Throw
2016 USA / Duration: 10 mins / Directed by: Darren Durlach, Dave Larson
Growing up in East Baltimore surrounded by poverty and violence is hard enough, and Coffin Nachtmahr had the added challenge of being different. He stutters. He never quite fit in, and he was picked on. Then he discovered a lifeline in the unlikeliest of pursuits: yo-yoing. In the subculture of “throwers,” he found purpose, acceptance and community. Today, Coffin is the city’s best, transforming the simple activity of yo-yoing into a transfixing dance of creativity, innovation and connection.
Edges
2016 USA / Duration: 9 mins / Directed by: Katie Stjernholm, Jonathan Hiller
She survived being thrown through her windshield in a car crash at the age of 80 and then a major stroke at the age of 85. And still, at the age of 90 years young, Yvonne Dowlen continues to ice skate almost every day. Dowlen insists it’s easier to skate than walk at her age. Her elegance on ice reflects the decades she spent traveling the world as a performer in the Ice Capades and sharing her love of dancing on ice as a teacher. Indeed, skating has helped her recover and rehabilitate from the most challenging times in her life. She spends every day pursuing what makes her happy — and that is the true wisdom in her story.
Joe Lahout
2015 USA / Duration: 4 mins / Directed by: Nick Martini
Joe Lahout has been outfitting skiers of the Northeast since the very beginning — when a lift ticket at Cannon Mountain cost only 25 cents. Born in 1922 in an apartment above Lahout’s Country Clothing and Ski Shop in Littleton, New Hampshire, Lahout still runs America’s oldest ski shop, which is crammed full of vintage leather ski boots and U.S. Ski Team memorabilia. Joe Lahout is the story of an old-timer who still believes in skiing’s simple roots: speed, freedom and the great outdoors.
Kickass Katie Lee
2016 USA / Duration: 8 mins / Directed by: Beth Gage – Mountainfilm Board, George Gage
Activist, author and singer Katie Lee has been a mainstay at Mountainfilm for years, celebrated for her fierce environmentalism. Her hallmark issue was fighting Glen Canyon Dam, a battle she hasn’t given up decades after the dam was built and even after she passed the 90-year mark.
Ace and the Desert Dog
2016 USA / Duration: 9 mins / Directed by: Brendan Leonard, Forest Woodward, Stefan Hunt
Ace Kvale, a veteran photographer, and Ghengis, a blue heeler “dogger” (that’s canine for “blogger”), live together in the Utah desert. Their backyard: 2 million acres of canyons, redrock cliffs, dry washes, empty landscapes and desert wilderness. For his 60th birthday, Kvale decided to go on a 60-day backpacking trip. Ghengis, naturally, joined him, along with friends who tagged along for sections. Ace and the Desert Dog proves that while backpacking may not be sexy, what it lacks in glamor it makes up in meaning. Kvale and Genghis are living proof, plodding along to spectacular places only reachable by foot, following the cycles of the season and learning lasting lessons from one another. Namely: Slow down, spend as much time with your best friends as possible and don’t forget to play.
Offseason
2016 USA / Duration: 8 mins / Directed by: Ben Moon
For Daniel Norris, baseball has been a passion, career, patient teacher and cruel master. But becoming a professional athlete means life in a high-stakes world of intense pressure where players are constantly under the microscope. That’s why, during the offseason, Norris lives in his VW van, Shaggy. It’s a simple life. He travels alone, taking pictures, surfing, exploring the West and hoping that Shaggy will make it to the next destination. It’s not life in the fast lane; it’s life in the right lane, chugging along at 55 with other cars speeding past. But that view is exactly what he needs.
Sandorkraut
2014 USA / Duration: 12 mins / Directed by: Emily Lobsenz, Ann Husaini
For Sandor Katz, the food writer and queer farmer who spurred the recent fermentation revival with his best-selling book The Art of Fermentation, fermentation goes beyond the sublime tastes and beneficial health effects of bread, sauerkraut, tempeh, meads and misos. The transformative action of microorganisms has also transformed his relationship with life and death.
1-800-GIVE-US-YOUR-KIDNEY
2016 USA / Duration: 17 mins / Directed by: Samantha Smith
“If I don’t give my kidney to somebody this week, will somebody die waiting for it?” The answer to this question, posed in Samantha Smith’s film, is unequivocally “yes.” Despite that, ethical and practical riddles surround the willingness of a living donor to undergo surgery and bodily mutilation to help a complete stranger. Smith doesn’t delve deeply into these questions. She simply tells the story of a kidney donor and recipient — individuals strikingly different from one another — leaving the audience to ponder the conundrum of more people needing kidneys than kidneys available. As the final credits roll, the viewer may wonder: “What am I doing walking around with two healthy kidneys?”
Guest Speakers
Samantha Smith, Director 1-800-GIVE-US-YOUR-KIDNEY
Katie Lee, Kickass Katie Lee (via Skype)
Coffin Nachtmahr, Yo-Yo Master and star of THROW
