jim whittaker
Saturday, 9:30 p.m. Sheridan Opera House
Jim Whittaker says luck is “something you make happen by extending yourself into situations of risk, but also by preparing yourself to succeed under those risky conditions.” By that measure, Whittaker has been extremely lucky. A force in mountaineering for decades now, he was the first American to summit Mt. Everest in 1963, a feat that captured the rapt attention of President Kennedy. (In 1965, Whittaker guided Robert Kennedy up a first ascent of Mt. Kennedy in Canada, newly named for his late brother.) Whittaker climbed Everest again in 1990 as the leader of the Everest Peace Climb, which placed Chinese, Russian and American climbers together on the world’s highest peak.
Whittaker was the first full-time employee of REI and, for many years, its CEO. He is now a spokesman for our presenting sponsor Eddie Bauer, which outfitted him for Everest in 1963. His son, Peter Whittaker, is attempting an Everest summit of his own as this program goes to print.
In addition to a Saturday morning slide show about his lifetime of mountaineering adventures, Whittaker will answer questions after the screening of Americans on Everest and participate in a breakfast talk on Monday at Cappella.
Bill mckibben
Saturday, 12:30 p.m. Palm
Three hundred and fifty: leading environmental writer and thinker Bill McKibben obsesses about that number, because it’s the maximum CO2 parts per million that the earth can handle without going haywire. As he wrote in the Washington Post, “We're already at 383 parts per million, and it's knocking the planet off kilter in substantial ways. Does that mean we're doomed? Not quite. Not any more than your doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high means the game is over.”
With his book The End of Nature, McKibben was the first writer to explain climate change to a broad audience. With his organization www.350.org, he’s trying to do something about it. Changing to energy sources that don’t emit carbon would be a step in the right direction. Toward that end, an exciting discussion will take place during McKibben’s presentation on Saturday at XX a.m. at the Palm. Telluride was the first town in the U.S. to use alternating current, and now local and state politicians are working to make it the first community to switch to a fully sustainable energy grid. Representatives will discuss these efforts with McKibben at the Palm.
McKibben will have a busy Mountainfilm weekend: a keynote address at Friday’s Symposium on Food at 9 a.m.; a Q&A after Friday’s World Premiere of Ken Burns’ new film, The National Parks; a breakfast talk with Paul Watson on Saturday morning; and a talk about www.350.org later on Saturday (which will be introduced by mountaineer David Breashears).
—DH
Goldman Environmental Prize
20 Years Later
Saturday, 4:00 p.m. Sheridan Opera House
Twenty years ago, philanthropist Richard Goldman was reading about the Nobel Prize winners when he wondered if there was a significant prize for people who worked on environmental issues. Seeing an opportunity, he started the Goldman Environmental Prize, which is awarded to environmental activists around the world and has become the premier environmental honor with a cash value of $150,000. To celebrate its twentieth anniversary, we have brought together some folks to discuss their work and the prize.
Rudolph Amenga-Etego won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2004 for his dangerous work in Ghana, where he fought to suspend a major water privatization project and ensured that water is a human right.
Julia Bonds is a true coal miner’s daughter. She won the Goldman in 2003 for her work in fighting mountaintop removal coal mining, a practice that has been catastrophic for Appalachia’s waterways.
Craig Williams is a Vietnam veteran whose path to the 2006 Goldman went through the Pentagon, which he successfully convinced to abandon a plan to incinerate stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Lani Alo is a senior program officer at the Goldman Environmental Prize. She has been involved with many aspects of the award, from researching and vetting recipients to educational outreach with students and community groups.
Hilaree O’Neill
Saturday, 6:15 p.m., Sheridan Opera House
Telluride local Hilaree O’Neill has been featured in several Warren Miller films, and in 2004, she was named one of Skiing magazine’s “12 Stars Who Are Changing the Sport.” Her slide show about descents of peaks from the Isle of South Georgia to Mongolia will also incorporate Mountainfilm 2009’s theme of food. O’Neill is expecting a baby in mid-May, but that won’t stop her from taking the stage at Mountainfilm—or from notching another first ski descent before long.
—DH
Timmy O’Neill & Jeb Berrier Present a Special Live Show
Saturday, 6:15 p.m., Sheridan Opera House/p>
Your guess is as good as ours as to what will actually go down at TBA (yes, we’re told that is the name of the show). Our sense is that it will be a theatrical improv/poetry slam/drag show/Shakespearean homage/burlesque/magic show. What is certain is that our favorite irreverent and politically incorrect Mountainfilm presenter and pro climber Timmy O’Neill will take the stage at the Sheridan Opera House with Telluride’s very own thespian Jeb Berrier.
This is what O’Neill told us: “Come celebrate the spirit of mountain film festivals in this comical homage to submitting, selecting and projecting. We will have only a couple of props: desk and chair, globe, hookah, beer bong, [some unprintable sexual props] and the usual.”
So we’re gonna go out on a limb here and say that this program is not suitable for children. And if the show sucks, at least there will be beer for sale at the bar.
—EL
tim dechristopher
Sunday, 10:00 a.m., Sheridan Opera House
During the last days of the Bush Administration, Tim DeChristopher put his liberty on the line at a BLM auction, where hundreds of thousands of acres in Utah were being sold. DeChristopher walked past the protesters outside and talked his way into the event (an attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called it a “…fire sale, the administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry”). He entered, intending to merely cause a disruption. Instead, he started bidding for a tract and won the rights to $1.7 million of pristine public land near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. He had no intention of paying for it.
