On May 7, “HAIR: The American Tribal Love – Rock Musical” opens at Harper Joy. Directed by Johnston Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Jimmy Maize, the production will present HAIR under a new light. Visiting Costume Designer Genevieve V. Beller has worked with Maize to create costumes emblematic of young adults to tie the musical with the Whitman community.

“We didn’t want to see what the pop culture idea of hippie has become,” said Beller. “Like when the ’90s flower power tie-dye jeans and stuff were in, it sort of became very homogenized, and we wanted to see who the real people were behind this counterculture movement and hopefully help the kids on campus connect to that because it is very much about them. The same age group, the same sort of problems and joys.”

Beller has worked professionally as a costume designer and costume craftsperson. She has made costumes out of many different materials.

“My specialty, when I am not designing, is I’m a costume craftsperson, which is anything that is not sewing that is still a costume. So making masks, fat-suits, jewelry,” said Beller.

The past two summers, Beller has worked closely with Senior Lecturer of Theatre, Robin Smasne.

“I worked for two summers with Robin, the costume shop manager and costume shop teacher, at a place called Trollwood Performing Arts School in North Dakota,” said Beller.

Beller came to work on the production after being invited by Smasne. Beller was working on a project that Smasne was designing, and afterward, Smasne offered Beller the visiting costume designer position for “HAIR.”

To prepare the costume designs, Beller did a copious amount of research in New York, where she lives, before arriving at Whitman.

“I spent a lot of time in the New York Public Library. They have something called the Berg Counterculture archive which is just a huge collection of magazines and videtapes and books and pamphlets about anything and everything counterculture. So if the hippies were reading it, I was reading it too … and we [Maize and I] came up with an idea of … a DIY magpie aesthetic,” said Beller.

The script also helped to inspire the costume designs. The cultures explored in the musical manifest themselves in the costumes. She and Maize wanted to focus on the idea that the characters created their own clothes within the musical.

“There’s a lot of cultural references in the script that it’s very clear these kids have made their own patchwork identity by taking bits and pieces from cultures that they liked and that they responded to in creating their own tribe,” said Beller.

The appearances of the costumes vary drastically, but the patchwork of cultures remains consistent throughout.

“You’ll see a lot of patchwork, you’ll see a lot of DIY stuff, you’ll see some African Prints and Indian tie-dye with Americana Quilt thrown in that they’ve just patched together to make what their tribe looks like,” said Beller.

One of the most interesting aspects of the costume designs comes in the middle of the musical.

“There’s a sequence towards the middle that’s a paper sequence … Culminating in the trip sequence where the costumes are partially or completely made out of paper, sort of as a comment on what was happening in pop culture at the time but also what’s going on in Claude’s frame of reference, in his imagination,” said Beller.

Though the paper proved a somewhat difficult medium in which to make costumes, it was also very rewarding to Beller to make the paper costumes.

Tickets for “HAIR” are currently on sale, and shows run until May 23.

Correction: This article’s headline has been edited to accurately name the era in which the play is set – the sixties, not the seventies.

On May 2, Whitman College will host The Wild and Scenic Film Festival at Cordiner. Whitman Events Board (WEB) in a partnership with the Blue Mountain Land Trust will be showing eight independent films that are deeply rooted in the environment.

The Wild and Scenic Film Festival is a national film festival that tours across the country. It has a catalogue of 75 films that are mostly independent and are always about environmental activism.

Because Whitman is a smaller venue, it will show 2.5 hours of film, or eight movies in total. These eight movies range from the story of a man traveling the world with his soccer ball to oil fracking in China.

Whitman has partnered with Blue Mountain Land Trust to help support the environment. According to WEB Cinema Director senior Sierra Dickey, this partnership made bringing The Wild and the Scenic Film Festival to Whitman possible.

“Blue Mountain land trust is a local land trust non profit and we’re putting it on with them. Because the school received a grant from Patagonia … part of the stipulations of the grant was to put it on in conjunction with a local non-profit in order to help them raise membership,” said Dickey.

