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Seward Winter Film Series 2009/10

Posted on: November 3, 2009 | Dano Michaud | Comments Off | Print Article | Rate Post:

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The community of Seward once again made possible the success of last year’s “Seward Winter Film Series” 

From the wet chilly month of November onto the delightful breakup of April we have been graced with the opportunity to provide the public a chance to share their experiences in the great Alaskan outdoors.  The “Seward Winter Film Series” happens once monthly during this winter time frame.

The ambition for the “Seward Winter Film Series” is to provide a venue for likeminded folks to get together every third Tuesday of each month and enjoy each other’s outdoor experiences through digital images, slides and short movies.

Last season’s affair with imagery was an eclectic array of topics and medias, with each month’s participant using whatever device they had on hand to capture their adventure

In our third year, the participants provided a combination of all the Medias mentioned. The first show of the year, November’s topic was a classic Alaskan bush whack extravaganza! ”Chronic Wetness” was appropriately titled as Eric Parson and Dylan Kentch shared their fat bike and pack raft trip on what is call the loneliest coast in Alaska. Their adventure went from Yakutat to Cordova using bikes for the sandy beaches and the pack rafts to cross big water like Icy bay to the countless rivers and streams that drain the high country into the majestic Gulf of Alaska.

December brought another great show as Harold Faust did his magic with a power point presentation of the 5 day Hearth Mountain trip that he and 3 other locals did in Seward’s backyard mountain play ground.

 January had us armchair world adventurers enjoying the 2005 attempt crossing of the Bering Strait with Troy Henkel and his fellow Scandinavian traveler Dixie Dansercoer, a job well done indeed by Troy on the stunning footage as these two travelers endured the brutal and bitter cold that is inheritent of the region.

Following our January show, February brought us the Alaskan adventurer Dick Griffith; Dick graced us with his presentations of his exploit, solo trip across our northern arctic region of this great state. Dick is the master of the modern day Alaskan explorer, a true pleasure indeed to see a man of his age pushing the limits of the body, mind and soul.

The March show had to be canceled but fortunately for us local uni-cyclist Kristopher Peck stepped up to the plate for our April show and he presented to us the season finale with his video premiere – “Wheel of Justice”. Kristopher’s 25 minute video documentary of his father George Peck’s unique title the“Grandfather of Mountain Unicycling” is a combination of his dad’s previous 1990 homemade instructional video called “Rough Terrain Unicycling and some unseen footage that Kristopher put together. This was a thrill for the packed house to view this master piece of a sport George holds national title to. After Kristopher’s showing we had some time left on the clock and continued with some other short films, “Laws of Motion” by Austin Gillespie and “Beg to Differ”  a short film I did of some local extreme snow shoeing . Sam Young wrapped it up with a real nice showing of slide taken from his Sunday snow shoe outings he did with other locals throughout the winter.

 This year we have a some folks on board to show their fare and to take us to the outdoors while we armchair it in the comforts of the auditorium. First to open the series November 17th is possibly the most well known Alaskan adventurer of our time, Roman Dial. The APU professor humbly accepted my plea to endure the drive down during a very hectic time of the year for this busy individual, so come early to this show as his time is limited and he needs to returns back to Anchorage the same night of the show. Packrafting is the main topic of Roman’s show and Pack rafting is his forte, if you have any questions for Roman regarding this fairly new and increasingly popular sport and means of outdoor travel this will be a good time to meet him. So come and enjoys his prodigious knowledge in the topic he wrote the book on, literally.

Also on our billing is our local Seward couple Cristan & Alex McLain. This husband and wife team endured a paddler’s most grueling race endeavor and participated in the “Yukon 1000 Canoe and Kayak Race”. The couple will put it all together and is bringing this race home to us  on Tuesday, January 19th.

Putting an extreme twist, adventure racing is growing in national popularity and what better place than Alaska to push the human body to extremes. Darren Hull from Anchorage is addicted to this sport and has created and instigated a few races himself. Darren will be sharing his experiences and ideas of some up and coming races with us in February. These races are located in different location around the state and Darren has been poking around this area of the peninsula with the help of some local outdoor enthusiasts. Come see what he has in store.

The Film Series has proven interesting to different folks for different reasons; for some it’s for the historic value of the old slide shows and others for the interest in the sport, activity or mode of transportation on display. Whatever the reason, local Sewardites are showing up and enjoying this multimedia event. The Seward Winter Film Series has but one general purpose – to provide free to the public a venue for human powered adventures and outdoor enthusiasts to share their love for the outdoors via the means of old time slides, digital imagery and short movies.

I’m always open for suggestion, so please contact me if you are interested or know of someone who might be. So keep a look out for posting of our fliers in the local store, restaurants and coffee houses. The Seward Winter Film Series takes place every third Tuesday from 7:00pm until 9:00pm and is held in the Auditorium located upstairs in the AVTEC’s Student Service Center, 519 4th Ave.

And remember, this is Seward, mountain country, so come prepared…to have some fun!

NO GEAR REQUIRED !

Category: Announcement

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