Michael Kodas

I’ve been up to my ears in films and books for the last couple of weeks, and the deluge of adventurous cinema isn’t over yet. For anyone in the Hartford area this Saturday, you can join me at the Patagonia Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival at Trinity College’s Cinestudio Saturday night from 7:30 until 10:30. The event, hosted by REI, features eight films showing river adventures, water conservation efforts and biofuels.

If the films at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival are even half as captivating  as those that I caught at the Banff Film and Book Festivals last week in the Canadian Rockies, (or the ones that I had to miss at the Hartford International Film Festival while I was up north) it will be a great night. Among the favorites in Banff were Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen’s latest climbing film, The Sharp End; The Last Nomads, a film about anthropologist Ian Mackenzie’s work in the rainforest of Borneo documenting the lives of the last nomadic Penan natives; Journey to the Center, about a team of world-renowned BASE jumpers leap into Tian Keng - the Heavenly Pit in China; and Red Gold, about the battle between fishermen and conservationists trying to preserve the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs in the rivers of Bristol Bay, Alaska, and mining companies proposing to extract what may be the planets richest deposits of gold and copper, likely at the expense of the fish. But those were just a few of the dozens of films that screened in Banff this year, along with presentations by world-class climbers, photographers, and writers like Peter Habeler, Jim Donini, Michael Kennedy, Jennifer Lowe-Anker, Maria Coffee, Robert Birkby, Majka Burkhardt, Dawa Stephen Sherpa, Zeb Hogan, and Dr. Geoff Tabin. With multiple screens and stages running at the same time, I often wished I could be in two places at once.

And that was before I even considered the great films I was missing at the Hartford International Film festival, which was running the city where I live at the same time as the Banff Festival. There were a number of terrific films at HIFF, but two I will certainly track down are Trouble the Water, the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at Sundance earlier this year, and Diamonds in the Rough, about the Ugandan Hip Hop scene and its role in the country’s recovery from civil war.

But if you missed out on Banff and Hiff (boy, that’s a lot of f’s), you still have the chance to catch some terrific outdoor films when the Wild and Scenic Film Festival makes its only Connecticut stop this Saturday at Trinity College. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Contact REI at 233-2211 for more information or to purchase tickets. I hope to see you there.

Writing has turned me into something of a hermit in cave, and it’s taken quite some time to get back out into the wild. So it only made sense that one of my first adventures once I tore myself away from my computer was something of an indoor outdoor expedition. I did the best imitation of Indian Jones I can manage and joined six other anonymous paddlers to explore an unnamed, underground river flowing beneath an unidentified, New England city.

Since 1984, TED (Technology, Education and Design) has brought the world’s greatest thinkers together to give 18 minute talks about their lives. The greatest of these people are awarded the TED prize, which consists of $100,000 and the granting of one wish with which they hope to change the world. James Nachtwey, who has spent nearly three decades photographing conflict and the world’s most pressing social issues, received a TED prize in 2007. His wish was for TED to help him gain access to one vital story that has been previously ignored and then to help him distribute it in a way that shows the power of news photography in the digital era.

The day has come for that wish to come true, and we can all help. James Nachtwey will show his photographs at venues worldwide, and on the web, this Friday, October 3rd. Learn more here:

<a href=”http://www.tedprize.org/nachtwey”><img src=”http://ted.streamguys.net/tedprize/badges/story_breaks.gif” width=”180″ height=”180″ border=”0″ /></a>

“I’m working on a story that the world needs to know about.
I wish for you to help me break it, in a way that provides spectacular proof
of the power of news photography in the digital age.” — James Nachtwey

In the first days of August, when 11 climbers perished on K2 and another half dozen found themselves stranded below the mountain’s summit, some mountaineers and media criticized them as “mountain tourists.”

“It’s long past time to stop calling these egomaniacs heroes and call them what they are,” wrote one poster at the New York Times website. “Selfish, egomaniacs, and stupid.” Reinhold Messner, the greatest climber of his generation, fumed about “K2 package deals” and the “pure stupidity” of the climbers involved.

While many lamented the Everest circus’s arrival on K2, others pointed out that the mountaineers involved were highly experienced high-altitude veterans.

During interviews of eight of the disaster’s survivors and a visit to Ireland to attend a memorial service for one of the victims, I learned of the blunders and heroism of the three-dozen climbers who headed for the summit of K2 on August 1st. I also learned that just a few of the trappings of Everest have made their way on to K2. But on K2, which is far steeper and more prone to storms and avalanches than Everest, it doesn’t take much to bring disaster.

