'Journey to the Center' (Director Jens Hoffman, 2008)

This year the Banff Mountain Film Festival redeemed itself. I've been going for years, and loving it, but last year was a huge disappointment. Maybe I just picked a night that had a bad lineup, but it was LAME.

After years of trying to get my brother to come, he did, and I felt like I had to apologize afterwards. There was a boring, tedious, film about a 24-hour mountain bike race (yup, pretty much a lot of footage of guys on bikes on a trail), something stupid about old guys rock-climbing, and pretty much nothing else that I can remember.

Oh wait! There was one cool film about a punk band on tour that was also obsessed with nordic skiing. So between late-night thrashy shows at seedy bars they'd head out into the bush and go skiing. Very cool.

ANYWAY, sorry, went off on a tangent there, this year, the BMFF, held as always at the Bloor Cinema, was once again awesome. It probably helped that it had two great sponsors this year -- the Alpine Club of Canada's Toronto division, and the Rock Oasis climbing gym.

If I can remember, there were two films about climbing -- one set in Scotland, another in Germany near the Czech border (crazy rock climbing on spires with barely any gear), a cute 5-minute film about a Swiss kid overcoming his fear of the water, one that had some awesome footage of avalanches but otherwise sucked, and my personal favourite, "Into the Center."

This film followed three BASE jumpers (BASE stands for Bridge, Antennae, Structure, Earth and is the sport where crazy people jump off dangerous things and pull their parachute moments before dying) who travel to a remote part of China to jump into one of the world's largest vertical caves. It's called The Heavenly Pit.

One of the jumpers, Chris Mcdougall, is from Australia, another, Jeb Corliss is from the U.S. and the third, Paul Fortun is from Norway.

I was pretty skeptical at the beginning of this film. It attempted to delve pretty deeply into their reasons for embracing such a dangerous sport, and the results were a bit tiresome. Corliss claimed the sport saved his live, and that as a child he was "extremely suicidal." Ok. "Douggs" talked about how he had let family members down when they needed him because of his obsession with the sport. Sure...
Paul was cool though. A typical Scandinavian, he didn't say much that wasn't necessary and just seemed to really like doing crazy things, but in a very controlled manner.

Just getting to the pit was a major adventure. Several planes, a boat up the Yangtze river, hiking on foot, and literally days of travel were required to get to this massive hole in the earth.

Fortun had seen a photo several years before of a Chinese tightrope walker crossing the pit in the 1970s. After going there himself to see if the cable was still in place, he had been working ever since to make the trip happen.

But still, the team wasn't even sure they jump would be possible.

Along their journey to the cave there's a few too many long artsy shots of the team members gazing off into the mountains contemplatively, or awkwardly chatting about the surroundings with each other while appearing to be nonchalant. And there's WAY too much of the American, Corliss. He seems like a nice enough guy, but seriously, he talks way too much.

One of my favourite moments is when Douggs, the Aussie, ventures off on his own and meets some young students who invite him to visit their school. He does, and finds a school-wide talent show has been organized in his honour and the kids in the remote town are pumped to have him visit. He loves it, and the magic of the moment is written on his face even until he leaves, a full four hours later.

The filmmaker won me over with moments like that. By the time the guys are packing their chutes to actually jump, the sense of anticipation is palpable and I found I had somehow come to care about them a little.

When they slid out over the massive pit on a tiny cable, chills went down my spine. And as Corliss unhooked his safety leash and started swinging on the cable preparing to let go, the audience actually held its breath. When he did let go, and freefell into that cave for what seemed like an eternity before pulling his chute, people actually applauded.

It was pretty solid storytelling. It was no less exciting when the other two jumped, and their excitement in the immediate moments after landing was infectious.

Maybe because the sport is so dangerous, and the jump was so risky, or because it took so much work to make it happen or because they spent so much time talking about it, you actually cared by the end whether they made it or not. At the beginning, I dind't anticipate that happening.

