Autumn is right around the corner. With the cooling temps comes the beginning of film festival season, a time for generating stoke for the approaching winter. One organization prepping for a cinematic onslaught is the Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA), a nonprofit whose mission is to promote and preserve winter wildlands and a quality human-powered snowsports experience on public lands.
Every fall, the WWA hosts The Backcountry Film Festival that premiers in Boise, Idaho sometime during the first two weeks in November. For the WWA, the film festival is a compliment to outreach and education programming that happens throughout the year.
We talked with Mark Menlove, Executive Director of the WWA, to find out more about the history of the festival and what is in store for the upcoming season.
Backcountry Magazine: What is the history The Backcountry Film Festival?
MM: The Winter Wildlands Alliance was formed in 2000 by several small grassroots groups who were all doing the same thing locally, and really decided that they needed a national voice. So, we decided to come together and create an alliance. We work to inspire and educate the backcountry community to take care of the places where we backcountry ski, winter mountaineer and snowshoe. We have three legs: the advocacy component where we are working with Forest Service and Park Service management plans to try and protect these places. We also run the SnowSchool, which is our national education program where we get about 30,000 kids out each winter on snowshoes for a snow ecology lesson and the snowshoe experience. The third component is the Backcountry Film Festival that blends our outreach and friend building components.
The film festival was founded 12 years ago. It started as one film in a tiny little theater in Boise, and went over so well that the next year we decided to expand into multiple films. Then it just grew organically from there. A couple of years in we said, “This is great, let’s package this and provide a turnkey event that our grassroots programs can use as a local fundraiser.” So all of the funds go back to those programs, whether it is outdoor education, snowsafety, or advocacy groups. We are shooting for 100 showings around the world this year. Last year we had 92 showings. We just finished a couple in the Southern Hemisphere.
BCM: What is the goal of the Backcountry Film Festival?
MM: The point of the Backcountry Film Festival is to gather the local backcountry tribe in celebration of human-powered winter backcountry experience. And that really is where we have kept it: to be a celebration, not a heavy-handed advocacy tool in any way. In most places it serves that purpose beautifully. In the fall and early winter, it is a way to gather the backcountry community and get them together in celebration of this thing we all love. That then provides us a nucleus, so that when we do have advocacy needs or funding needs for different groups, we are able to gather those people together and get them in contact [with each other].
BCM: Describe how the submissions have evolved over the years?
MM: It has been really interesting and rewarding to watch how The Backcountry Film Festival has gotten on the map in the filmmaking world. It has gone from what it used to be: going out and getting filmmakers we knew of that might have projects coming down the pike to let us show their films, to what is now a real undertaking. We jury the films and select the best out of dozens of submissions. I think last year we had 30-something submissions and we ended up with nine films.
BCM: What sets the Backcountry Film Festival apart from other film festivals?
MM: We have worked hard to keep a grassroots feel to the film festival and to have a range of films from first-time filmmakers to those companies who are doing really amazing work, whether it is Sherpas Cinema, Sweetgrass or TGR. But I think that it is a successful formula for us to make sure we are keeping it grassroots. And a lot of times those are the favorites, those first time videographers with a GoPro and a small camera going out and saying. “I can make that.” We are also able to give those kinds of filmmakers helpful feedback in terms of, “yes we like the film, but here are suggestions we have for how to improve it.” It helps them then make something we would consider for the film festival. It is serving the backcountry community in that way too.
BCM: How has the subject matter evolved?
MM: It is interesting how there seems to be a theme to each year. We are watching the maturation of the backcountry ski film community from ski porn—the pretty picture approach—to films that now carry important messages from climate change to stewardship. These filmmakers are finding a balance between the beautiful cinematography and the narrative that matters.
BCM: What does the film festival look like on an international scale?
MM: So, nationally, it is primarily in mountains towns. Most of the showings have a raffle and gear sales that benefit the local host organization. We premier the festival in our hometown of Boise in the first or second week of November. Then it goes on the road to all of these different locations. Most of the North American sites are hosted by groups we know and work with. We do stipulate that any showing has to benefit a nonprofit. That has been very successful as well. For international showings, it has really grown by word of mouth. Someone in Australia has heard about the film festival and says, “We want to do that.” One of our ambassadors may travel south and do a showing where they are traveling, like in Antarctica. We had an ambassador that was stationed at the base in McMurdo, and showed it there. We have another ambassador (Donny Roth—see his latest Austral Aspirations account here) who travels to Chile every year and has done the festival in a couple of towns in Chile.
BCM: What are you looking forward to for this year’s event?
MM: I have been talking with Keili Bell, our Outreach and Events Coordinator who runs the film festival, and she has said that our submissions for this year—the level and sophistication of them is better than ever. I know we have a couple of small groups who are producing films locally. There is one group in Quincy, Calif. who are talking about the history of skiing in their forest, the Plumas National Forest, which is in the midst of winter travel planning, creating a management plan for winter use. So it is really fun to see that kind of thing coming together.
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Submissions for the film festival close on September 1, 2016 and can be sent tokbell
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