You can read my story at Outside magazine’s website:

http://outside.away.com/outside/destinations/200809/k2-disaster-eleven-climbers-die-1.html
Cheers,

Michael

A few weeks ago I presented the multimedia program promoting High Crimes at Google, as part of their “Authors @ Google” series. I imagine I was as entertained by my tour of the Cambridge, MA facility, with its geometric, primary-colored furniture, catered lunchroom, video games and musical instruments, as the Google employees were by my talk, photographs, and slideshow. Google has graciously put up the entirety of my presentation at YouTube.

Michael Kodas is scheduled to appear on the CBS Evening News Sunday edition tonight. In an early note to our mailing list we noted that the program airs at 6:30 PM EST, but we notice that in many areas, the program is on at 6 PM EST, so please check your local listings for the exact air time on your local CBS affiliate.And thanks for watching. 

China called their Olympic Torch Run, planned as a 21-nation tour that was the the longest trip ever for the Olympic Flame, a “Journey of Harmony.” The Olympic Fire’s swing through Europe, however, was anything but harmonious. In fact, the International Olympic Committee is considering ending the international tour of the Beijing games’ flame and limiting the torch run to sites within China due to the aggressive demonstrations the event sparked in Europe. In London, protesters of China’s human right’s record, particularly in Tibet, attempted to extinguish the torch with water and fire extinguishers. Demonstrators scuffled with Chinese Olympic supporters and with police in what the Guardian called “A Day of Chaos.” News Photos and television coverage from the event showed protesters aggressively put down by British police. Lord Coe, who is in charge of the 2012 Olympic games in London, was manhandled by the Chinese security workers in track suits escorting the torch. He later referred to the security detail as “thugs.” In Paris, it was worse, as activists trying to put out the Olympic fire forced organizers of the event to extinguish the flame themselves at least four times and put the torch on a bus to complete the route (even if the fire is extinguished, the flame continues to burn in two lanterns used to light the torch). Keeping order around the Olympic torch has at times looked like a sporting event itself as police jogged, rode bikes, flew planes and even donned rollerblades to keep hold back the demonstrators. Throw in some stilts and a unicycle and you’ll have a circus. Those accessories aren’t completely out of the realm of possibility considering that Wednesday’s stop for the Olympic torch is San Francisco, where one team of protesters plans to run naked behind the torch. By the time the Paris fiasco was over, in fact, climbers in San Francisco had already scaled the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge to hang pro-Tibet banners. The protests in London and Paris probably wouldn’t have been nearly as volatile if China hadn’t planned to take the torch to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and mountaineers might not have been so interested in scaling a bridge in San Francisco if the China hadn’t planned to take the torch to the summit of Mount Everest. By promoting the Beijing games with a climb to the roof of the world, the Chinese turned the Tibetan mountain into a political stage. They shouldn’t be surprised that disenfranchised residents of Tibet are trying to take a stand on that platform to promote their desires of autonomy and independence, and to highlight the human rights abuses of the Chinese. China’s use of the torch run, and the rest of the Beijing games, as a public relations campaign begs for people angry with the country to hijack that effort. And as the world saw on Sunday and Monday, along the torch’s planned route there are plenty of people disdainful of China’s human rights record, their arming the Sudanese militias committing genocide in Darfur, their horrific environmental record, their sales of dangerous products to other nations, as well as their plan to plant their flag in Tibet by carrying the Olympic flame to the top of Mount Everest.China is reported to be shopping for an American or British public relations firm to help them put a positive spin on the Tibet mess. That in itself will be a task of Olympic proportions. But China has proven image making tool in the Olympic torch, which has always been a popular device for nationalistic public relations. The torch run, in fact, began as a PR stunt for a despotic regime. Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels came up with the Torch Run as a way to glorify the Third Reich in the lead up to the 1936 Berlin Games. Considering last month’s violence in Tibet, the Chinese Olympic motto, “One World, One Dream,” seems just as much an empty slogan as their description of the Olympic torch’s trip around the world as a “Journey of Harmony” when India is preparing armored vehicles, riot police, helicopters, and water cannons for the torch’s visit and Australia has announced that Chinese paramilitary torch protection team will not be allowed to escort the flame when it visits Canberra later this month. Whether the IOC decides to cancel the rest of the Beijing Games’ international torch run or not, the turmoil and oppression that has surrounded the tour show that China has already managed to export another of its best known products to the West.

