Conrad Kain film night

Mar 27, Invermere –

Third annual Conrad Kain film night.

Conrad Kain Centennial Society.

The Conrad Kain Centennial Society (CKCS) is once again pleased to host the Conrad Kain Film Night at J.A. Laird Elementary School (13 St & 13 Ave) in Invermere. The evening is comprised of films from the best of the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, and CKCS spokesman, filmmaker Pat Morrow, assures us that the films won’t overlap any of the Best of Banff films shown here earlier this winter.

Doors open at 7 p.m., March 27. Films run promptly from 7:30 til 10:30 p.m., including intermission. Tickets $15 at the door. Children grade 7 and under with parent free of charge. Advance tix: J.A. Laird School, Quality Bakery and Dave’s Book Bar.

As an offshoot of the evening’s program, a selection of films will be shown gratis to the students at J.A. Laird during regular school hours.

Morrow is pleased with the film lineup this year. “My wife Baiba and I had the pleasure of sitting on the jury of the VIMFF again this year, and can say with confidence that these are top notch documentaries, with something to suit everyone’s taste.”

“We’ll show the core films first, most of which were winners at the VIMFF. As a bonus, at the end of the program, we’ll leave it to the diehard film buffs who wish to extend their evening by choosing one from three equally enticing films.”

There are two films that stand out in the climbing category – the palm-sweating Welsh Connections, showcases a climber’s acrobatic performance on a 100 m high wind-swept sea cliff in the UK. Contrast this with a three week alpine style siege on a 6600 m granite peak. Samsara meshes imaginative hand drawn graphics and fast paced edit style with “in your face” reportage of what it’s like to hang it all out on the near vertical flanks of a Himalayan giant.

Freedom Riders is a mountain bike story set in Jackson Hole, yet another mountain community with tremendous environmental challenges. It combines enough action scenes to hold even the most ardent bikers’ attention, with a backstory on how the biking and non-biking communities came together to develop a responsible trail-building plan for a limited land use area. INCANtations takes a quirky cultural look at the Quechuan natives of the Peruvian highlands, and Rowing the Atlantic portrays a grim solo crossing of the stormy seas by a British woman with an exceedingly stiff upper lip.

Like the Freedom Riders film, What Would Darwin Think? Man Vs Nature offers some valuable lessons to us here in our own small, crowded valley. It’s about tourists and entrepreneurs in the industrial tourism industry “loving” nature to death in the Galapagos Islands. Film details can be found on the News and Events page of the Kain website, http://www.conradkain.com

Morrow says the event is the perfect opportunity for budding filmmakers to stock up on inspiration for their own projects. “We’ll be sure to encourage members of the audience, particularly the youth, to begin planning their own ‘mountain-themed’ films for next year’s event since none were submitted this year.”

At intermission, a representative of the Rocky Mountain Section of the Alpine Club of Canada will present door prizes ranging from ACC mountain hut overnight passes, a backpack, avalanche probe and shovel from Ortovox Canada, an adult pass and instruction/gear loan on the Conrad Kain Climbing Wall at J.A. Laird, and copies of the Centennial edition of Kain’s biography, Where the Clouds Can Go.

Dave’s Book Bar will offer a special discount of 30% on Where the Clouds Can Go at the show, and in their store in the days leading up to the show.

Funds generated from the film night will go toward the maintenance of the climbing wall at J.A. Laird, as well as a CKCS-sponsored opportunity for local teens to the pristine granite of Conrad Kain’s mountains.

Last summer, the day after the Kain Centennial Celebration in Wilmer, local ACMG guides Tim McAllister and Kirk Mauthner led six local teenagers (from Golden, Invermere, Kimberley and Banff) on a spectacular climbing tour of the Bugaboos. In 1916, Conrad Kain guided Albert and Bess MacCarthy, also of Wilmer, on the first ascent of Bugaboo Spire – at the time, it was the most difficult climb in all of North America. Morrow will announce details of how teens can apply for the program again this year, at the show.