To help protect the environment, Blue Mountain Land Trust purchases easements of land from landowners for conservation. They pay for these easements through grants or the government. Through this method of conservation, land owners still own the land but they no longer have the right to use it.

Blue Mountain Land Trust will benefit from The Wild and Scenic Film Festival by gaining public awareness and a possible profit from ticket sales.

“They’re going to reach audiences that they usually wouldn’t, and it’s a great chance for them to sign up for [their 2015 series] called Learning on the Land,” said Dickey.

This partnership is what The Wild and Scenic Film Festival wants. They have been focusing on growing the grassroots environmental movement for around 15 years.

“If you bring it, you really have to do your part to energize your community around environmental issues,” said Dickey.

Dickey and sophomore Jessica Parker have been planning this for a long time.

“We’ve been planning probably since two or three weeks before Spring Break,” said Dickey.

WEB has done a lot of marketing, and Blue Mountain Land Trust has reached out to a lot of their supporters. Dickey is optimistic that many people will attend the festival.

“We’re hoping to fill at least the bottom part of Cordiner,” said Dickey.

The Wild and Scenic Film Festival runs from 7 to 10:30 pm on Saturday, May 2 in Cordiner Hall.

On April 25, merchants, singers and jugglers will all come to the Memorial Hall lawn for the annual Renaissance Faire at Whitman.

The Czyhold family has been in Walla Walla for many years and has been blacksmithing for generations. Richard Czyhold, the local blacksmith, will be putting on a demonstration in place of his son, Ben Czyhold.

“My family has been farming here in the Walla Walla Valley for about four generations, and so my grandfather and great-grandfather did a measure of blacksmithing just by necessity,” said Ben Czyhold.

Ben Czyhold first figured out he wanted to be a blacksmith when he was a kid. He was often surrounded by blacksmithing equipment and wondered how it worked.

“My family had a number of metalworking tools and blacksmithing tools that they procured over the decades, and when I was a boy I would often ask my dad concerning an anvil or a hammer. I would ask, ‘How does that work?’ … So he would show me. And my father knew what blacksmithing my great grandfather and grandfather knew, and he’d pass it on to me,” said Ben.

When Ben Czyhold graduated from high school, he decided to pursue blacksmithing and metalwork.

“Just after high school I enrolled in the local community college here, and I enrolled in their two-year metal fabrication and welding program,” said Ben.

After completing the program at the local community college, Ben Czyhold initially decided to pursue a career in welding. He later realized that he would rather pursue blacksmithing.

“For a time I worked as a certified welder. But then my interest in the craft started to grow, and ever since about 2007 or so, I’ve been pursuing [blacksmithing] as a full-time career,” said Ben Czyhold.

Now Ben Czyhold works on various projects that he sells at the Farmer’s Market and other smaller venues like the Whitman Renaissance Faire. His projects range in function and appearance, but they mainly fall within the realm of architecture.

“In blacksmithing circles I would be known as an architectural blacksmith. I make things for house and home, buildings, some small sculpture, things of that nature. I pretty much make anything from wall hooks to handrails,” said Ben Czyhold.

In terms of stylistic approaches to his work, the natural world and its designs usually cross into Ben Czyhold’s own designs. For example, some of the works he has made are a wine holder in the shape of curling vines, wall hooks with faces on them and a sculpture of a cross.

“The natural world does enter into my work quite often,” said Ben Czyhold.

While Ben Czyhold focuses mainly on architectural blacksmithing, his father, Richard Czyhold, mainly makes sculpture and other art crafted from found objects.

“He specializes in the found objects and the fanciful creatures and sculpture. My own work tends to be on a smaller scale,” said Ben Czyhold.

The elder Czyhold uses more modern methods of creating his art. It is more conducive for fusing found objects with metal.

“I use welders and the more modern types of joinery,” said Richard Czyhold.

