Baker film festival
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Bellingham, WA – Pre-winter anticipation officially dawned on Northwest Washington with Thursday’s 7th annual Mount Baker ski and snowboard film festival.
“This is like the start of the year. You get to see everybody,” said Andy Sahlfeld of the Mount Baker Ski Patrol. “This is what starts it. This is like when you’re a kid and you go to Warren Miller. Except this is local and it gets all the local guys out there.”
Area riders, from ages 6 to 60, packed downtown Bellingham’s Mount Baker Theater with an energy and rowdiness typical of these events. The festival included eight films whose clips ranged from 3 to 18 minutes. Most of the films featured Northwest filmmakers and riders–the exception being an abbreviated version of Teton Gravity Research’s latest, Anomaly.
“Seven years ago Warren Miller was the only gig in town,” said Gwyn Howat, Baker marketing director and mc of the event. “We wanted to start something to get independent skiers and filmmakers out there, and it seems to be working well. It’s so good to see that there’s so much support out there for these local guys.” Of the films, Theory-3 Media’s movie Photo Play featured the most progressive and entertaining skiing of the night, mostly of skier James Heim. The film will be internationally distributed by Poor Boyz Productions and Video Action Sports at the end of the month.
The evening concluded at the Wild Buffalo with beer, salmon tacos, a slideshow of photographers and riders at Baker, and the music of Bent Grass.
One of the clips that received the loudest approval of the night was of a still chair, in dumping conditions, that slowly started its rotation around the bullwheel. The Baker season will start when the rain turns to snow, hopefully in mid-November.
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