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Mountainfilm Festival tour returns to Minturn

Special to the Daily/Peck Euwer"Losing the Elephants" will show at Minturn Middle School on Friday evening. The film examines an animal lodged deep in our psyches and also one in dire straits. It is estimated that by the early 2050s, there will no longer be a viable population of Asian elephants left.
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MINTURN ” For 30 years, Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride has been committed to bringing ever-increasing levels of artistic excellence to its mission of educating and inspiring audiences about critical issues. The festival began as a venue to showcase climbing movies and has grown to be a major promoter of adventure, awareness and activism.

The Mountainfilm Festival tour will be at Minturn Middle School at 6 p.m. on Friday. Tickets are $10 per person or $40 for a family of four or more and can be purchased at the door. Refreshments will be provided. All proceeds benefit the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound program in place at Minturn Middle School.

“These films really embrace the vision of the Expeditionary Learning program,” said Toni Boush, principal at Minturn Middle School. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for community members to support our school and watch amazing films all at once.”



Films such as “Sponsor Me, Jake,” by Vince Franke, “Shikashika,” by Stephen Hyde, and “I Met the Walrus,” by Josh Raskin, all follow the 2008 Mountainfilm symposium theme of water and the natural world. The Mountainfilm Festival tour has stopped at Minturn Middle School for the past three years in a row and is a popular evening for all ages.

The ELOB program, in place at MMS, is a model for school reform that emphasizes high achievement through active learning, character growth and teamwork. ELOB schools focus on core curriculum skills while basing the class on in-depth investigations. Learning includes authentic products, fieldwork, service learning and inviting experts into the classroom.

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The Mountainfilm Festival runs in-line with ELOB principles designed to develop curiosity, skills, knowledge and courage needed to imagine a better world and work towards realizing it. One of the principles is the natural world, which focuses on students learning about a respectful relationship with the world we live in, highlighted in all of the films shown at the Festival. They cover important ideas of recurring cycles, as well as cause and effect relationships.

Mountainfilm is dedicated to educating and inspiring audiences about issues that matter, cultures worth exploring, environments worth preserving and conversations worth sustaining.

For more information on this event, contact MMS at 970-328-2920 or visit http://mountainfilm.org.

“Play Gravity” Segment ” 10 minutes

We don’t fight gravity ” we play with it … What happens when two sports get one!

“Losing the Elephants” ” 23 minutes

Welcome to Lek Chailert’s Elephant Nature Park, where rescued animals come carrying physical injury and psychological pain. At the refuge, they are allowed to again be elephants ” to socialize, raise families and develop friendships. These Asian Elephants (of which 35,000 are left on earth, half in captivity) often live for seven decades; they recognize themselves in a mirror; relationships are important to them; and, of course, they don’t forget. As elephant caretaker Olivia Daniel says, “They are like people, but nicer.” But what happens to one of the planet’s largest and most intelligent mammals as Asia’s population explodes and the animal’s habitat is destroyed?

“Sponsor Me, Jake” ” 5 minutes

Justin Woods takes advantage of the first snow of the year to get some turns in. One mans ‘epic powder’ is another mans 0.3 of an inch.

“Shikashika” ” 11 minutes

Shikashika is a documentary short that offers a rare glimpse into life in the Andes mountains of Peru. The filmmakers focus on the unseen practices of extracting glacial ice for shikashika, which is sold at the steps of a cathedral beneath the mountain, Huscaran.

“I Met the Walrus” ” 5 minutes

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview. This was in the midst of Lennon’s “bed-in” phase, during which John and Yoko were staying in hotel beds in an effort to promote peace. Thirty eight years later, Jerry has produced a film about it.

“Red Gold” ” 54 minutes

At the headwaters of the Kvichak and Nushagak Rivers in Bristol Bay, Alaska ” the two largest remaining sockeye salmon runs on the planet ” mining companies Northern Dynasty and Anglo American have proposed to extract what may prove to be the richest deposit of gold and copper in the world, perhaps worth as much as $600 billion. Telluride filmmakers Ben Knight and Travis Rummel (previously at Mountainfilm with “The Hatch” and “Running Down the Man”) spent more than two months in Bristol Bay, documenting the tension between native fishermen who oppose the dam and mine officials who say they will build a “clean” mine that will leave the salmon’s habitat untouched. Mountainfilm is thrilled to host the world premiere of this exquisite film that goes beyond the conflict, offering a portrait of a unique way of life that wouldn’t exist if the salmon don’t return with Bristol Bay’s tide.

What: Mountainfilm Festival Tour

Where: Minturn Middle School, Minturn

When: Friday, 6 p.m.

Cost: $10 per person or $40 for a family of four or more. All proceeds benefit the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound (ELOB) program at MMS.

More information: Refreshments will be provided. contact MMS at 970-328-2920.


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