Ben has been involved with the Renaissance Faire for the past five years. He took over the blacksmith post after Torvald Sorenson retired. While it does not bring a huge amount of profit, Ben enjoys the atmosphere and appreciates exposure he receives from the community.

“The Whitman Renaissance Faire has been very good to me. It’s good exposure with the local community, and it gets on very well with the overall spirit and subject matter of the Faire,” said Ben Czyhold.

At the Faire, Ben brings some of his crafted work for event-goers to purchase, and he also puts on a demonstration.

“I bring my retail space, where I sell my little things and dad’s things too, and I have a traveling blacksmith’s shop … I have a small forge, anvil, a vice and I often bring that around to the Farmer’s Market [and Renaissance Faire] and I demonstrate with that setup … Small projects for the benefits of those watching,” said Ben Czyhold.

Though some might consider blacksmithing a dead art in the face of modern technological advancements, Ben Czyhold advocates strongly for the continuation of such an important craft.

“All the great works of humanity have been only possible because of blacksmithing … And there’s a lot of folks out there who think blacksmithing is gone or otherwise dissolved, but I for one and thousands of other blacksmiths around this country and the world would beg to differ,” said Ben Czyhold.

Through April 19, the Department of Theatre will perform “Three Tall Women” in Harper Joy Theatre. Written by Edward Albee, the play tells the story of three women, named A, B and C. A, played by sophomore Lauren Rekhelman, is a 92-year-old woman who tells a lot of stories. B, played by senior Anastasia Greeley, is her 52-year-old caretaker. C, played by sophomore Haley Forrester, is a 26 year old from a lawyer’s office looking into why A is not paying her bills. There is also a boy, played by sophomore Thomas Zbyszewski.

“From my character’s perspective, it’s about learning to age, learning to be O.K. with aging,” said Forrester.

‘Three Tall Women’ opens the week of April 13th. Photo by Anna Dawson.

The three actors are all playing women older than them, and in the cases of Greeley and Rekhelman, their age difference is quite large. To try and appear older, Greeley looks at the specific movements she makes.

“I’ve been preparing for this role by thinking a lot about my physicality in terms of age. How does a 52 year old move that’s different from a 21 year old? And that involves being a lot more deliberate in my actions, not slow, but just not as rapid,” said Greeley.

The play will be under the direction of guest director Paul Budraitis, who has worked in a number of theaters and studied extensively in Lithuania. He used some exercises to try and get the actors into character.

“One of the exercises we did to get in character was imagining the character in front of us in a mirror … imagining them standing there like how they would look, what they would be wearing,” said Forrester.

Forrester’s character, C, is a lot closer in age. In this way, Forrester can more closely relate to her character than Rekhelman and Greeley.

“I’m not her, but at the same time my character is 26, so, as opposed to the older ladies, I can more closely relate to her just age-wise,” said Forrester. “Some of the things she says I can totally understand.”

Even though there is a giant age difference between Greeley and the character B, Greeley still manages to find a connection.

“I take care of kids a lot. I do a lot of babysitting, and not to say that is exactly what B is doing with A, but it is a caretaker role, so I understand what it is to assist another human being,” said Greeley.

Part of this also stems from Greeley’s need to feel connected with all the character’s she plays.

“If I’m playing a role I have to feel connected, it’s complete empathy,” said Greeley.

With such a small cast, the play offers a lot of challenges. Forrester found that one of these challenges was memorizing lines.

“It’s a four-person cast and the lines are shared between three of the four people, and so I’m essentially memorizing a little less than a third of the play,” said Forrester.

Still, the actors feel a connectedness that pushes them toward success. The size of the cast might be daunting but it is also exciting.

“It’s also really scary not having that many people on stage … [but] I think that’s been really cool too, to have this really strong connection between the four of us because we are all we got,” said Forrester.

The actors are not playing characters of their own ages, and they also experience age differences between one another.

