TAHOE FILM FEST: Best Ten Action Minutes
Imagine a series of films where hurling your parachute-clad body off a massive cliff might be the least wacky activity on the list. The Tahoe Adventure Film Festival, a.k.a. the "Tahoe Don't-Tell-Mom-I'm-Doing-This Fest" showcases the best ten action minutes from a crazy range of new sports movies.
The high-energy event puts the fest back in festival and was held in South Lake Tahoe Dec. 16 & 17. The first evening featured guest speaker, the affable, quite mad, Shane McConkey, sharing a few of his passions. These include making a name for himself via big mountain skiing and pioneering the sport of ski BASE jumping.
After describing the gear and showing several film clips (last year's Festival winner Yearbook among them), McConkey advised, "I recommend none of you ever go sky diving or BASE jumping - it'll consume your job, your life, everything. But it's the most fun you'll ever have times about fifteen. The world is a totally jumpable place."
Capping the evening, after going through an evolution of big mountain ski designs, Shane introduced the Grand Master of the sport, Rick Sylvester. If you're not up on film trivia, Sylvester was the James Bond stunt double in the 1977 The Spy Who Loved Me commonly known as the greatest ski stunt of all time. Watching the clip in conjunction with current BASE jumps underlined just what Sylvester accomplished 28 years ago.
On to the main event, held Saturday at the Caesar?s Tahoe showroom for a thousand ticket holders. A vibrant sports photo exhibit by Corey Rich was as entertaining as D.J. Red Dawn and the B-Boy Break Dancers. Judges in the audience would vote on the Festival winner from a range of eight semi-finalists. Show host and founder, Todd Offenbacher (crazy himself in a McConkey-ish way), got things swinging with more BASE jumping in Jimmy Halliday's film Keen In Able.
Footage of guys free-falling, back flipping and chasing each other down-cliff with helmet cams, before deploying their parachutes, will never be boring. Seeing the sport from the athlete's view is crucial 'cuz no one would believe a normal description.
Highlights of the movie clips were deep water free climbing in Vietnam, showcased in Big Up Production's Deep Water Soloing clip, where we learned that monkeys can be ornery and the climbers will tenaciously try a hold until they get it right.
Swedish freeskiing is featured in Rising - the Swedes have cornered the market on walking away from avalanche duff and they literally traveled the globe looking for chances to do so. Hands down the best soundtrack of the night.
Creative Differences was a blast of snowboard, skate and snowmobile clips from a local Tahoe producer, where once again, a helmet cam in a spindly little chute gave viewers the ?I?m there? perspective. And the wipe out scenes were as entertaining as any Warren Miller flick.
The show topper - and this year's winner of $500 and bragging rights, was Defect by Syko Productions. Who knew you could ride a unicycle in such abnormal terrain? These guys have balls of steel and aren't afraid to use 'em. Offenbacher said of the winning clip, ?The unicycling did just what we wanted for the Film Festival - it showed us a sport we might not know much about and created this "wow" factor in the audience. It was definitely the coolest.
Now the biggest question is what will next year's fest - the 4th annual - offer to top it all. Details at www.laketahoefilmfestival.com, where the new name just may be Tahoe-These-People-Are-Crazy-Fest.
