Picture this: all the set pieces you see in action movies without that annoying plot around them. Ottawa Adventure Film Festival demonstrates that in 2018 you don’t need to write a script to make a movie. All you need is a cheque from an outdoors company.
If you like Go Pros, glorified commercials and touching heartfelt stories about the human experience (brought to you by L.L. Bean, literally) then you’ll love the movies played during the event, which are mostly available online.
The last night’s lineup started out with introductory speeches, violin show, and opening remarks from the organizing commitment thanking their corporate sponsors.
Wednesday night’s programming was pretty good overall, the quality of the work ranging vastly over 12 films in just over two hours. Although some were genuinely interesting, well-crafted pieces of cinema, others felt like they were just filling time.
The films themselves ranged from the light-hearted, goofy, and possibly acid-trip-inspired adventure of Day Dream, (Dir.Skip Armstrong, —a Ferris Bueller-type tale of a man dreaming of days spent paddling in the forest naked with a panda. Both he and the panda coincidentally shared a love of a tent company that sponsored the movie.
Though this movie was very palatable to a general audience, it doesn’t offer much in terms of a challenge. The film festival was at its best when it blended the outdoor style with an interesting story.
A particular highlight of these upper tier works was Wadi Rum (Dir. Kori Price), a gripping tale of rock climbing and tourism politics in the desert of Jordan. Its main subjects shared a love of creating rock climbing routes that crossed racial and religious borders.
The film came mid-program and chto switch up the visual palette, stepping back from the claustrophobic Go Pro camera work of the films that preceded it.
There were less physical restraints in the filming of this movie because the camera crew could repel down the rock face. This allowed the crew to use a full size Ricoh camera, and my eyes, long sick of Go Pro Lens flares, thanked them.
Wadi Rum had the essence of what makes adventure films good:enough talking that the viewer has some basic questions answered: why are these people endangering their lives? Why does this person like doing this activity that looks really hard and not that fun? Where is this adventure taking place? Who is this person being insane? Why do I care?
That, mixed with a good story, appealing cinematography and quality editing made for a meditative piece about man in the outdoors. That’s the sort of content people pay the $25 admission for – but sadly, this memo was not received by all the filmmakers.
Many of the movies only had one or two of these attractive elements and largely fall short. Often, it appeared that filmmakers were more worried with scale and sponsorship over substance, with the movies feeling like infomercials for whoever put up the cash for them. The glarey-flarey mind-boggling first person feeling Go Pro camera work is cute, but gets old quickly.
Overall, the Ottawa Adventure Film Festival wasn’t a bad experience. It just had the feeling of scrolling through Instagram stories for outdoor apparel. For 25 minutes straight. And $25.