“They’re [both] sophomores as well, so that’s different. It’s kind of funny working on a show that does focus so much on age and different generations and moments in your life that I actually have noticed [certain differences between] me and the other people in the cast … [As a senior], my concerns are different. The things I talk about and am thinking about are different than the rest of the cast,” said Greeley.

As the performances start, both Forrester and Greeley are a bit nervous about the play and are experiencing pre-show jitters.

“I’m an actor and I’m always going to be nervous … but of course, I know when we get there we’re going to be there and it’s going to be great,” said Forrester.

“I won’t feel good until after a couple of performances because I think you are constantly changing things, and I think that’s how it should be, that’s why it’s live,” said Greeley.

Performances run through April 19 and tickets are selling out fast.

On April 2, the latest visiting exhibit opened in the Maxey Museum. The exhibit, Particles on the Wall, combines many different mediums to showcase a variety of reactions to the Hanford Nuclear Program and its aftermath.

“[The Particles on the Wall] exhibit is a conglomeration of science, poetry and art, and it combines all of those to tell the story of what it was like to have the Manhattan Project going on right next to us,” said sophomore student curator Emma Philipps.

While Philipps did not work on Particles on the Wall, she and senior Grant Rommel installed an exhibit on the second floor of Penrose Library. Called Community and Culture: The Diverse Roots of Walla Walla, the exhibit contains artifacts and information about three historically significant ethnic groups in Walla Walla: Chinese, French-Canadian and Italian. Rommel initially came up with the idea of exploring these communities.

“I was really interested in the immigrant history of Walla Walla because it’s something that’s not really visible anymore,” said Rommel.

As the pair began to create their exhibit, they began to realize that they were finding information and artifacts related to certain families. In this way, their exhibit slowly moved towards an exploration of families and individuals rather than the different communities in their entireties.

“As it went on, it kind of seemed we were really trying to almost trace families … It became very much about what families were influential in Walla Walla,” said Philipps.

The entire project took around a semester to complete, and they installed it around Winter Break. To complete the project, they needed to research and find information about the communities and obtain artifacts. The latter proved somewhat difficult. Even though the Maxey Museum has a wealth of artifacts in storage, Rommel found it hard to find artifacts from the Italian community.

“[It was difficult] finding artifacts that would be specific to the Italian population in Walla Walla because we don’t really have any in our collection. I ended up finding photos,” said Rommel.

Even with the difficulties of finding Italian artifacts, they never ran out of information. In fact, they had the opposite problem. Philipps found it hard to compress all the information they found into one display case.

“It’s really hard to keep it concise. Really what we offer is a pretty narrow view,” said Philipps.

Overall, the exhibit consists of artifacts from the Maxey Museum storage and the archives in Penrose as well as photos, all of which presents the information from various families with different backgrounds. The exhibit will stay up until the artifacts need to be returned, and a new exhibit needs a display.

Other current exhibits include “Whitman College in the 1950s” by junior Madeline Duppenthaler and sophomore Brenna Two Bears, and Hand and the Machine (Maxey Edition). Whitman College in the 1950s is located outside of room 108 in Maxey and Hand and the Machine is located in the Maxey West Foyer.

“Particles on the Wall” runs from April 2 to May 9 and is open from 6–8 p.m. on Wednesdays, 12–4 p.m. and 6–8 p.m. on Thursdays, 12–4 p.m. on Fridays and 12–4 p.m. on Saturdays. It will also hold several events in association with the exhibit. Tricia Pritkin will give a talk on April 15, while the Hanford State of the Site meeting will take place on April 29. Both events will take place in Maxey Auditorium at 7 p.m. Civil engineer and poet Kathleen Flenniken will also give a poetry reading of her most recent poetry collection, “Flume”, in Kimball Theatre on April 30 at 7 p.m.

On March 7, it was once again time for Kappa Alpha Theta’s annual fundraiser, Walla Walla’s Best Dance Crew. Each year, Kappa Alpha Theta nationally raises money to support the Court Appointed Special Advocates program (CASA). The Whitman chapter of Theta women’s fraternity puts on Walla Walla’s Best Dance Crew to fundraise for CASA in Walla Walla and Columbia County.

