Stowe Mountain Film Festival

I was walking out of Julio's tonight after dinner when I noticed a flyer for something called the Stowe Mountain Film Festival. Being a fan of the annual Green Mountain Film Festival in Montpelier, the flyer caught my eye. I then ran into a friend on the sidewalk who works for the Vermont Film Commission and asked him about it but he said he only recently heard about it. He said he also just learned of a film festival down in Bennington too (VT is becoming packed with film festivals!).

So, I knocked around on the internet for a while trying to gather info on this Stowe Mountain Film Festival. Apparantly, this is the third year of the festival which runs from Thanksgiving to New Year's with various films about skiing every Wednesday and Saturday. The available info is somewhat sketchy but it seems that some of the films take place at the Vermont Ski Museum in Stowe and others are shown at the Akeley Memorial Building which is down the street from the Ski Museum on the left as you head north on Rt. 100. The schedule for the shows is available here.

This Saturday they are showing two films. The first one is the first film, Four Champions (1952), to show the proper technique for cross-country skiing. I guess it was originally intended as an instructional video but probably now has sentimental and kitch value. The second film, American Skier (2004), is more recent. Based upon the trailer, it has a more X-Games feel to it as it covers the World Championships, U-23's and World Cup.

The film, Epoch, on Dec 17th looks like an interesting film. It's a documentary on backcountry skiing in the northeast including hiking and skiing Mt. Washington in NH. The trailer for it is pretty cool.

The unfortunate part of this film festival is that it takes place during the holiday season. My wife and I were talking tonight about how we are now busy every weekend this month with various parties. I'd be interested in checking out some of these films if they ran them in January. However, this is a tough time of the year to host a festival.