TRAILBOUND X MOUNTAINFILM FESTIVAL (Part One)
First we have to get to Mountainfilm Festival!
The crown jewel of Mountainfilm are the prayer flags that fly across Telluride’s main street. Photo by Jennifer Langille
In May we officially premiered our new film Footprints on Katmai at the 46th Annual Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, CO and it was an INCREDIBLE experience.
Our Trailbound Team, made up of myself, Jennifer (Showrunner), Caroline (Impact Producer), and Peyton (super rad running marine biologist featured in the film,) all met up at the Denver Int’l Airport the morning of May 23rd, piled into a donated Storyteller Campervan, and embarked on our first, of what we hope becomes an annual, Rocky Mountain road trip!
Peyton sneaking in a conference call while Jennifer, Caroline and I fetched necessities at Target! Photo by Jennifer Langille
It was the best time! Memories were made! Our film was received in the most amazing way! We made new friends who will for sure become lifelong ones. Oh, and there was A LOT of watercolor painting with ~ 200 people at the Ah Haa School For The Arts!
This is just one blog of a series of blogs, because our trip to Colorado on a whole was impactful, and to kick off this saga, let’s begin with “Why Mountainfilm?”
For starters it is North America’s OLDEST continuously running documentary film festival and for over 4 decades their mission has been to inspire through film ways to create a better world. That’s a statement we, at Trailbound, can easily get behind! Having our film accepted into the festival was exciting and validating.
So, as soon as we received the exciting news, we unanimously knew we ALL had to attend! Which was not going to be a small task. I live in Anchorage, Jennifer in Upstate New York and Caroline in Boston. The trip would be easiest for Boulder, CO based Peyton.
We had invited our friends at Ocean Plastics Recover Project, however they were preparing for one of their largest and most significant marine debris removal projects to-date! Andy, Scott and Rachel — you were missed!
Making the decision was the easy part, but how the heck were we going to afford this massive trip, and still fund our important projects that would continue on regardless of us making the trip to Telluride?!?
As if it were a sign… this Instagram REEL went viral, in a big way. Jennifer and I had a 2-second pow-wow, because the DMs and emails were blowing up by the second, as the shares and viewer count shot up like a rocket to Mars!
“WHERE CAN I GET THAT PRINT FROM THE CHAIR LIFT?!?!”
Oh, and yes, often in ALL CAPS!
Behind the scenes Jennifer was scrambling to find and build the easiest way for us to make this print available. It was a lot of work, but in the end our amazing community grew in an impressive way. “Sketches From The Lift” prints now live all around the globe (and continue to), which is wild to say, and we were able to bring our small mighty team together to celebrate, learn and grow.
That was lucky break #1 and allowed us to quickly secure a place to stay and book flights before everything was booked or the rates increased out of our budget. We now needed to come up with some thrifty means to get our whole team to Telluride. Sure, we could rent a car, which is not inexpensive, or… we could ask for help!
Always ask for help! If you have a big scary thing you wish to make happen, do NOT be afraid to ask for help, support or whatever you need to move toward the dream. Turns out, Jennifer is kinda REALLY into this who thing called “Overlanding” (It’s kinda wild and you can learn ALL about it through her friend’s company called Overland Bound — I’m still learning what it means!) She began reaching out to camper van companies who specialize in this “Overlanding” and one particular company responded right away! They were IN! WHOA! Just like that!
Well, not just like that, though pretty close! It helped that we are storytellers and their company is Storyteller Overland — we were destined to collaborate! Their support of a van to borrow was tremendous and not only did it make it easier for our team to have this experience, it also allowed myself and Jennifer to stick around Colorado after the festival to track down some of my late grandmother Lu’s sketches from when she lived in Colorado!
However, THAT story will be for another day. Actually… there is more than one story to tell! To be continued…
