5Point Adventure Film Festival: Six to Watch

If you could bottle the energy inside the Carbondale Rec Center during the 5Point Adventure Film Festival, the world would be a better place.

The annual film festival, now in its 11th year, brings together the best of adventure movies with special guests and surprise moments for inspirational presentations. It’s formed a global community, and something like a movement, since it was founded in 2007 by Julie Kennedy.

It is about more than extreme sports eye candy, and these days its about more than film. Along with five programs of short movies and one feature film screening, 5Point 2018 includes concerts by The Davenports and Pearl and Wood, daily live art demonstrations by Sarah Uhl, daily yoga gatherings, a taping of the “Enormocast” podcast and the annual Van Life Rally along with talks and panels on activism, the outdoors and film industries, trauma and wilderness therapy.

Themed “Our Stories, Our Lands” and running over Earth Day weekend, this year’s festival offers a tribute to and defense of America’s threatened public lands (each film shot on any public land will be followed by a title card saying where it was shot).

As for the movies, here are six to watch for:

‘Tailwhip’

Film Program Two

Friday

This 13-minute film profiles BMX rider Erik Aguilar, 14, who is on track to reaching professional status. But in the meantime he is using biking to keep himself out of trouble and off the streets.

‘Hayden Kennedy: A Tribute’

Film Program Two

Friday

The death of Carbondale native and renowned climber Hayden Kennedy last fall, at age 27, shook the global mountaineering community, the 5Point community and the Roaring Fork Valley to their cores. The son of 5Point’s founder will live on in the Hayden Kennedy Fund, to protect public lands, and in this new film by director Anson Fogel.

“This will be a special night for our community and for the healing process,” said 5Point program director Meredith McKee.

‘Coconut Connection’

Film Program Two

Friday

5Point is world-premiering the latest film by Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll, who takes viewers to the edge of the world on Baffin Island, where a crew of skiers are voluntarily stranded for almost two months.

‘The Bikes of Wrath’

Feature Film

Saturday

Following the path of the Joad family in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” five buddies from Australia set out to ride their bikes from Oklahoma to Bakersfield, California, with just $420 and their musical instruments on a 30-day trek in search of the American Dream.

‘My Big White Thighs’

Film Program Three

Saturday

British filmmaker and swimmer Hanna Maia attempts to swim in open water at least once a month for a year in this story of womanhood, miscarriage, healing and freezing your butt off.

‘Ten Years Out’

Film Program Four

Sunday

The directorial debut of 5Point program director and former Aspen Skiing Co. hand Meredith McKee profiles Carbondale’s Summers Moore, who has used art and the outdoors to recover from her husband’s death.