A lack of oxygen must make watching films in a dark theater better, and up here at 7,522 feet in Estes Park it’s got to be good, competing against the views of Rocky Mountain National Park. My oxygen theory was put to the test with the Documentary Shorts Program at this year’s Film Festival, but turns out the EPFF is just pretty good at programing a diverse lot of cinema. The Estes Park Film Festival has proved motivating so far, now that I want to Mountain Bike a man-made trail under a freeway, meditate to Kevin Gant’s music and shear an Alpaca.
The Doc Shorts program opened with a somewhat lackluster trailer for an upcoming 2012 documentary, “Ghosts of the West.” We’ll just excuse it as the previews before the program, and explore how the short “Bring the Riding to the People” made me care about mountain biking. The film edges close to coming off as a promotional video for the International Mountain Bicycling Association, and in its own organic, charismatic way, it is. Yet, filmmakers Andrew Mudge, Andrew Kemler, Julie Morey and Valerie Vozza assembled a coast-to-coast trek capturing communities from Washington Heights in New York City to Golden, Colorado and to Seattle, Washington, undergoing development of Urban Mountain Biking Parks. The result is a slice-of-life portrait that’s testament to how an often-overlooked passion can grow a grassroots experiment that strengthens community and nourishes innovation.
There was no way to prepare for the leap into the next selected short with a documentary from half of the Mumblecore brothers, Jay Duplass. The Duplass brothers implanted their presence amongst several films at SXSW in 2005, that grew into what is known as the Mumblecore genre. Though, Jay Duplass returned to Austin with an entirely different agenda in his documentary about Austin musician, Kevin Gant in “Kevin.” The documentary explores the exotic lyricism and musical prowess of Gant, set against his transcendental journey from Austin indie sensation, the literal violence of trying to “make it” in Los Angeles, and being reborn in the birthplace of Flamenco guitar, Granada, Spain. Gant’s music is a love it or hate it bag of soulful songwriting and new agey lyrics, but the man himself is an undeniable force of personality.
From the far-out world of Kevin Gant, the program landed back on Earth, digging into soil and stewardship in Melinda Levin’s short documentary, “The New Frontier.” Taking us along for her visits to three ranch families from Colorado to Texas, Levin manages a concerned look into the current challenges of ranching without the preachy tone. The documentary held a heightened relevance with the past summer of drought in Southern Colorado, and seeing these ranchers dig back to the roots of their land, their heritage and wisdom was… well, kind of inspiring.
Coverage originally published on Mile High Cinema.