2015 FILM SCHEDULE
Issues That Matter | Cultures Worth Exploring | Environments Worth Preserving | Adventures Worth Pursuing | Conversations Worth Having
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20th
2013 France / Duration: 75 Minutes
Directed by: Luc Jacquet
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.
2015 USA / Duration: 7 Minutes
Directed by: Skip Armstrong
Just before he turned 30, Hayden Peters was forced into the terrifying position of confronting his own mortality because of a health issue. The experience came with a seismic shift in perspective, priorities and the way he approaches life. Trading city life for cold saltwater, Peters finds balance, inspiration and solace in the Oregon coastline — a place of crashing waves, elegant sea stacks and blunt, breathtaking, uncaring beauty. This short film by Skip Armstrong is a meditation on the power of the ocean and the lessons it can impart about what truly matters in life. (CARPE DIEM / OCEAN)
THE THOUSAND YEAR JOURNEY: OREGON TO PATAGONIA
2015 Bolivia / Duration: 5 Minutes
Directed by: Kenny Laubbacher
Jedidiah Jenkins quit a job that he loved to ride his bicycle from Oregon to the southern tip of Patagonia. Friend and filmmaker Kenny Laubbacher joined him for a month and a half to pose the question: Why? Jenkins’ poignant answers are woven together with sun-soaked travel footage and shots of life on the move in this short film about shattering routines, staying open hearted and keeping the flames of inspiration not just burning, but raging. The Thousand Year Journey is a paean to travel, adventure and, as Jenkins puts it, “turning your 100 years on this planet into 1,000.”
2015 USA / Duration: 7 Minutes
Directed by: Ben Knight
There’s no easy way to say goodbye to your best friend. Especially if that best friend stuck by your side during the darkest time in your life — licking your feet, shadowing your footsteps and going insane with joy every time he saw you. This short film by Ben Knight, Ben Moon and Skip Armstrongcelebrates the human-dog bond and illuminates the incredible resilience we can conjure with the help of our friends.
2014 USA / Duration: 12 Minutes
Directed by: Michael Brown, Nick Waggoner
Hailed as one of the most cinematically profound ski films ever made, Afterglow is a testament to the Sweetgrass legacy of creating bold, uncompromising, creative imagery. Filmed at night in B.C. and Alaska’s backcountry with powerful lights and ski suits studded with LED lights.
2015 USA / Duration: 9 Minutes
Directed by: Forrest Woodward
When Forest Woodward was born, his father wrote a poem for him about the secret places of sublime beauty that he would find in life. “May you always remember the path that leads back, back to the important places,” it concluded. Nearly three decades later, Forest came across the poem in a box of family books and was propelled by the words to challenge his father to recreate a 1970 trip down the Grand Canyon.
2014 Canada / Duration: 3 Minutes
Directed by: Ben Marr, Rush Sturges
In the suspense novel Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn writes, “...if you're about to do something, and you want to know if it's a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.” But sometimes bad ideas become brilliant films.
2015 USA / Duration: 4 Minutes
Directed by: Justin Bogardus
Feeling tired, irritable or stressed out? Try nature. This harmless prescription has been shown to relieve the crippling symptoms of modern life — indifference, cynicism, narcissism, even murderous rage — and is healthy for people of all ages and even pets. Side effects may include authenticity, confidence, spontaneous euphoria or being in a good mood for no apparent reason.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21st
2014 USA / Duration: 90 Minutes
Directed by: Louie Psihoyos
In Racing Extinction, director Louie Psihoyos makes it clear that the ongoing sixth extinction crisis is the biggest story in the world. Astounded that no one is telling it, Psihoyos sets out to do it himself, following his Oscar Award-winning film The Cove (Mountainfilm 2008) with this around-the-world investigative effort into how species are disappearing at an alarming rate.
Psihoyos assembled part of the undercover team from The Cove to expose an assembly of horrors, such as the finning of countless sharks. Additionally, a special camera is used to show the emissions from our vehicles and machinations of industry. Seeing these no-longer-invisible CO2 gases discharged into our lives and lungs is highly distressing and, hopefully, motivating.
2015 USA / Duration: 7 Minutes
Directed by: Ben Moon
In the middle of the vast watery stretch that is Lake Superior sits Rabbit Island, 91 acres of rocks, earth, trees and wild habitat. Rabbit Island has never been divided or cut. Nor will it ever be. In collaboration with a land trust, a conservation easement has been placed on the island, ensuring that it will remain protected forever. This place offers a new kind of wild experience, where the point is to do nothing to an ecosystem and see what it teaches us.