Jackson, Wyoming – January 3, 2008 – The Alpinist Film Festival announced today that on January 18, at the Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village, Wyoming, Dana and Wes Brown will present Surf Night, the second evening in the AFF’s 2008 lineup. The Browns, who, with “Grandpa” Bruce Brown, comprise three generations of surf filmmakers, will trace the evolution of both surfing itself and their family’s lensmanship with a showcase of their most spectacular and influential surf scenes, culminating in an excerpt from their yet-to-be-released film High Water.
In 1966, a young filmmaker named Bruce Brown captured the power and beauty of the surfing lifestyle as it had never before been represented in the now-classic film The Endless Summer. With his son Dana, Bruce then surpassed the mastery and influence of his first film with The Endless Summer II (1994) and The Endless Summer Revisited (2000). The experiences with his father led Dana to create his own style and vision with his film Step Into Liquid (2003), the highest grossing surf film in history. Wes Brown (son of Dana and grandson of Bruce) has been around filmmaking his whole life and has successfully worked in films for nearly a decade. Last year, at the 2007 Alpinist Film Festival in Jackson, Wyoming, Wes’ film Chasing Dora won the People’s Choice Award for Surf Night. Chasing Dora then went on to win Grand Prize for the entire Festival.
In their new film, High Water, Dana and Wes take the viewer on an action-packed adventure based on the epic 55-day 2005 Vans Triple Crown competitions. The Triple Crown is the final three competitions in the professional surfing tour, and attracts the best surfers on the planet to the impossible waves of the North Shore of Oahu–the so-called “Seven Mile Miracle”. As the culmination of their presentation, Dana and Wes will present an excerpt from High Water, which is set to be released in 2008.
“With so many classic films created over five decades, the contribution this family has made to surfing is unparalleled,” said Conor Miller, the Alpinist Film Festival Film Coordinator whose untiring work on the 2008 lineup eventually led Festival organizers to the Browns. “The collection of footage presented from three generations of surfing’s legendary family is a very special event, and one not to be missed.”
The 2008 Alpinist Film Festival will feature its signature Snow, Surf and Stone nights January 17-19 at Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village, Wyoming. A fourth evening, The People’s Choice Ceremonies, will present the People’s Choice award-winning films from the previous three evenings at the Center for the Arts in downtown Jackson. Winners of the individual evenings receive a gift certificate from Patagonia worth $750. The Grand Prize winner receives an additional gift certificate worth $1,500.
Tickets for The 2008 Alpinist Film Festival are $18 for the Snow, Surf and Stone nights and $20 for the People’s Choice Ceremonies. Tickets and additional information can be found online at www.alpinist.com/film_festival. To date, every event in The Alpinist Film Festival’s three-year history has sold out.
About The Alpinist Film Festival
The Alpinist Film Festival celebrates the adventure lifestyle across disciplines and generations with three nights of film in skiing, surfing and climbing. The Festival’s mission is to advance the art of cinematographic storytelling as it underscores the unity among the adventure lifestyle communities. A portion of every year’s proceeds are donated to charities that help preserve the places of our inspiration. Because one of these places is our planet, beginning in 2008, the Festival will purchase carbon offsets to counteract its carbon footprint.
About Alpinist Magazine
Hailed by Italian climbing legend Reinhold Messner as “The best climbing magazine in the world today,” Alpinist Magazine is an archival-quality, quarterly publication dedicated to world alpinism and adventure climbing. The pages of Alpinist capture the art of ascent in its most powerful manifestations, presenting an articulation of climbing and its lifestyle that matches the intensity of the pursuit itself. Alpinist has been awarded three Maggie Awards, for Best Quarterly/Consumer Division, Best Overall Design, and Best Electronic Newsletter, and was featured in a seven-page article in Outside Magazine (“The Purists”) in March 2005. The magazine’s editorial and publishing offices are based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and online at www.alpinist.com.