This year marks the 25th year that Kappa Alpha Theta has been partnered with CASA. CASA is a program that partners volunteers with neglected and abused children. These volunteers, CASAs, act as stable adults in the children’s lives and provide support while working to get these children stable homes.

“They are the only person in the legal system who is specifically advocating on behalf of the child,” said advertising co-chair Caitlyn Yoshina.

There are many children in foster care that need the support of CASAs.

“In the United States, there are roughly 600,000 children in foster care. About 238,000 of them have CASAs, but that’s hardly enough. In Walla Walla and Columbia Counties alone, there are about 110 children in need of CASAs, and only 80 of them have them. The other 30 are split between the CASA coordinators Jeff Gwinn and Jane Sporleder. With the money we raise at the show, they will be able to support at least 10 children in need,” said coordinator junior Samantha Grainger-Shuba.

Last year total fundraising for CASA reached over 4,600 dollars. This year Grainger-Shuba took over as the coordinator of WWBDC. The women’s fraternity wanted to raise more than double the total fundraising from last year.

“I had a lot of freedom to figure out what I wanted from the event and how I wanted to achieve our goal, which was to raise 10,000 dollars,” said Grainger-Shuba.

Through letter writing and other forms of fundraising, Theta was able to raise money before the actual event itself. Through these methods and along with others, they managed to raise just shy of 10,000 dollars before the fundraising done at the event. They also made use of other methods of advertising the event, including a flash mob.

“We had a really successful GoFundMe campaign as well as a letter writing campaign to like relatives and friends and reaching out to local businesses … We already raised 9,500 dollars,” said Yoshina

At the event they added 2,500 dollars to make the total fundraising 13,000 dollars, surpassing their goal. They accomplished this through selling tickets, asking for donations, selling raffle tickets for prizes from local businesses and by having audience members pin money onto tape to support their favorite act.

The actual event contained eight dance performances: Social Dance Club, Whitman Dance Team, Filipino Cultural Dancers, RAs Off Duty, Brazilian Groove, Explosion, Lydia and Judelle and The Dance Center. It included a lot of different cultural influences as well as a lot of “Uptown Funk.” Not all of these performers came from Whitman and many came from the surrounding community. There were not very many regulations; however, they did have a guiding principle.

“We made sure they knew it was a family show,” said Entertainment Committee Head Lauren Vorona, who was in charge of off-campus dance crews.

For each performance there were three scores: a judge’s score, a people’s choice award and the overall Walla Walla’s Best Dance Crew. Associate Professor of English Sharon Alker, Assistant Professor Dance Renee Archibald and Senior Lecturer of Philosophy Mitch Clearfield acted as judges. The people’s choice award was determined by audience donation. The Best Dance Crew was the judge’s score and the total donations combined.

The Dance Center won the people’s choice award, and Lydia and Judelle won the judge’s award. Explosion, a trio of high school students, won the title of Walla Walla’s Best Dance Crew.

Although Theta managed to raise 13,000 dollars, like most other fundraising ventures, the women’s fraternity did not avoid trouble altogether. They just figured out how to manage the problems.

“Even with the best planning, things go wrong all the time. However, I had to learn not to wallow in failure and instead roll with the punches,” said Grainger-Shuba.

This event required the help of Greek life, the city of Walla Walla, Walla Walla University, Walla Walla High School, Whitman clubs, Residence Life and countless others. A community came together to support a good cause.

“We are really happy that community members could be involved. The community is very important. It’s Walla Walla’s Best Dance Crew, not the Whitman Best Dance Crew,” said Vorona.

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” opens on March 5 in the Harper Joy Theatre. The two leading roles will be played by seniors Emily Krause and Tory Davidson. Krause will be playing Rosencrantz and Davidson will be playing Guildenstern. As part of the theatre major senior project, they each have researched their characters and spent a lot of time together.

