2018 Mountainfilm Festival Program by Mountainfilm

F ILMS | SH O R T S

S HOR T S | FI L MS

Permafrost Now

Our National Mammal A New View of the Moon

Thia Martin

Wylie Overstreet

A Night at the Garden

SAT, 3 P.M., PALM; SUN, 6:45 P.M., NUG

Marshall Curry

Wylie Overstreet was hanging out in his L.A. apartment one night and, out of boredom, decided to take his high-powered telescope out to the street to peer at the moon. Pretty soon people began wandering up and asking what he was up to. When he showed them, they nearly fell over in awe. A New View of the Moon is just the reminder we need to keep looking up. Because as Galileo said, back in 1610, “it’s a beautiful and wondrous sight to behold the body of the moon.” —KK (USA, 2018, 4 min.)

FRI, 9:30 P.M., SOH; SAT, 9:30 P.M., NUG

Without the exterior shots of Madison Square Garden, viewers of Marshall Curry’s A Night at the Garden might think they’re watching a Hitler rally. But this is a chilling collation of archival film clips from the “ProAmerican Rally” held in New York City on Feb. 20, 1939. Boys in brown shirts carry American flags through the crowd and onto the stage, taking their place beneath a 50-foot painting of George Washington flanked by deconstructed American flags and swastikas. The eerie music gives way to organizer Fritz Kuhn, a Hitler acolyte, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “We’d like to think that when Nazism rose up, all Americans were instantly appalled,” Curry says. His film strips us of that comforting illusion. —MT

FRI, 8:45 P.M., BC

IN PERSON: Thia Martin Congress named the bison the “American National Mammal” in 2016. But if wild bison migrate outside the protection of Yellowstone National Park, they are managed less as an iconic symbol of the American spirit and more like a pest, largely because they allegedly infect domestic cattle with brucellosis. Produced by the Buffalo Field Campaign, Our National Mammal reports on the conflict over bison management in Montana. “People are too scared to let wild things be wild,” laments one activist. —SC (USA, 2017, 12 min.)

Our Surfing Is Revolutionary

Stash Wislocki

Kasia Cieplak Mayr-Von Baldegg, Nicolas Pollock

Playing with Movers and Shakers Shorts

SAT, 3:15 P.M., OW; SUN, 9:30 A.M., NUG

Playing with Movers and Shakers Shorts IN PERSON: Kasia Cieplak Mayr-Von Baldegg Big wave surfer Bianca Valenti has been competing since she was 9, much of the time against boys, since there wasn’t a girls’ division. Fed up with sexism in the sport and the sexual ways in which women surfers are portrayed, she founded the Committee for Equity in Women’s Surfing. This fun, animated short celebrates women surfers supporting each other and proves that women have the ability to open minds when they ride big waves. —HS (USA, 2017, 2 min.)

SAT, 3:15 P.M., OW; SUN, 9:30 A.M., NUG

Persian Powder Erik Bulckens

IN PERSON: Stash Wislocki, Dr. Max Holmes, Dr. John Schade, Darcy Peters, Edauri Navarro Pérez

FRI, 1:15 P.M., MAS; SUN, 3:45 P.M., OW

The hard work of science — its investigative, analytical, proof-driven mission — is inspiring. Couple it with the passion and humanitarianism of youth, and even a reality as dark as climate change takes on a light of hope. —PK

Mona Seraji is a professional snowboarder. Which is a distinction, of course, but what really sets her apart is that her home mountain is in Iran. One of the unique delights of this endearing short film, in addition to glimpses of a country and culture we hear so little about (and rarely anything positive), is that fretted lutes, ancient Persian percussions and haunting Farsi vocals perfectly counterweigh the very modern, very cool, hip-hop segments of the musical score. —PK

(USA, 2018, 10 min.)

Playing with Around the World Shorts

(Belgium, 2017, 13 min.)

(USA, 2017, 7 min.)