Filmmaker Renan Ozturk (Towers of Ennedi and On Assignment) shows us a new angle on slack lining as Dean Potter attempts a perilous crossing at Upper Yosemite Falls.

This short film’s full title is Yelp (With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”). Directed by Tiffany Shlain and narrated by Peter Coyote, it is a brief essay (really a rant) about technology and how we need to–as Peter Coyote shouts to the world–“unplug, unplug, unplug and revisit the present tense.”
–DH

The North Fork of the Payette has long been fabled as one of the classics of big water kayaking. WildWater—beautifully filmed by Anson Fogel (who also edited Chasing Water and Cold)—takes us along as kayakers attempt to run this classic during a record high water year. 

Most people come to New York City to see the sights, and understandably they look up. Steve Duncan, a historian and self-described urban explorer, looks down–way down–into the maze of tunnels that run beneath the city. Directed by Andrew Wonder, Undercity, is a short documentary that follows Duncan as he shows us some of the city’s secrets and introduces us to some of the peculiar characters that that lurk below the streets. Not content to explore underground, Duncan sets his sights on some hard-to-reach landmarks above–way above–ground.

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.

"Kadoma" was a nickname for Hendri Coetzee, a legendary South African kayaker who had explored some of Africa’s wildest rivers. In December of 2010, American pro kayakers Chris Korbulic and Ben Stookesbury followed Coetzee into the Democratic Republic of Congo for a first descent of the dangerous Lukuga River. Seven weeks into the expedition, tragedy struck. Coetzee was paddling tip to tail in between the other two men when a fifteen-foot crocodile surfaced silently and swiftly pulled him underwater. He was never seen again.

If you know Roko Belic–a longtime Mountainfilm regular who along with his brother Adrian is one of the filmmakers behind Genghis Blues–he seems like a pretty happy guy (especially after the birth of his daughter Viva Paradise Firth Belic on March 27). You may not need to be happy to make a film called Happy, but it must have helped Belic as this fine documentary is infused with wisdom and warmth and abounds with life lessons.

Surf photographer Mickey Smith artfully crafts and narrates an immensely powerful and brooding glimpse at some of Ireland’s heaviest, and coldest, waves.