“To prepare for the play, I became familiar with Tom Stoppard’s work and Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet,’ researched the play’s original and recent production history, and looked at examples of clowning in other contexts. Emily and I watched a lot of Marx Brothers and vaudeville. And flipped a lot of coins,” said Davidson.

As they have practiced their roles and rehearsed the play, putting many hours into preparing for the opening night, they have become better actors and have helped each other grow and improve. In fact, they have worked so closely that they have almost become indistinct on stage.

“We balance each other out and we challenge each other,” said Krause. “We were definitely cast as a pair and definitely function as a pair.”

Their collaboration has sparked most of their improvement. During rehearsal, they provoke each other to become better at playing their parts.

“Inspiration comes from my sense of my character and everything that I got from Tory … A lot of the discoveries I made were in connection to her and not just by myself,” said Krause.

Inspiration, however, does not just stem from the pair’s collaboration. They also looked at other performers and actors who played these roles in a similar style.

“I looked a lot at Harpo Marx, who’s the silent one … His energy and his face is so expressive and so bright all the time that I really wanted to try and capture that,” said Krause.

There can always be the slight chance that studying too much and watching too much of a certain play on repeat will lead to the actor’s inability to create a meaningful character that is created with his or her understanding. Krause restricted herself from looking at other performances of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” to preserve meaning in the play.

“I tried not to look too much into other performances of this role because I wanted to keep a clear head,” said Krause.

While there has been a lot of improvement throughout their rehearsals, they have also experienced some difficulties.

“The world of this play is ever-disorienting, but it is important that we find ways to keep driving the action forward, which has been hard. That is something we’ve been wrestling with throughout the process,” said Davidson

In the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern experience uncertainty and, by connecting with these characters, Davidson and Krause were able to experience a similar disorienting feeling.

“As Guildenstern gets incapacitated by her own thoughts at times, I’ve really had to piece through her text and find the driving forces behind all of the metaphors,” said Davidson. “It’s a difficult play — one that we’ve really had to live inside of in order to understand. Emily and I often joke that the two of us in this process have felt a sense of uncertainty similar to how our characters feel throughout the whole play.”

Krause feels that the fact that they are both women adds to the play but also preserves the essence, the main ideas encompassed within the script.

“I think the fact that Guildenstern and I are both women is really cool. I think it does and doesn’t change the play. I think it colors certain interactions and it makes certain moments have a different weight,” said Krause. “But really in the end it’s just about two people who don’t understand the weight of what’s going on around them.”

After much preparation for the show, they each shared a similar confidence and readiness to perform in front of an audience, and an audience is just what they need to finalize their performance.

“The wonderful thing about the process of a play is that you’re never quite sure what a piece is until you have an audience. I think we’re ready for that,” said Davidson.

“I think we can work on this play for a really long time, but it’s a comedy and we need an audience,” said Krause.

The play is directed by the chair of the Department of Theatre, Associate Professor Christopher Petit, and runs until March 8. Tickets are available in Harper Joy and are free with student identification.

On Feb. 22 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., the Music Department will be presenting the Composers Spring Concert. Six students have each composed a piece of music that will be performed in Chism Recital Hall. Each student has written a unique piece that they have worked on since the fall.

During the Fall Semester, seniors Clayton Collins, Ryan Jacobsen, Writing Support Specialist Jonas Myers, Director of Institutional Research Neal Christopherson, Aaron Stern and Frankie Bones took a class, Music 480, on musical composition in which they worked one-on-one with Adjunct Assistant Professor John Earnest. Earnest has taught this class since 1999 and has always felt deeply connected to the students he mentors.

“When you’re working in a private setting with someone on something as intimate as music and that requires so much of our commitment, you begin to build a bond with the students that you’re working with,” said Earnest.

While Earnest helps the students with the process, the entire performance is heavily dependent on student involvement. The student composers write the pieces and then many students perform the pieces. Even the organization of the concert is completed by the student composers.

