As It Happens: Filmmaking in Real Time

If you're unable to make it to the Adventure Film Fest in Boulder, then catch As It Happens, an intense, direct-experience mountaineering short by award-winning filmmaker Renan Ozturk and photographer Cory Richards, in its entirety online.

Shot and shared in real time, Ozturk and Richards posted their dispatches from their climb in the Nepalese Himalayas, to the delight of thousands of online viewers following their exploits as they happened. Ozturk and Richards' attention to lighting, focus, arresting camera angles and use of time lapse creates a high-quality movie experience, unexpected for the conditions under which much of the film is shot. The cinematography is laudable in its own right. To have carried the extra equipment necessary to edit and share their experiences, while navigating dangerous terrain at tens of thousands of feet--especially during the final legs of their two-man ascent--seems nuts. And brave. And hyper-real. If you've ever wondered...or ever been there...this is a film you'll want to chew on.

(Don't miss the rest of Ozturk's blog, filled with "dispatches" from other mountain adventures, large and small. The links to Ozturk and Richards, posted above, will take you to each man's own site.)

As It Happens screens at 8 p.m. tonight at Neptune Mountaineering, along with four additional short films. See the Adventure Film Festival page for schedule and ticket info.
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Get Off Your Seat: Adventure Film Festival in Boulder, CO

If you would rather frolic in the rapids of a torrential river than play World of Warcraft until 3 a.m., this film fest might inspire you sit still long enough to formulate your next daring plan. The Adventure Film Festival opens today at the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado. This evening's program runs from 7-9 p.m. (Click here for a PDF of the full festival schedule.) Sponsored by Patagonia and a number of other forward-thinking, community-minded partners, Adventure Film also hosts screenings in Chamonix, France and Santiago, Chile, as well as a touring program that visits Seattle, San Francisco, New York, and Boston throughout the year.

The week's program begins on Thursday with the short, Skateistan, which examines how skateboarding is pushing the boundaries of change for two teens (one of them a young woman) in Afghanistan. On Skateistan's heels follows Ben Knight's thoughtful Eastern Rises, as a group of fly fisherman explore the pristine environments of the Kamchatka Peninsula of Pacific Russia in their search for "the most wild and beautiful trout in the world." Knight's deadpan narration is spot on. The trailer on the film fest site had me laughing out loud at his description of a fly hook that looks "like the half-eaten rodent your cat wheezed up on the kitchen floor." (It does.) This second trailer strikes a more awe-struck tone:


After intermission are two killer-looking ski flicks: the short, Desert River, and Australis: An Antarctic Ski Odyssey. In Australis, a group of experienced, daring (I'd venture "crazy") skiers take on the slopes of Antarctica--with no guidebook, no lift, and not much between the end of the slope and the near-freezing polar waters, below. I suppose, given the rate at which the planet's poles are melting, these folks might have discovered the next great ski resort destination--all they need is a hot tub and a bit more beach.