MOUNTAINFILM ON TOUR ATL Set for This Weekend

Mountainfilm on Tour, the touring arm of Telluride Mountainfilm, makes its third annual stop at the Plaza Atlanta Theatre in August. Year-round and worldwide, Telluride Mountain film takes a selection of its festival films ON THE ROAD and the Atlanta stop, Mountainfilm on Tour ATL, is this weekend, August 28 and 29 at The Plaza Atlanta Theatre.

At this year's festival, Mountainfilm On Tour ATL officials will announce the launch of a scholarship program that will benefit a local, emerging filmmaker. Screenings are Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30pm. On Saturday afternoon, there is a FREE family-friendly Kidz Kino event with the Alliance Theatre Educational Outreach Team at 1pm.

Festival passes ($35 for all weekend events) are on sale, and single tickets ($18) go on sale August 3. Passes include one complimentary raffle ticket, more will be available online and at the event. The Plaza Atlanta Theatre is located at 1049 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta GA, 30306. Visit mountainfilmatl.org for more information.

Each evening's screenings consist of several films totaling approximately 90 minutes per screening. After Friday night's screening, there will be an after-party for guests, attendees and press, on the Plaza premises. Henry C. Lystad, the national director of Mountainfilm on Tour from Telluride, will be in attendance. A list of films and filmmakers in attendance is at the end of this announcement.

Festival passes are $35, single tickets are $18. Passes are on sale now at www.mountainfilmatl.org; single tickets go on sale on the same website on August 3. If available, tickets will also be available at the door.

Mountainfilm on Tour ATL is a non-profit organization and a portion of the proceeds of this event will benefit the filmmaker scholarship fund. Mountainfilm on Tour ATL is a collection of films dedicated to educating, inspiring, and motivating audiences about issues that matter, cultures worth exploring, environments worth preserving, and conversations worth sustaining. In keeping with its source material, the Festival is a green event, and promotes sustainability, recycling, and reusability.

Celebrating indomitable spirit since 1979, the Telluride Mountainfilm Festival is a four-day, six-senses experience of art, adventure, culture and the environment. It attracts filmmakers, photographers, conservationists, mountaineers and explorers from around the world. Our audiences also come from around the world to gather in theaters that range from historical to state-of-the-art in the box canyon of Telluride, Colorado and the gondola-linked town of Mountain Village. Our motto is "Celebrating Indomitable Spirit." Atlanta joined the Telluride Mountainfilm family in September of 2013 with the launch of Mountainfilm on Tour ATL at The Plaza Theatre.

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SCREENINGS / SELECTIONS:

August 28 & 29, 2015

Screenings begin at 7:30pm each night

Each night totals approximately 85-90 minutes of film

Friday August 28 selections

Leave It As It Is

More than 100 years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt, who like so many before and after him had fallen in love with the Grand Canyon, implored Americans to preserve the wondrous site in a speech. "Leave it as it is," he said. " You cannot improve upon it." Today, his words set off alarm bells as the Grand Canyon and Colorado River are surrounded on all sides by threats: uranium pollution, water diversion and proposal for a highly impactful gondola project. This short film by Peter McBride lays bare these threats and reminds us that the Grand Canyon belongs not to developers or industrialists - but to the people.

The Re-Invention of Normal

Toothbrush maracas, an umbrella with plant pots, a teacup cooling fan and the reverse bungee. "Go straight off the wall," said his father, and Dominic Wilcox listened. This short film follows the London artist/inventor/designer on his quest to come up with something creative every day. The result is a font of productivity as he transforms the mundane and ordinary into surprises, wonders and, sometimes, just plain absurdities.

We Are Fire

Orlando von Einsiedel's documentary VIRUNGA mesmerized audiences at Mountainfilm 2014 and was later nominated for an Oscar. His new short features an impressive collection of Indian women, called the Gulabi Gang, who live in Uttar Pradesh in northern India, one of the poorest districts in the country and a place where domestic and sexual violence is common. The Gulabi Gang's goal is to help victimized women gain economic security, emotional confidence and physical safety. With their bright pink saris and fierce-looking bamboo sticks, members of the Gulabi Gang are emblematic of courage, resilience and the power of women united by a cause.