I returned from a few weeks on the road late last night to the sad news that Dith Pran, the New York Times photojournalist who survived Cambodia’s killing fields, had died of pancreatic cancer at 65. With the ongoing oppression and turmoil in Darfur and Tibet, Pran’s life strikes me as distinctly relevant. He worked as a photojournalist in the United States for more than 25 years covering hundreds of stories, but his life’s focus remained telling the story of the Cambodian genocide.In the early 1970s, Pran was a photographer, translator, and fixer for Times reporter Sydney Shanberg as the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia. Although Shanberg arranged for Pran’s family to escape their disintegrating homeland, Pran himself chose to stay  to continue documenting the horror that was overtaking the nation. When the nation’s government finally fell in 1975, Shanberg got out, but Pran was captured by the Khmer Rouge. He endured forced labor and torture in the “killing fields,” avoiding the almost certain execution his education would have earned him by pretending he was a peasant. He lived on as little as a tablespoon of rice a day. By the time Pran had escaped Cambodia over the Thai border in 1979, more than two million Cambodians had died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.I met Pran in 1988 at a demonstration at the United Nations while I was working on a story about Asians in New England. Over the next few years he provided invaluable guidance and advice as I made my first trips to work on stories in Southeast Asia. He published a book of stories told by children who had witnessed the Cambodian genocide,  spoke about the genocide to hundreds of groups, and established the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project. To me he was both generous with his time and passionate about his cause. You can read the New York Times obituary here and see the Times’ Last Word video about Dith Pran’s life here. 

The 24 primary elections held across the United States made Super Duper Tuesday a less than super day to release my first book. Although High Crimes was overshadowed on the day of its publication by some slightly more significant news,  the rest of the week has exceeded my hopes. Positive reviews in Entertainment Weekly and Mother Jones and interviews on Connecticut Public Radio, and on Joey Reynolds’ and Colin McEnroe’s radio programs built quite a bit of interest. On Wednesday night I had a fascinating debate with Rick Wilcox, a guide, climber, and owner of International Mountain Equipment, that was moderated by Randy Cohen, the Ethicist for the New York Times Magazine. The event was hosted by the Rubin Museum of Art in New York and sponsored by the New York Section of the American Alpine Club. Friday night Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT, hosted the hometown launch of the book, and prepared space and seating for about 150 people. More than 250 people attended the event, which was thrilling for me, but left many of the audience unable to hear me or see the photographs and videos in the show. A number of people told me they came and left. We sold out the 60 books the gallery had on hand before I even started signing. Saturday night, at the Green Street Art Center in Middletown, CT, the scene was similar. The 80 seats were spoken for days in advance, as was a 20-person waiting list. Fifteen other people showed up but couldn’t get in. I must apologize that I didn’t realize that Green Street was taking reservations or I would made sure the promotion of the event indicated that fact. I never dreamed that I would draw the crowd that I did at Green Street or at Real Art Ways. I apologize to anyone who was unable to take in my programs and promise I’ll have others in the area. For anyone that is willing to come to another event, please watch the appearances page on my website for upcoming programs in the area. Those who were unable to get a book for me to sign, you can order them through highcrimesbook.com or purchase them at area bookstores. If you would like a signed copy, please contact me through my website when you have one and I’ll be happy to make arrangements to put my scrawl across a page. There are a few that I have already signed at Broad Street Books. And for everyone that has made the launch of High Crimes so super, once Super Tuesday had passed, thanks for your continued support, encouragement, and friendship. Michael

I’m honored that Outside magazine chose to review High Crimes, even more so that the review was written by Brad Wetzler, best known as the editor at the magazine who came up with the idea to send Jon Krakauer to Mount Everest in 1996. That assignment led Krakauer to the top of Everest, from which he descended into the middle of the deadliest day in the mountain’s history. His story on the disaster was perhaps the longest feature in magazine’s history and eventually grew into the bestseller, Into Thin Air. Ten years later, Outside published an issue commemorating the ten-year anniversary of the Everest disaster. Krakauer didn’t write anything for that edition, but Wetzler, his editor, penned a wrenching recollection of learning that climbers on the Krakauer’s team had died in a storm and the writer was unaccounted for. You can read Wetzler’s description of how the deadly storm on Everest cast a pal over a party Outside staffers were throwing in the September, 2006 issue of the magazine. You can read Wetzler’s review of my book in the February, 2008 issue. - Michael