Contact CU Independent News Staff writer Sonia Fraser at sonia.fraser@colorado.edu.
“Going local” takes on new meaning at the upcoming Banff Mountain Film Festival. This year, there are three Boulder entries to Banff, making it a good year to be a Boulderite. 55 Hours in Mexico, Nature Rx and Women’s Speed Ascent are all products of Boulder residents.
Here is a quick glimpse at these homegrown creations.
55 Hours in Mexico follows three friends on the ultimate weekend quest to ski down the third tallest peak in the Americas. The film was the brainchild of adventure photographers and filmmakers Thomas Woodson and Joey Schusler. The idea for the project came from online trip reports made by other weekend warriors taking on the trek to Mexico to ski down mount Orizaba, all within the confines of one business weekend. As a twist, Woodson and Schusler decided to pull in their friend, and token working stiff, Karl Thompson.
Nature Rx is a quirky take on the idea of natural remedies. Presented as a series of spoof pharmaceutical ads, it pokes fun at the relationship between humans and nature. This production is filmmaker Justin Bogardus’s first entry to Banff Mountain Film Festival, and it has been one of the most showed films on the festival’s international tour.
Women’s Speed Ascent chronicles Mayan Smith-Gobat and Libby Sauter’s record-breaking ascent of The Nose of El Capitan. When film director Chris Alstrin caught news of Sauter and Smith-Gobat’s plan to take on the record, he knew he had to join in. The climbers made multiple attempts to break the standing women’s record of 12 hours and 15 minutes. The women finished off with a record-shattering time of 4 hours and 43 minutes.
The Banff Mountain Film Festival will visit the Boulder Theater on Feb. 23 and 24.
