Knik Canoers and Kayakers hosts second annual screening

Knik Canoers and Kayakers, the local paddling club in Southcentral Alaska, has been around for decades. Only last year did it start hosting an annual whitewater film festival, organized by volunteer Chris Hellman. At the second annual festival in 2017, a packed house at Bear Tooth watched paddling films based in Africa, Alaska, and many watersheds in between. Films ranged from cuts by local enthusiasts to expensive, professional edits.

Locals featured prominently in the films. Luc Mehl’s “Show Up and Blow Up: Alaska” included whitewater footage from the Kings River, Little Susitna, interspersed with traverses of Glacier Bay National Park and the Alaska Peninsula. Mehl’s clips had professional-grade editing featuring our neighbors, many of whom have pioneered technically challenging Class V whitewater runs as well as extraordinary long distance traverses. Local paddler Mary Price also showed two movies, of local favorite Glacier Creek and the lower Kings River.

Alaskans’ movies were by locals, not yokels. Knik Canoers and Kayakers did find a film in that category, a hilarious short flick called “Chasing Rainbows,” about local paddlers running the New River Gorge in a large pool toy shaped like a goose. As the closing film, it mocked the usual bravura and shallow introspection of extreme ski and whitewater paddlers. As a piece of amateur film work, “Chasing Rainbows” was exemplary and the Knik Canoers and Kayakers deserve credit for finding it.

There were plenty of films of kayakers running extreme lines, including in “Women of the Whitewater Grand Prix,” “Why,” and “Way We Go.” The women grand prix racers, a very small elite group of competitors from around the world, ran incredible lines off complex waterfalls and through massive rapids. Their male counterparts in “Why” are kind of like women’s male counterparts everywhere--lazier, more prone to lolling around under tarps in the rain, and shallowly reflecting on life’s deep questions while ambling around Iceland seeking huge waterfalls to send. Philosophizing aside, the footage was incredible, including high volume, high elevation waterfalls stacked back to back, some of which are shortly below the terminus of glaciers that form these wild rivers. Sponsored by NRS, “Why” had some of the most impressive shots. In contrast, the lines of “Way We Go” were every bit as extreme, if not more dangerous with sieves and manky drops, though with lower film quality.

One of the best stories in the film festival was in “Wild President,” about Jimmy Carter. In a series of interviews interspersed with contemporary and archival footage, Carter discussed how he grew up fishing in the Southeast, and paddled rivers such as the Chattooga while Governor of Georgia. In a little known piece of presidential arcana, Carter got the first canoe descent of Bull Sluice Falls on the Chattooga. His personal experiences on rivers informed a powerful presidential legacy, including establishment of many of America’s National Parks and Wild and Scenic Rivers, many of which are in Alaska.

If the first two film festivals were any indication, next year’s will be crowded as well. If you want to submit a film to the festival, Chris Hellman and club volunteers are looking for submissions, so get in touch at kck.org. The festival is a fine way to celebrate Alaska’s wild rivers and kick off the paddling season.