The World is as Big or as Small as You Make It

In North Philadelphia, local kids gather at a rec center to participate in a modern-day pen pal program. Through digital technology, these teens connect, bond, share and forge friendships with peers around the world - Nigeria, France, Kazakhstan - proving that the horizons can always be expanded and that the world is as big or small as you make it.

The Important Places

When Forest Woodward was born, his father wrote a poem for him about the secret places of sublime beauty that he would find in life. "May you always remember the path that leads back, back to the important places," it concluded. Nearly three decades later, Forest came across the poem in a box of family books and was propelled by THE WORDS to challenge his father to recreate a 1970 trip down the Grand Canyon. Together they set off on a 28-day journey down the Colorado River, where, surrounded by towering canyon walls and powerful whitewater, Forest watches his father "not just alive, but living again." This poignant short about the father-son bond teaches us that although we may sometimes go astray - stuck in eddies and in life - the path back to the important places is never too far away.

The Fisherman's Son

Anyone who's seen Patagonia photographer Jeff Johnson's film 180 Degrees South: Conquerors of the Useless remembers Ramón Navarro, the Chilean surfer who gives the traveler and his crew a humble introduction to his beloved, overfished waters. The Fisherman's Son is a film that finally explores Navarro's life in depth, following the trajectory of a boy who came from a fishing family, one of many that have long earned their livelihood from the bounty of the sea. Only this fisherman's son found his passion riding the breaks just beyond his front door. Along with making his mark as one of the best big-wave riders in the world, Navarro is an impassioned environmental activist. Development is rapidly altering the waters and coast that the Navarro family has depended on for more than a century, and he's determined to ensure that this precious resource is available for generations to follow.

Bounce - This is Not a Freestyle Movie

Freedom, exploration and the Universal bond forged by the game of football (that's soccer to you Americans). Bounce - This is Not a Freestyle Movie is a playful short film that takes viewers on a trip around the world - to beaches, ski slopes, museums, deserts, bustling cities, rug markets, music festivals and deserted alleys - with one man and his soccer ball.

Knee Deep *Filmmakers Ali Geiser and Aly Nicklas in attendance

In 2013, the city of Boulder, Colorado, was devastated by floods following a 1,000-year downpour. Small communities nestled in the foothills above the city were the most damaged - with homes destroyed, roads washed out and lives forever altered. With the infrastructure that allows access to those communities swept away, evacuations were orchestrated using helicopters. Long-term disaster recovery and assistance, at least the type offered by big aid organizations, had to wait until the roads were repaired - or so everybody thought. Enter an impromptu brigade of volunteers armed with shovels, buckets and a strong desire to help in whatever way they could. Being outdoorsy meant they were undaunted by the bushwhacking it sometimes took to get to those most in need. Eventually dubbed the Mudslingers, the group made an indelible impact in the lives of those whose had been uprooted unexpectedly. This Kickstarter-funded documentary highlights the selfless efforts of the Mudslingers and the power of lending a hand in the face of monumental disaster.

Saturday August 29 selections

Strange Rumblings Iceland Segment

Amazing cinematography, stunning landscapes, BRAVE surfing and beautiful direction by Joe G. Surfers Nate Tyler, Dion Agius and Brendon Gibbens trace graceful lines amid icebergs in the frozen waters of Iceland.

Rinpoche Speaks

Ngawang Tenzin Norbu, who was born in Nepal in 1935, is believed to be the first reincarnation of Lama Gulu, the Tengboche Rinpoche. Over the course of his lifetime, he has witnessed a seismic change in his homeland, which has GONE from a remote and unvisited landscape to the bustling hub of a multi-million-dollar Everest expedition industry. In this short film, the Rinpoche speaks about the destruction of beyuls, sacred places high in the mountains, caused by the presence of too many people. The Himalaya, he says, are where gods dwell. "You think and say that climbing mountains is good...that you will gain something from it," he says. "But climbing mountains is also a form of greed... If you stopped some of the climbing on Everest, it will mean more to those who do summit."

