I went to the Bear’s Tooth Theatre last night and saw the first 5 films of the 2010 Oceans Film Festival with an old friend from back in my pipeline days. I hadn’t seen Robert in close to 20 years, so was a little nervous about meeting up with him again – but he was great, so after just a few moments we were chatting away like old friends (which, coincidentally, we are).
The films we saw last night were an odd mixture: some really good, a few not so good, and one that I just don’t see how it made the cut at all.
The first one was called White Shark Café about a bunch of scientists studying the Great White Shark. They had some pretty cool footage from underwater of the sharks which really made me wish I were a marine biologist. That just looked like the perfect way to spend your day at work!
The second one was called Surf Bus. This was the one that I just didn’t care for. The basic story line was good enough: an old, worn out surfer chick starts up a program to bring city kids out to the beach for the day to learn to surf. The program grew to the point where they bring up to 500 kids a day to have fun at the beach. But the film itself just wasn't up to par, I thought.
After that we watched one called Lost on a Reef about 6 marine archeologists searching for ship wrecks off the coast of Hawaii. Very cool underwater footage of fish, reefs, ships, and all sorts of things. It had a fair amount of history, too – which is always nice.
They paused for a brief intermission and then started up the remaining two films for the night. The first one was called Bicycle Trip which basically just followed this kid who was biking down from the mountains to the beach for a day of surfing. There was no dialog in the film at all, just scenery shots of him in all the different habitat he went thru to get there. Not my favorite film of the night, but it did have some really interesting shots.
The final film for the evening was really an interesting one called Paddle to Seattle. It documented the adventures of two guys who build their own kayaks (out of wood) and then paddle them from Skagway to Seattle; a three month journey down the inside passage. I once though I’d like to learn how to kayak, but after seeing what they went thru I’m not so sure I could do that! Particularly the part where they get visited by a pod of Humpbacks out in the open ocean = OMG what a fantastic experience!
Robert and I had such a good time chatting with each other we went ahead and had dinner after the films, and even decided that we’d go to the next day’s films together. I’m looking forward to it tonight.
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