If you caught “Free Solo” as it climbed cinematic heights last year, you already know that the best outdoor-adventure films are really internal-exploration films.
While its physics and photography are simply jaw-dropping, what raises “Free Solo” higher than visual-adventure porn is its thoughtful study of the crazy climber at its center. According to a brain scan that we see happen in the film, he’s a man who turns out to have no functioning amygdala.
The amygdala is the most ancient and survival-oriented node of the brain. It’s your fight-or-flight reactor. It’s the source of fear, which is what the star of “Free Solo” apparently cannot feel.
Want to test out your own amygdala, and also meet some of the greatest adventurers of our day, while tucked safely into a movie theater seat? Check out the Banff Mountain Film Festival, a whole weekend’s worth of high-flying, death-defying journeys and achievements. The annual traveling festival, launched every winter from the Canadian resort town and arts mecca of Banff, Alberta, is back at the Kiggins Theatre for a two-day run, featuring two different programs of short movies, most between five and 15 minutes long, that whisk viewers to some of the most eye-popping places on this planet.
If You Go
What: Banff Mountain Film Festival, featuring nine short films each night.
When: 7 p.m. Feb. 1-2.
Where: Kiggins Theatre, 1011 Main St., Vancouver.
Tickets: $20 per night, $36 for two nights.
Learn More:www.kigginstheatre.com, www.banffcentre.ca
Some are strictly visual experiences that aim only to wow you, but others delve into the lives, loves, back stories and motivations of those high flyers and death defiers.
Many of them are in it for the personal glory and exhilaration — and there’s nothing quite like the exhilaration of “Dream Ride 3,” a sumptuous six-minute journey featuring booming drums and stunning drone photography of cyclist Mike Hopkins in New Zealand, sweeping down mountainsides and weaving between coastal boulders as big as houses. (Hopkins takes this third installation in his “Dream Ride” series a little less seriously than before by adding a rhyming, Dr. Suessian voice-over.)
But some of the adventurers are out for something deeper than just topographic glory, and those are the really interesting stories.
“For the Love of Mary,” another six-minute film, stars a distance runner named George Etzweiler, accurately described as “adorable old man meets badass.” He’s 97 years old and has a pacemaker; he challenges himself to run up Mount Washington, the tallest peak in the Northeast, every year — in honor of his late wife, Mary. He’s just starting to slow down now, he confesses in the film, but that has not stopped him from achieving his goal every time — because “I had Mary with me” all along.
Cultural barriers
Others are struggling against cultural barriers. “Brotherhood of Skiing” is a history of the National Brotherhood of Skiers, which was founded in the early 1970s to develop Olympic-level black skiing talent — and to encourage African-Americans in general to hit the slopes. The National Brotherhood of Skiers is one of the largest skiing organizations in the country, and its annual “Black Summit” event is reportedly the largest skiing gathering in the world. (The 2019 event is set for March 2 to 9 in Steamboat Springs, Colo.)
Two of the most culturally interesting offerings focus on horses and the people who love and need them; they’re from the same producer, a company called Handful of Films, led by Canadian anthropologist Dr. Niobe Thompson. One is “Fast Horse,” a 14-minute film that follows Siksika cowboy Allison Red Crow as he prepares a team of jockeys to challenge the best bareback horse riders alive. The other is “Boy Nomad,” a 21-minute film about a 9-year-old Mongolian kid who loves to race horses — but who must scramble to save his family’s animals when a brutally hard winter blocks their usual migration route.
That’s not optional adventure for fun or glory or proving something to yourself; it’s the adventure of real human struggle for survival.
