On Assignment: Jimmy Chin

In On Assigmnent: Jimmy Chin, Renan Ozturk (Mountainfilm 2009, Samsara, which won the Charlie Fowler Award) trains his lens on a man who usually stands behind a lens of his own. Climber, skier and mountaineer Jimmy Chin, a longtime guest of Mountainfilm, has spent his life behind the camera and from that viewpoint has chronicled incredible feats in some of the most breathtaking places in the world. This film follows Chin to Yosemite Valley and films him as he shoots a National Geographic story on the climbing culture in Yosemite. It’s a short portrait of a passionate athlete who has melded his loves: climbing and photography. “I think the most honest photos happen when both the subject and the photographer are just in the moment,” he says in the film, and “the rest of the world has just fallen away.”