I liked this movie. It made me even more excited about going to China in ONE MONTH.
Maybe I'll visit the Heavenly Pit! Or that school, or one like it. But I probably won't be doing any BASE jumping. Katie wouldn't be a fan of that. And neither would I. HA!

"The Sheltering Sky" (Paul Bowles, 1949)

I spent a year in Morocco, travelling to almost every dusty corner of that country with my friends James and Daniel.

We explored Casablanca and Marrakech and Essouera and Chefchouen, and countless, nameless, hills and valleys and towns and villages in between.

We traveled by bus, train, and bush taxi, and by hitch hiking, and we made friends in every place we visited.

As a result of all that I feel like Morocco is one of the few foreign places where I have truly gotten to the point where I felt ‘at home.

It’s a beautiful country with incredibly hospitable, generous people and I love it a lot.

So, I admit to possessing a somewhat snobby attitude sometimes, when I’m watching a movie or reading a book, that is set in El Maghreb.

It’s sort of an ‘I know Morocco better than they do” sort of attitude, and I’m pretty embarrassed about it.

But when I was reading Paul Bowles’ “The Sheltering Sky,” I had to just sit back in wonder and accept that this guy lives and breathes Morocco and knows the country and the people, inside and out.

TSS is a perfect example of Bowles' ability to take his readers under the skin of this foreign land, to experience the country from an insider’s point of view.

The book begins with three Americans disembarking from a freight ship on a jetty in a grubby North African port town in 1947.

The trio is comprised of a married couple, Kit and Port Moresby, and their friend Tunner. They’re rich, cocky, artsy Americans out to see North Africa -- living up to many of the negative stereotypes that still follow American tourists around the world.

Bowles immediately sets the scene, accurately describing a place that smacks first-timers upside the head with a blast of dust and heat and foreign smells and languages that can be completely disorienting.

It quickly becomes clear that there is a strange dynamic between the three. Kit is feminine and fragile and sensitive, but with a deep rooted fear and insecurity that can result in a mean edge.

Port, her husband, is arrogant, smart, driven – and with little ability to see beyond his own personal goals.

Tunner is shallow and dull, but incredibly handsome and charming, and mostly he’s just along for the ride.

Port is the driving force behind their journey. He insists he is a “traveler not a tourist” and believes tourists take trips, while travelers slowly migrate from one part of the world to another, over a period of years. I like that concept.

The book, which has been adapted to film by Bernardo Bertolucci (starring John Malkovich and Debra Winger), is both a literal journey into the fabric of Morocco and its people, and an exploration of the minds of Americans who find themselves dealing with difficult circumstances in extremely foreign lands.

Bowles follows the characters as they take their very American style of travel – full wardrobes and bottles of champagne and massive stacks of luggage, further and further south into Morocco and away from European influence. The quality of their hotels declines the further they go, the pool of people who speak French, evaporates, the sand flies increase, and their adventure quickly becomes much rougher than expected.

When Port and Kit finally split from Tunner, in order to have some quality time, the situation really begins to decline as Port becomes sick with Typhoid, and as Kit begins to unravel psychologically as her two anchors, Tunner and Port, no longer give her something to grip on to.

From there the story begins to really get interesting as it takes a massively unexpected turn, deep in the Sahara desert, as Kit becomes completely unhinged as her inability to understand or adapt to her circumstances, drives her to the edge.

I wish I could say more about this without giving away the plot, except to say that through her experience we begin to see an entirely different viewpoint of Morocco and its people.

The physical journey this book takes captures accurately the beauty, immensity, and diversity of the Sahara – the shifting colours, deceptive gentleness, and shocking power. I can only imagine there is accuracy too, in the way Bowles describes the journey right to the edge of madness, brought on my helplessness and instability in a land that could swallow a person completely – and in this case, does.

Like most of what I’ve read by Bowles, TSS is undeniably dark and disturbing, but mixed with that is an honest appreciation for beauty and culture and that fascinating clash that occurs when very different people, from very different worlds, come together.