“Each composer essentially has to find musicians to play their piece,” said Christopherson.

Neal Christopherson has taken the class for three semesters, and he has learned from this experience

“I feel like I’ve gotten a little more comfortable and confident with my writing,” he said.

Still, Christopherson feels that there is a challenge in writing these pieces. Writing these pieces requires all parts of the brain.

“You kind of have to use both halves of your brain. You have to be creative with it, but there’s also a very technical, logical piece to it as well,” said Christopherson.

His piece, “Wilderness Myth,” is made up of three parts and will be performed by a brass quintet.

The other pieces are “Reproductive Services” by Collins, “Fantasy on a Brahms Waltz” by Jacobsen, “”Three Women’ Rearranged for Piano” by Stern, “Characters From a Novel” by Myers and “The End” by Bones.

Each of these pieces is unique and the composers often draw on different influences. Collins draws heavily on minimalism.

“[Minimalism is] to use very small amounts of starting material and then to kind of spin it out over an extended period of time where you modify it very slowly, so in a lot of ways kind of like reproduction with small changes,” said Collins

Collins focused on minimalism in his piece to learn a new style of composing and to attract the audience’s attention. He wanted his piece to clearly articulate its meaning.

“My goal personally was to practice writing in a style that was stripped down and in that way hopefully accessible to the audience … I wanted to write something that people would hear and understand on the first hearing … in a digital age, in a modern age, where you might only get one shot at capturing someone’s ear. I wanted to get to the very bare bones, minimum,” said Collins

The composers often feel that this experience is transformative and builds a strong knowledge base for their future endeavors in composing music.

“[I] gained so much experience and so much knowledge … that will inform later things that I do in life,” said Collins.

Students, faculty, friends, families and community members are welcomed to join these composers on Sunday to experience the hard work each student has put into his or her piece.

A week after the BANFF Film Festival, the less-popular Backcountry Film Festival played in Maxey Auditorium on Feb. 3.

Students and community members alike enjoyed nine short films about backcountry skiing and snowboarding that ranged from personal journeys to adventures that were edited to be like a videogame.

Two of the films portrayed dogs running aside skiers, sliding down the mountains and enjoying the backcountry. “Backcountry Baker” featured Baker, a Labrador Retriever who excitedly followed his owner down the mountain.

Not only did man’s best friends partake on these adventurous expeditions, but best friends also went along for the ride. “The Powder Pilgrimage” chronicled the expedition of two friends across the Northwest to arrive at Valdez, Alaska. “From the Road” also took place in Valdez, but it recounts the  filmaker’s story of breaking his neck upon returning to the peak of the mountain.

This marks a theme of adversity that played throughout the festival, but most prominently in “Out on a Limb.” In the film, Vasu, a one legged skier, proves his disability fails to limit him in the backcountry and continues to pursue everything without limitation.

The festival takes a weirder turn with “IRS Traverse.” Edited to appear like a retro video game,  the skiers collected coins as if they were in a Super Mario game. Complete with dialogue and sound effects stripped from Mario, this film definitely stands out from the rest.

Often the videos offered dizzying views of incredibly steep slopes that provoked feelings of anxiety even within the audience. “Higher” included probably the most dangerous mountain as it told the story of Jeremy Jones’s trip to Grand Teton. At the steepest parts, Jeremy Jones and his crew had to rappel down from great heights to make it down the mountain safely.

The festival highlights the near fanatical nature of these skiers and snowboarders. It even proves that summer cannot deter the most dedicated enthusiasts. In “95 to Infinity,” two of these enthusiasts remained dedicated to skiing each month for 95 consecutive months.

The well known hit video “Afterglow” also made an appearance in which skiers wore suits that were covered with colored LED lights and carved down the fresh powered mountain through the night to create stunning visual effects against darkness of nature.

With high popularity, the Outdoor Program will most likely try to continue bringing festivals like BANFF and the Backcountry Film Festival.