Powerful, purpose-driven adventure films that matter return to our own screens next week for the third edition of Adventure Uncovered's Film Festival.
Adventure films challenging prevailing narratives and representing new or silenced perspectives
Despite changing government regulations, evolving social gathering guidelines and cautious venues and event spaces the 2021 Adventure Uncovered Film Festival launches next Wednesday - July 29th, and the line-up, once again, is interstellar.
Now in its third year, the AUFF is the only film festival dedicated to screening adventure and outdoor films with an underlying social or environmental purpose; stories that challenge prevailing narratives, represent new or silenced perspectives and motivate social and environmental action through connection. Films that truly show Adventure, Uncovered.
This year’s festival does not disappoint. Amidst the 60 Official Selections expect explorations into how the Fukushima earthquake and nuclear disaster impacted local adventure communities, transgender perspectives on adventure, LGBT+ accounts that counter traditional prevailing narratives, stories of ecological degradation, restoration and appreciation, local portrayals on living locked-down for 18 months and reflections for how we might live ‘wider’ rather than ‘longer’ lives.
Top Picks
Freedom Seat
Directed by: Linus Herbig-Matten.
Freedom Seat is a 9000 km intercontinental tandem bike adventure from Chennai, India to Hamburg, Germany. We pedaled with 180 strangers and friends who helped in raising awareness on human trafficking and funds to help the victims of bonded labor slavery in India.
12 countries, 2 continents, 180 people, with one purpose: To #EndSlaveryNow
City Trippin
Directed by: Liz Barker
City Trippin is a short film documenting our adventure project, where we took a group of disadvantaged inner-city kids out from the confines of the concrete jungle. Giving them an opportunity to extend their horizons in a bigger world outside of their normal environment. We capture their stories, their stoke and the transformative power of the great outdoors.
Be There, Be Present
Directed by: Greg Dennis
It's May 2020. The UK has been in lockdown for over a month leaving many people feeling isolated and anxious. Photographer Nick Pumphrey turned to where he feels most at home - the sea. In May he dedicated to taking his camera in the sea for every dawn of the month, and sharing his experience each morning with ten photographs on Instagram.
His ritual was known as #DawnDaysOfMay
Voice Above Water
Directed by: Dana Frankoff.
Voice Above Water is the story of Wayan Nyo, a 90 year old fisherman who can no longer fish because of the amount of plastic piling up in the ocean.
Instead Wayan uses his fishing boat and net to pull trash from the water in hopes of being able to fish again.
Voice Above Water is a glimpse into how one human can use their resources to make a change and, like we are experiencing right now, a reminder that it takes all of us playing our part and coming together to accomplish something much greater than ourselves.
This Land
Directed by: Chelsea Jolly, Whit Hassett
Runner and advocate Faith E. Briggs used to run through the streets of Brooklyn every morning. Now she’s running 150 miles through three of our National Monuments that lay in the thick of the controversy around public lands. She will be accompanied by running companions - who represent diverse perspectives in what it means to be a public land owner.
Conservationists are no longer reading Walden and hanging on the words of John Muir. Women, people of colour, indigenous peoples and their knowledge and perspectives have been ignored in the conservation conversation. That is changing. The face of conservation is changing. The voices involved are changing.
Those voices are speaking a new language and this is a new story. A story about land access told through a journey of empowerment. It is also a story about love - love for community, love for our country, and love for the spaces that have miraculously transformed the lives of these runners.
This short film is meant to act as both a powerful encouragement for those in the fight to find their place in the conservation effort and a tool to start these much-needed connections and conversations around public lands across our country.
Original plans for 2021 were to bring the festival to the great outdoors and watch films under starry skies in Pembrokeshire, Oxford, Brighton and Bristol. But rather than continually postpone screenings, the decision to make all Official Selections available for two months on a ‘pay what you feel’ basis was made with the intention of allowing all the Adventure Uncovered community to enjoy the festival in their own time, location and settings.
We thank all the filmmakers for their understanding and agreeing to this once-off format in light of a challenging year for all. Collectively we provide the films, you do the rest.
Enjoy yet more new perspectives, changing narratives and untold stories!
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