Showcasing quality short shorts (under ten minutes) is a proud part of the Wild & Scenic Film Festival. Should one or three of these figure into your decision about which of nine festival venues to choose in any given timeslot? Anyway, taste a dozen of them below.
Some films deserve thumbs up even with a label of program filler. Others inspire or raise awareness or have fun beyond and because of realizing a vision that gets in and gets out in a rightsized few minutes.
Brothers of Change: Here, “Black people don’t do that” refers to the sport of climbing, and to the fact of a group of Blacks who are into it, and the community of it, big time.
Danny MacAskill’s Wee Day Out: This sick, kick and a half, trick bicycling is jaw-dropping fun through pretty, Scotland scenery.
Dragging 235 Lbs. Uphill Both Ways: Assuring family values (with four kids) plugged into the great outdoors is a gratifying long haul.
Every Bend: The ranging blessings of Wild & Scenic Rivers designations, perhaps most of all for kids, get an appreciative nod.
Forgotten but Not Gone: Sort of a cute, wolverine, otter, bear-ish combo, the oddly named “Pacific Fisher” suffers from toxic land use and tenuous corporate “help.”
Ghosts of the Arctic: “The cold is my home,” says a polar photographer immersed in the harsh, beautiful white of the Arctic, especially when he “captures” remote wildlife on their terms.
Imagination: Tom Wallisch: A clever wrapper around some sick, kick and a half, in-town, trick skiing fuels excitement in otherwise bored kids.
Land Where We Live, The: Yet another beautiful remote place to preserve -- how do we gauge all too real fears about the still resident definitions of “progress” and “development”?
Letter to Congress, A: A letter sent in 1960 invigorates something “good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”
Norma’s Story: A cute, respectful, cautionary animation for kids (are they the only ones who will listen), spoken with the inherited gravitas of an indigenous voice.
Valve Turners: As with this example, perhaps the best of “monkey wrenching” is a coordinated, non-violent, polite mucking of the worst pipelines of shortsighted greed.
Where the Wild Things Play: Framed by geeky guys and a geeky guy song, this film peppers through women just doin’ it -- an array of extreme adventure and sport.