California Paradise Burning

The collapse of California's Central Valley, as the region's worst drought in recorded history enters its fourth year, is shot in artful black and white in this short film. California: Paradise Burning can't help but evoke the Depression-era work of Walker Evans, especially given this film's FOCUS on the individual farmers and farmworkers who are most immediately affected by the disaster and soon to be out of work and out of business. Photographers Matt Black and Ed Kashi alternate still images with interview footage, producing a shattering portrait of an agricultural paradise, albeit an irrigated one, rapidly turning into a desert. The causes, the solutions, and the broader implications are all left to the viewer's imagination.

Sundog

Man's best friend has never been truer than in this endearing, intimate portrait of skier Santiago Guzman and his loyal canine companion Conga. Living deep in the mountains of Patagonia, the pair spends idyllic days scouting big lines on the steep Argentine mountains together from their base in a BACKCOUNTRY hut known as Refugio Frey. The snapshots of their life together are brief and beautiful: Conga's coat ruffling in the wind as she chases a ball of snow, a spindrift cresting over a ridge line as the duo get ready to descend, Conga bounding after Guzman in an effort that is both graceful and goofy. The heart can't help but swell in this short portrait of fidelity, love and snow.

Body Team 12

Garmai Sumo is the only woman, and the effective leader, of Body Team 12, a group of medical professionals unafraid to handle the bodies of the victims of Ebola in Liberia. She and her team are doing work that must be done to save her country, she explains, and it's important FOR A WOMAN - a sister and mother - to be part of the crew, to help the men manage their fear. This urgent dispatch from the front lines of the epidemic, at its most terrifying in the autumn of 2014, depicts what appeared to be the start of an apocalypse, but the film could as easily be a bulletin from a dystopian future.

No Ordinary Passenger

As a winner of the World Sidecar Championship in 1953, Stan Dibben was a prototype of today's extreme sport athlete: gutsy, talented and willing to put his body on the line for speed. In this short film, the 86-year-old Brit recounts the thrills and perils of his former profession, a no-margin-for-error postwar endeavor that has mostly faded into the history books.

Above the Alley, Beneath the Sky

Sometimes sport mirrors life, and that's the case for a determined group of youth growing up in Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro. Disadvantaged in circumstances but not in spirit, some of the boys from the favela begin rock climbing with Americans Asa Firestone and Andrew Lenz. This film follows the spark and the struggle of climbing - up the granite walls that soar above the city and against the conditions of the favelas that have been constructed so rapidly that proper sanitation and infrastructure lag behind. Two boys in particular, Jonas and Patrick, expand their conception of the possible through their upward ambitions.

Knee Deep *Filmmakers Ali Geiser and Aly Nicklas in attendance

In 2013, the city of Boulder, Colorado, was devastated by floods following a 1,000-year downpour. Small communities nestled in the foothills above the city were the most damaged - with homes destroyed, roads washed out and lives forever altered. With the infrastructure that allows access to those communities swept away, evacuations were orchestrated using helicopters. Long-term disaster recovery and assistance, at least the type offered by big aid organizations, had to wait until the roads were repaired - or so everybody thought. Enter an impromptu brigade of volunteers armed with shovels, buckets and a strong desire to help in whatever way they could. Being outdoorsy meant they were undaunted by the bushwhacking it sometimes took to get to those most in need. Eventually dubbed the Mudslingers, the group made an indelible impact in the lives of those whose had been uprooted unexpectedly. This Kickstarter-funded documentary highlights the selfless efforts of the Mudslingers and the power of lending a hand in the face of monumental disaster.

Leave It As It Is

More than 100 years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt, who like so many before and after him had fallen in love with the Grand Canyon, implored Americans to preserve the wondrous site in a speech. "Leave it as it is," he said. " You cannot improve upon it." Today, his words set off alarm bells as the Grand Canyon and Colorado River are surrounded on all sides by threats: uranium pollution, water diversion and proposal for a highly impactful gondola project. This short film by Peter McBride lays bare these threats and reminds us that the Grand Canyon belongs not to developers or industrialists - but to the people.