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Banff Mountain Film Festival


February 27th, 2009

some great films, some guilt inducing yawners

by Richard Markosian

A little guilt can go a long way. But a lot of guilt can induce extreme boredom and irritation. Regarding this year's Banff Mountain Film Festival there are some excellent adrenaline rushing films about rock climbers, extreme skiers, extreme kayakers, but there are some seriously annoying western guilt-- global warming--world-wide environmental disaster films that basically tell me I need to feel very guilty for driving to work and eating vegetables.

Banff Poster

I'm all for a little guilt. If there is something I can do to change my lifestyle that will really make an impact on the Earth: like recycling or using less water, or composting my lawn clippings. But sitting through "Silent Snow" a nearly hour long film about a couple of little girls from Greenland who might have to move because the fish might cause their future breast milk to be contaminated---because farmers in the U.S use pesticides-- where this fact is beaten over my head in the most contrived manner, was quite annoying. The girls were cute, but under the obvious prodding by the Director to push the guilt button, they appeared puppet-like.

It's surprising that so many of these films have received sponsorships by big outdoor retailers. I assume that the retailers must now believe that it isn't enough to just show courageous climbers pushing the limit of human strength, endurance and sanity. Now the films must also show that everyone who doesn't live like an Eskimo or a loin cloth native, is a bastard.

There was a very exciting film called "The Last Frontier" about extreme kayakers. These dudes go all around the remote corners of the globe kayaking the craziest routes and rapids. Treking through indigenous native populations looking for the best killer line. But apparently they couldn't just leave it at that, they needed to show sensitivity for the natives. They had to end the movie by the narrator saying, "leaving this place makes me aware that how I live my life back home has a direct impact on these people's lives."

No it doesn't. You can't do anything back home to impact these people's lives. The film then addressed the problems of excessive logging in Papua New Guinea. The very ironic part of the story is here are these extreme kayakers, descending from heaven from their flying birds (helicopters) who have wonderful food from colorful packages, boats that are 20 times better than the natives crappy little hand-made wooden boats. And they want to tell the natives to stop logging so they can remain poor? Please, just do your extreme kayaking and leave the politics and messages for others.

"99 Days on the Ice" is about how a woman and her husband left there three small children behind so they could trek across the arctic -- from Russia to the North Pole to Canada in 99 days. These ignorant people nearly died from freezing cold, moving ice and polar bear attacks-- which would have left their children orphans. Then they have the gall to complain about global warming messing up their trip. It's clear that their trip was sponsored by many huge outdoor retailers likely due to it having a "global warming spin" on it.

I get politics and indoctrination in schools, on tv and even in news reports. When I went to the Banff Film Festival ten years ago it was only about watching the best of the best climbers, skiers and mountain people pushing the envelope. This is what outdoor retailers should sponsor, and these are the films I want to see.

Banff decided to put all of their purely adrenaline films into a secondary film festival called Radical Reels. We didn't know this before purchasing our tickets to Banff. So if you want to save your self a guilt trip go to Radical Reels and skip the Banff film festival.

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