Theatre were lucky enough to produce our own Voices readings with Tom Shadyac, Josh Bernstein, Alex Chadwick, Shawn Colvin, and others. We’re excited to see the new film production of this amazing people’s history.
You can find more details about the upcoming film on the History Channel here.
A link to this trailer was in my inbox today (thanks, Jenny). The film is called The Shark Con Film, and the main point seems to be that sharks are doing just fine, thanks, and that anyone who says otherwise is just trying to make money.
We’ve played our fair share of shark films with a different message, including Sharkwater (MF07) and Mind of the Demon (MF06).
There is an authentic controversy over the exact number of sharks killed by humans every year, but as other bloggers have noted, the trailer for The Shark Con Film is lacking on credentials and scientific evidence.
After a little detective work, I found that the production company credited with the film, Tiburon Productions LLC, is also associated with the film Summer of the Sharks and Shark Diver Magazine (SDM). Summer of Sharks is billed as an adrenaline film, and the trailer didn’t seem biased one way or the other (environmentalist or anti-). However, the editor has published that their goal is “To do our part to help sharks survive for generations to come, and to take our sport to the next level.” (Link here)
Although it’s possible that it the film will be made, I think the trailer is mostly likely a publicity stunt. What do you think?
Wade Davis, perennial and popular Mountainfilm Guest and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, recently released a new book. The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World is a tale about disappearing diversity; not only of animal species, but also of languages, poems and unique cultural perspectives.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today reversed the decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada regarding the long and complex case featured in the film Our Land, Our Life (MF 2007, later renamed American Outrage).
The Ninth Circuit in San Francisco ruled that the BLM likely violated the National Environmental Policy Act when they approved the Cortez Hills Mine on sacred Shoshone land. Read the full news report.
This is exciting news: “The federal government has acknowledged it never prosecuted anyone who failed to pay a bid for drilling rights in Utah until a college student offered his bogus bids in an act of environmental defiance.” Keep reading…
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