Everyday Activist - 2017 Banff World Tour Short Film Selections - Calgary Red Program

Posted on Thursday, January 05, 2017 at 10:00 PM

"Ace and the Desert Dog"

2017 Banff World Tour Short Film Selections - Calgary Red Program

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

I had to divide the short films into multiple blog posts this year, mostly because the quality of each film that I saw was fantastic. The Banff World Tour announces their films well ahead of the hosting city, in our case Calgary, but not all audiences will have access to every film. While I knew Shift, Sea Gypsies and Super Salmon would for sure make it (they are all also in the Red Program), I searched for as many other films as I could on the list. In my research I found quite few films available online for free and some of these will be screened in Calgary as part of the Red Program.

Ace and the Desert Dog

Filmmaker and author, Brendan Leonard, came to Banff to promote his film, Ace and the Desert Dog as well as his book 60 Meters to Anywhere. In his book Brendan talks about how life in the Rocky Mountains, not far from us, in Montana, healed him, giving his life new meaning as well as opportunity to write about things he’s passionate about. Filmmaking is just another way to tell a story. His film follows adventure photographer, Ace Kvale and his dog, Genghis Khan, as they spend 60 days trekking in the Utah desert as a way for Ace to celebrate his 60th birthday.

To me, this is nothing short of miraculous. Most people his age start to wind down and it seems like Ace is getting his second wind. The film doesn’t go into this but he uses his photographic skills to help vulnerable people all over the world. He says, “It’s not the places we go, it’s the people we meet when we get there. My focus now is on giving back to cultures I’ve come to love.” The first part of his career was spent as a ski model in the 80s and then after a trip to Africa his friends encouraged him to take up photography professionally. He’s done it all on the mountain adventure circuit, so if anyone could do a 60 day backpacking trip at age 60 it would be him.

Brendan incorporates a number of subtle and not so subtle features in this short film to tell his story, including a little bit of animation and Genghis Khan’s dawg blog, http://desertdawg.acekvale.com/. His blog not only has a prominent place in the film, but also documents all their adventures. I enjoyed the present face shots compared to Ace’s past photos as well as the usual landscape panoramic shots. It gives the viewer an intimate feeling while on an extraordinary journey. This will be shown on the Calgary Mountain Film Red Program in January as part of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour 2016/17 #1 & #2.

Max Your Days

While Southern British Columbia doesn’t have the 20 hours of daylight that Whitehorse has in summer, they still have pretty long days to go on the snowboard, skateboard, mountain bike, wake board and surf board. They had to have had a trailer to carry so much equipment around for so many people! I kind of wish that they would have put a time stamp as the activities changed. All we know is that the day starts around 7 am and because it’s a sunny day you can sort of get a sense of the sun’s positioning as the day passes.

During the various sections of the day, friends, family and other The North Face sponsored athletes joined them doing their own activities such as climbing, kayaking, cliff jumping and boating. I cringed watching the kids with life jackets but not the adults. Accidents happen. Overall though, an entertaining, cleverly edited film by Sherpa Cinema and a great way to promote tourism in British Columbia. This will be shown on the Calgary Mountain Film Red Program in January as part of the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour 2016/17 #1 & #2.

Everyday Activist Review: 2017 Banff World Tour Short Film Selections - PART 1 >
Everyday Activist Review: 2017 Banff World Tour Short Film Selections - Calgary Blue Program >
Everyday Activist Review: 2017 Banff World Tour Short Film Selections - PART 2 >