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.

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

“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

 By the time I was halfway through High Crimes I was disgusted with everyone involved with Everest, even the so-called good guys, who hadn’t done nearly enough to clean up the situation. By the end of the book I was angry. What’s going on at this mountain and many others represents everything that is wrong, that is despicable in not only mountaineering and adventure travel but human behavior overall. 

 Read the review in its entirety here. 

http://tinyurl.com/552jvz