Jackson, Wyoming – January 19, 2008 – The Alpinist Film Festival’s Surf Night opened to a full house at the Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village, Wyoming last night, January 18. The audience chose Sliding Liberia to win the 2008 Snow Night People’s Choice Award. It was the film’s world premiere, presented by its cast and crew: Britton Caillouette, Nicholai Lidowand and Dan Malloy, the night’s Master of Ceremonies.
Sliding Liberia is a surf film/social documentary that follows a group of young surfers to Liberia in search of more than perfect waves. As they travel through the West African country, devastated by decades of brutal civil war, they record the stories of people they meet along the way–people like Alfred, a young boy who became Liberia’s first surfer after finding a bodyboard while fleeing from rebels. Besides rediscovering a world-class point break that could be the best-kept secret in the surfing world, the surfers find something much more important–a way to travel responsibly in the 21st century.
“Sliding Liberia offers a window into a world that most surfers don’t see,” said AFF director Christian Beckwith, “and it shows how a handful of people with a passion–in this case, surfing–can build new friendships and communities in a war-torn country. The manner in which the cross-cultural connections were blended with the surf cinematography must have enthralled the audience as much as it captivated me.”
Master of Ceremonies, Malloy, also presented three other films, Joyride, High Water and Bra Boys.
Sliding Liberia will be presented at the People’s Choice Ceremonies, held in Jackson at the Center for the Arts on January 20, 2008. Let It Ride: The Craig Kelly Story, which won Snow Night’s People’s Choice Award, will also show on January 20, as will Stone Night’s People’s Choice Award winner, to be determined by the audience on January 19. The three audience-selected films will have a shot at the 2008 Alpinist Film Festival Grand Prize. The audience will choose the Grand Prize winner at the January 20 Ceremony.
The filmmakers of Sliding Liberia and Let It Ride each will receive a $750 gift certificate from Patagonia for winning their respective night’s People’s Choice Award. The People’s Choice Award winner of Stone Night will receive the same, and the Grand Prize winner will receive an additional Patagonia 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.