Sopris Sun THE
VOLUME 2, NUMBER 10 • APRIL 29, 2010
5Point rocks on Local film fest focuses on adventure with a conscience
Three years in, the folks behind the screens at Carbondale’s 5Point Film Festival are still seeking to educate through film and to inspire adventure with a conscience. From left: festival founder Julie Kennedy, business manager Brie Bath and program director Beda Calhoun. Photo by Jane Bachrach By Terray Sylvester The Sopris Sun
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rofessional surfer Kahana Kalama has rarely seen anyone quite so passionate about surfing as the ragtag members of the only surf club in Bangladesh. “They are just super passionate about it and that’s what touched me,” said Kalama, who was born in Hawaii but now lives in San Diego, Calif. “I like surfing but I have a full-on support group around me of friends that like surfing. There’s a culture that says surfing is cool. Over there, the family is saying, ‘What are you doing? You’re wasting your time.’” Two years ago, Kalama traveled to Bangladesh with filmmaker Russell Brownley to meet the club and surf with its members. The half-hour documentary that came out of the trip is named “Gum for My Boat,” and it will be shown at this year’s
5Point Film Festival in Carbondale. The film offers a surprising lesson in the potential for extreme sports to serve as a catalyst for social action. “The story just sort of unfolded in front of us,” Kalama said of the film. The club’s membership is 70-odd kids who range in age from 12 years old to their mid twenties. They’re among the poorest in a nation whose citizens, according to the U.S. State Department, earn about $500 per year on average, and they practice a sort of make-do, improv surfing rarely if ever seen in the U.S. They steal each other’s waves, share their club’s few surfboards without a second thought and generally grin the whole time. For years the kids surfed with little knowledge of the sport, less knowledge of how to swim, and little in the way of basic equipment such as leashes or wax for their boards. They had been describing that last item as
“gum” for their “boats,” hence the name of the film. Kalama’s trip was stimulated in part by a non-profit group named Surfing the Nations, which has helped the Bengali surf club since 2001, teaching them to surf and encouraging them to translate their passion for the sport into an income for themselves and aid for others. “I definitely think that it’s engrained in just their thinking of surfing,” Kalama said. “That’s part of the beautiful part of the club – that they associate surfing with service and it’s like, ‘sharing my surfboard is just as much a part of surfing as catching a wave.’” And that’s why the folks at Carbondale’s 5Point Film Festival have included “Gum for My Boat” in this year’s lineup. The film will join 44 others in the four-day adventure film festival, which kicks off this evening, Thursday, and runs through Sunday. Kalama him-
self is slated to visit Carbondale and speak when the film screens Friday night. As festival founder Julie Kennedy put it, “Gum for My Boat” was “absolutely a perfect 5Point film.” “That’s what we look for,” she said. “We look for athletes that are following their passion fully but then also giving back, trying to infect and engage, inspire, educate.” Kennedy says she hopes the 5Point festival will inspire viewers to pour energy into whatever fills their lives with meaning, whether that happens to be outdoor recreation or not. At the same time, Kennedy said the festival aims to screen films that touch on the five “points” that are the festival’s namesake: respect, commitment, humility, purpose, balance. She thinks some of those values can stand to be reinforced in today’s generation of adventure sport enthusiasts.
Home at last to Ironbridge
Q&A with the fire board candidates
Swings and smiles
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