This act of civil disobedience (Ed Abbey might have called it “monkeywrenching”) resulted in the auction being declared null and void, and the Obama Administration has since removed the land from the market to preserve it. DeChristopher is being prosecuted for his actions and could face jail time, but as he said, “America is still very much the kind of place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone.”
The DeChristopher story is being filmed by Beth and George Gage (previously at Mountainfilm with numerous films, including Our Land, Our Life and Fire on the Mountain). The Gages will show a short preview, and afterward DeChristopher will join festival director David Holbrooke to discuss his actions.
James Balog
Sunday, 10:00 a.m., Sheridan Opera House
“Seeing is believing” is the operating principle behind the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS). Founded by photographer and long-time Mountainfilm guest James Balog, EIS sets up time-lapse cameras at glaciers around the world and watches—tragically—as they recede.
I know Jim is the right guy to take on a project of this magnitude because I worked closely with him on a film titled A Redwood Grows in Brooklyn about his photography series on trees.
Jim’s work with glaciers is quickly becoming part of the science (after all, seeing is believing) that illustrates that the planet is heating up more rapidly than scientists previously predicted. The upside of the newfound urgency is that EIS is receiving deserved media attention. This project is the subject of a new book, a NOVA special and a story in National Geographic, which is one of the major funding sources for the research.
Jim will present a slide show of his work with EIS on Sunday and participate in a breakfast talk about ambitious photography projects. You can see his photos up close at the Ah Haa School.
—DH
Steve Winter
In Search of the Snow Leopard
Sunday, 12:30 p.m., Sheridan Opera House
The current population of snow leopards is estimated at only 4,000 to 7,000 (and some scientists believe that number could be less than 3,500). Five of the countries in snow leopard range may host only 200 or fewer, so Steve Winter set off to Mongolia to photograph these creatures. This challenging work involved camera traps and resulted in the 2008 National Geographic Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. Now working for Panthera, a big cat preservation group, Winter will present a slide show about conservation of the snow leopard and its connection to Buddhism.
nicholas kristof
Sunday, 12:45 p.m., High Camp
Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times uses his powerful platform on the paper’s editorial page to tell us not only about the powerlessness and horrors that people around the world endure, he also spells out what we, as readers, can do to help. He doesn’t hang out in the salons of Washington or amongst the movers and shakers at Davos; rather, he reports from the poorest parts of the world. As he wrote in a recent email, “I’m rather anxious to go to Haiti or the Congo than anywhere with sheets.”
His no-sheets style of reporting has brought essential issues of our time—such as modern day slavery and Darfur (a region that he’s visited 10 times)—to the public radar. Having grown up on a sheep and cherry farm in Oregon, he also writes perceptively about food and has suggested that President Obama appoint a secretary of food.
Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, won a Pulitzer Prize for their work in China in 1990. They were the first husband-and-wife team to win the prestigious award, and he won a second Pulitzer in 2006 for his columns about Darfur, which the judges said, “gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”
Kristof will speak after screenings of Reporter, the documentary that features him (p. XX), and will join my father, Richard Holbrooke (who also goes to rough places, although he likes his sheets), at High Camp on Sunday at XX. Kristof and his wife will also be part of a breakfast talk on Sunday, where they will discuss their forthcoming book Half the Sky: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide.
—DH
Voices of a People's history of the united states
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” —Frederick Douglass.
Sunday, 4:15 p.m., High Camp
Howard Zinn’s seminal book, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, looks at American history from the bottom up, with a perspective more focused on the story of fugitive slaves than the founding fathers. Zinn has adapted his work for the stage by having performers read primary source documents—speeches, letters and court transcripts—from historical figures such as Tecumseh, Sojourner Truth and Allen Ginsberg.
The Mountainfilm readings will feature Josh Bernstein, Paul Bosch, Ken Burns, Alex Chadwick, Shawn Colvin, Sasha Cucciniello, Jennie Franks, Emily Long, Tom Shadyac, Rick Silverman, Ben Skinner, Colin Sullivan and Terry Tice. The show is produced by SquidShow Theatre and directed by Sasha Cuccinello.
This 80-minute program at High Camp on Sunday is FREE and open to the public after pass holders are seated.
Bill Kerig
Sunday, 6:45 p.m., Sheridan Opera House
When I read The Edge of Never, I don’t know what made me more tense: the scenes set in the no-fall chutes of Chamonix, France, or the tales of film production meetings that were harrowing in their own way. This nonfiction book by former ski racer Bill Kerig tells two tales, both of them compelling.
As a skier, I was riveted by the stories of big-mountain skiers Trevor Peterson and his son, Kye. Trevor was killed in an avalanche in Chamonix in 1996, and nearly a decade after his death, 15-year-old Kye is brought to France to ski the scene of the accident, the 55-degree Exit Couloir, for a documentary directed by Kerig.
As a filmmaker, I found the behind-the-scene narrative about the making of the film agonizing in its own way, when one thing after another goes wrong for Kerig and his production. The film Kerig set out to make became the documentary Steep, though it didn’t include the Peterson story nor have Kerig as director. His efforts did result in this worthwhile book, which is populated with memorable characters, such as Glen Plake, Greg Stump, Mike Hatttrup and legendary French guide Anselme Baud.
Speaking of characters, Telluride local and Skiing magazine columnist Rob Story will talk with Kerig about The Edge of Never.
—D.H
*All Films, Schedules, Events, and Presenter Participation are subject to change.
