MountainFilm Recap
Films about the outdoors in Telluride
For over 35 years Memorial day weekend means MountainFilm in beautiful Telluride. It is a fantastic four day event consisting of independent films about the outdoor life. A sampling as to what you might see includes films about extreme rock climbing, river conservation, rescue missions and dirtbags living in parking lots. Telluride’s weather can be quite fickle in May and instead of sunny skies and warm temperatures we got snow, rain and cold. Luckily this is a film fest overall and thus many films were watched serially from morning to night, all weekend.
Nine films of that 25 or so we watched really stood out and if you see them coming to a festival near you. You should definitely check them out. Those films we loved are:
Common Ground
The fight to preserve wilderness is not waged by just wooly-headed radicals and bleeding-heart intellectuals. It’s an issue with advocates on all sides, including hard-working, down-to-earth farmers, ranchers and guides in Montana, where the controversial Heritage Act — designed to identify new wilderness and manage non-wilderness lands — has pitted neighbor against neighbor.
Dear Governor Hickenlooper (trailer)
Inspired by the 2013 Mountainfilm selection Dear Governor Cuomo, this compiling by Colorado creatives follows Shane Davis (a.k.a. The Fractivist) as he guides us through a series of vignettes. These stories were collected from the state’s filmmakers, farmers, skiers, activists and concerned citizens and use both science and emotional appeal to explain why fracking is problematic in Colorado.
High Tension (trailer)
In the spring of 2013, “The Swiss Machine” Ueli Steck set out to climb Mount Everest and then neighboring Lhotse without oxygen. But he and climbing partner Simone Moro ended up in an ugly confrontation with some Sherpas who were fixing lines on the route. The fight spilled into Camp 2, culminating in a group of Sherpas attacking the two European climbers with rocks.
Love in the Tetons (trailer)
Juan Martinez grew up in urban Los Angeles, but when he stepped off a bus in Grand Teton National Park in 1999 and saw the stars for the first time, he knew his life would be in the outdoors. He became an emerging explorer for National Geographic and in 2012, met Vanessa Torres, a Grand Teton park ranger whose background from a family of Mexican-American migrant workers was similar to his. This short film tells the story of their love for the park and growing romance with each other.
Once Upon a Forest (trailer)
Francis Hallé is a French botanist who has spent his life exploring, studying and marveling at the great tropical forests of the world. He laments the destruction and loss of the forests and, in this richly crafted film, narrates his vision of what will happen when the forests reverse the effects of man’s onslaught. Bringing to bear Halle’s deep knowledge, insight and feeling, filmmaker Luc Jacquet (March of the Penguins) suffuses the botanist’s vision with arresting images — both real and imagined — of nature’s irrepressible force and ceaseless interconnectivity.
Tashi and the Monk (trailer)
In a remote community in the foothills of the Himalaya, a former monk struggles under the weight of his calling. Once a spiritual teacher in the U.S., Lobsang returned to India to create a community for orphaned and neglected children. Tashi — the newest arrival and youngest child with a troubled past and alcoholic father — acts out and challenges her elders every step of the way. But there is a spark in her that Lobsang sees clearly: a person inside the hurt, abandoned child with the potential to blossom and grow. His patience and compassion for Tashi comes from a deeper place than mere sympathy; he was a wild and troubled orphan himself. This portrait of Lobsang and his family of 84 children is a short and lovely reminder that while there is a lot of darkness in the world, there are also beautiful shining points of light.
The Apothecary (website)
Nucla, Colorado, just an hour’s drive from Telluride, has seen hard times ever since the U.S. uranium industry collapsed in the late 1970s. It’s a hardscrabble town, where the folks who haven’t fled barely eke out a living. One oasis of activity is The Apothecary Shoppe, the sole pharmacy within 4,000 square miles. The owner, Don Colcord, gamely occupies multiple roles as druggist, surrogate doctor, life counselor and community benefactor. Colcord’s sanguine public persona, however, belies a long-suffered private pain for which there is no drug, no cure and no relief.
The Grand Rescue (trailer)
Mountain rescue is always a risky proposition, so those who are attracted to the job tend to be strapping, young and full of verve — and nerve. This was definitely the case in 1967, when a group of seven national park rangers in the Grand Tetons risked their lives to save an injured climber. On August 22, Gaylord Campbell was climbing the north face of the Grand Teton with a friend when a boulder broke free and showered them with rocks, leaving Campbell with compound fractures. During the rescue attempt, which took three days, Campbell was critical of the methods and decisions made by his saviors every turn of the way. The Grand Rescue tells this legendary story for the first time in film.
Who Owns Water (trailer)
Water wars have always been heated in the American southwest desert, where water is scarce and droughts are frequent, but the same quarrels were once unthinkable in lusher areas of the country. That’s changing as Georgia, Alabama and Florida are locked in a battle over water from their once-bountiful rivers. Two young brothers decide to paddle the three rivers in the Appalachiacola–Chattahoochee–Flint River Basin to tell the story of a system that still flows, though it’s threatened from all sides.
Other films we saw but wouldn’t recommend as highly as the others are:
Trail Riders of the Wilderness, A Life Well Lived, Catch It, Cold Rolled, Coming Home, Dubai — A Skier’s Journey, Marshland Dreams, North Slope Alaska, Parking Lot Culture, Sound of the Void, Stars above Lofoten, Supermom, The Weight of Mountains, Vultures of Tibet, Walled In,
Winter Light
Lastly there are some we really wanted to see, and despite our back-to-back movie watching weekend we weren’t able to catch the following:
— A Beautiful Waste
— Damnation
— Living Wild
— Mending the Line
— Sufferfest
— Wrench
If any of these come to our hometown we will definitely pick up some tickets to check them out.
MountainFilm is always a fantastic time, if you have the chance to spend your memorial day there you will not be disappointed. We hope to see you there next year!
