Reel Rock 17

For anyone in the Southern NY/Gunks area its playing for 2 nights at the Rock & Snow Annex in New Paltz, NY:

- Friday March 10th Tickets

- Saturday March 11th Tickets

New Jersey Folks its playing at NJ Rock Gym in Fairfield, NJ:

- Thursday March 23rd Tickets

Did RR walk back the whole plan of making the festival virtual and spotlighting their subscription service instead? I thought last year was the last year of the Reel Rock Tour. 

Is reel rock usually just three short films? I always thought they featured more. 

It's surprising to see reel rock not feature a Caldwell/Honnald bromance adventure. 

Mark Starr wrote:

Is reel rock usually just three short films? I always thought they featured more. 

Depends on the lineup- their website lists the lengths (30, 40, 50 mins), the nameless tower one (50) is a bit longer than the average rr feature 

Don Frijoles wrote:

Looks good, but they appear to be regressing with DEI.

Because inclusion is regressive, right?

Long Ranger wrote:

Did RR walk back the whole plan of making the festival virtual and spotlighting their subscription service instead? I thought last year was the last year of the Reel Rock Tour. 

I think they are doing both: having live events and releasing it via their streaming service. Seems like the best of both worlds IMO

Don Frijoles wrote:

No

I've re-read my first post and I can see how it could have been unclear. I'm saying this one doesn't have as much DEI as past ones. They were making good progress but appear to have regressed.

GOTCHA. My bad, I thought it was a comment on the Palestinian climbers movie.
I gotta stop thinking the worst about comments on here, but holy shit is this place a cesspool sometimes. lol.

I was intrigued by the forearm flexor exercise he was doing at 2:39.

i feel like Reel Rock is getting kinda cringe. 

L Mitch wrote:

i feel like Reel Rock is getting kinda cringe. 

Care to elaborate?

Reposting my review here, obviously if you want to go into the showing blind don't read this. Or maybe just read the conclusion:

Reel Rock is back to doing tours this year, so I went to the one in Denver tonight. Obviously the presentation is a bit different at a live show vs a recording on your computer, so I'll do my best to separate the two.

The first feature shown was DNA, about Seb Bouin's new 5.15d. I didn't really know about the Verdon, or much about Seb prior to this movie. I'd followed his FAs a bit, and watched some of his videos, but knew pretty much nothing about him the person. I was blown away - the incredible aesthetics of the climb, his background, how ripped his mom is. The whole thing was honestly very enchanting. We're so fortunate to have had two high quality videos made about the 2 hardest roped routes in the world - but wow this one really was enjoyable. The pacing was great, the shots were mostly superb (except for some weird "from below" shots that didn't really fit), the entertainment was all there. No real negative comments on this and will likely come back to it regularly.

The second feature was Resistance Climbing, about the Palestinian Climbing scene and conflict, as well as Bisharat's exploration of that. Now I'll be honest. I'm a bisharat hater. If there is 1 Bisharat hater on this world, that is me. If there are no bisharat hater's in this world, it is because I have left it. Don't be confused - I'm not gonna say "oh but he was actually solid in this film". In my opinion, he was easily the weakest link of this film and generally detracted from my enjoyment of it. I don't want to spend too much space on him, so I'll summarize it by saying he did an excellent job of not really having anything meaningful to add to the discussion while also being incapable of getting out of the way. The other parts of this film were superb. The local palestinian climbing community seems wonderful. They bring an incredible amount of nuance into the intersection of life and climbing. Their candor, their excitement for the sport, and how they're overall full of life. This film really continued the messaging we saw 2 years ago in Black Ice showcasing the "why"s of climbing. The editing in this film was great too - a lot of the visuals given went a long way to educating the audience on the conflict as well - allowing audiences to understand the gravity of the situation and the importance of climbing to the group featured themselves.

The last feature was Burning The Flame, about Babsi and Jacopo's flash of The Eternal Flame on The Nameless Tower in Pakistan. I'll start off by saying the footage in this film is absolutely jaw dropping. I mean, if there's ever an opportunity to see this in iMax - I would highly recommend it. It is beyond beautiful. That being said, this film lacks a bit of a narrative to it. It's interesting, scenic, rad looking climbing - however it doesn't really go further than that, which is disappointing for technically the only feature length feature in this film. There's also this weird kind of "Jacopo is fighting to keep up with Babsi" narrative that exists nowhere in the film except for Austin's narration. Feels like it was definitely trying to create a narrative that wasn't present instead of focusing on their "why"s like the first two films did well. Overall, I think this one runs a bit long for how shallow it goes but if I had the opportunity to just get comically high and sit and watch the raw footage for 6 hours I would be very hard pressed to pass it up.

Conclusion: Standard Reel Rock fare. Some winners, some losers - sometimes even in the same feature. Forced narratives still suck.

On Burning the Flame.  I didn't know much about the climb before watching the film other than; they went, they sent-I didn't know the style, multiple trips, that it was a Flash, ect.  The only real thing that bothered me of the film, and unless I missed it explained (then apologies and throw the rest of what I am typing into the trash), was that Austin kept saying that they are flashing the route, and all I saw was fixed ropes, tick marks, 2 tents on the lower, large ledge even before they got there, ect, and it just didn't make sense in my mind. I felt like either they didn't want to explain the climbing minutiae about "The How" as to keep the film digestible to a wider audience, or I just though there was a bunch of BS in the film.  The tick marks really threw me to say the least. 

I watched it in SLC, and Babsi and Jacopo explained it all post film on stage that another party was above them (and Austin was able to jug their lines for the top down shots, ect) and that the other climber also free'd the route just before they did, and in the same weather window.  If they were not on stage to explain a few of those details, I would have not known (I really don't pay too much attention to what pro climbers are doing), and thus now knowing that their ascent, although used the efforts of others to at least help make the movie, they really did do something incredible up there, tick marks or not.  F'n proud send for those two. Also, yes, awesome footy of those mountains.