Bainbridge filmmaker Liesl Clark’s life revolves around high altitudes. As a toddler growing up in Chile, where her father was an economic advisor to then-President 'êªEduardo Frei Montalva'ê¬, Clark learned to speak Spanish as her first language and developed a love for the remote beauty of tall peaks.
After graduating from Harvard with a focus in writing, the wide-eyed liberal arts major found her way to Aspen, CO — simply because she “wanted to go and live in a place that was beautiful and that was close to the mountains,” Clark said. It wasn’t long before that decision paid off.
She landed a gig with ESPN in the small mountain town focused on documenting outdoor expeditions and wildlife. “I literally answered an ad in the newspaper,” she explains matter-of-factly. From there, her career took off. She gained experience writing about and filming in remote locations. In a sense, this became her news beat. Her profession has taken her on to PBS’s Nova as a web correspondent, where she covered the single greatest loss of life on Mt. Everest. Then on to the Alps to document snow melt atop Mont Blanc and now, to her latest project, Cave People of the Himalaya.
That documentary, which screens Oct. 20 as part of the Celluloid Bainbridge Film Festival, follows a group of archeologists and other scientists through mountain caves as they try to piece together the ancient remains of a mysterious group of people entombed inside the Kali Gandaki River Valley in Upper Mustang Nepal.
Clark found herself living in Washington by what else? A mountain. Her husband was hired by Alpine Ascents International to develop a guiding concession on Mt. Rainier. Clark, naturally, views this relocation as befitting of her other moves: “We came here because of Mt. Rainier.”
Now, back from the remote river valley high up in the Himalayas, Clark will kick off the the Bainbridge film festival Oct. 19th at the Kitsap Library, with fellow island filmmakers Bryan Gunnar Cole and Laurance Price. The trio will discuss the challenges — both legal and ethical — of filming remote civilizations.
Searching for ancient crypts buried inside mountain walls, as Clark did for Cave People, involves its own set of physical problems — namely climbing accidents, and there are a few in Cave People. But apart from broken bones, shooting a documentary within communities that rarely have contact with the outside world engenders confusion and concern over the artifacts at hand.
On a separate project, Secrets of Shangri-la, Clark and her team uncovered a library of Buddhists texts dating back 700 years. Loose pieces of paper were literally blowing out of the cave they were concealed in and birds began to do what birds do best: shit on things. Clark was eventually able to translate the writing from photographs taken and then place the scripts in the hands of a local monastery. But interupting the shooting process was a local youth group questioning the motives and the handling of antiquity. What followed was an ordeal over the text’s ownership. "No matter how much good will that we have, there are always moments of misunderstanding and questioning. These are valid concerns people have because once you become embedded in this project you become involved in the community.”
But most concerning for Clark is the cross-culture dichotomy she sees in her films. “On one end I have the assignment of telling a story for producers,” she notes. “But by the same token I feel responsible for representing the locals on film, telling the story as clearly and truthfully as I can. To reduce them to just wallpaper is not truth telling [because] when we go to a location there is always a connection with the people.” It’s an inner turmoil many filmmakers wrestle with, that dilemma between profitability and accountability. “If you marginalize the local people in the story,” Clark adds, “you don’t feel the infrastructure.”
If you go: Celluloid Bainbridge Filmmakers Forum, Bainbridge Island Public Library, 1270 Madison Ave N, Oct. 19, 6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m., free
Bainbridge Film Festival, Historic Lynwood Theater, 4569 Lynwood Center Rd, Oct. 20, 9 a.m.- 5:30 p.m., Oct. 21, 11 a.m.-10 p.m., free
Jeff Orlowski: Chasing Ice
Al Gore and Roland Emmerich aren't the only people making movies about climate change. Sure, An Inconvenient Truth scared the hell out of people and convinced the most worrisome that if they drive Hybrids, maybe those glaciers will grow back.To get a sense of just how bad things have gotten, Nat Geo photographer James Balog and cinematographer Jeff Orlowski have arrived with Chasing Ice, a time-lapse documentary condensing years into seconds as glaciers continue to shrink around the poles (to screen at the Varsity Nov. 16). Orlowski will share snippets of Chasing Ice at Town Hall, and he's written a piece exclusively for Crosscut, further proving that this world is changing, as if the weather outside wasn’t proof enough.
If you go: Jeff Orlowski, Town Hall, 1119 8th Avenue, Oct. 21, 6-7 p.m., $5
Omar Rodriguez Lopez
Many of my friends in High School tried, unsuccessfully, to replicate the guitar insanity on the Mars Volta’s 2003 debut album, De-Loused in the Comatorium. The complexity on the last track, "Take the Veil Cerptin Taxt," was just too difficult. While the Mars Volta trudges along still (Omar and front man Cedric Bixler-Zavala are the only two originals remaining), Omar has embarked on an impressive solo career that no High School guitarist should attempt to copy without adult supervision.
If you go: Omar Rodriguez Lopez With Crypts, The Triple Door, 216 Union St, Oct. 19, 8 p.m., $15- $20.
Milt Priggee: Political Cartooning: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
As newspapers around Washington (and everywhere) cut staff, political cartoonists may sit too low on the editorial totem pole to reach a level of untouchable job security. For years, Milt Priggee was one such cartoonist working for the Spokesman Review in Spokane. As the profession is on a drastic decline, Priggee will discuss how the job, like all other journalistic pursuits, is transitioning from a print world to a digital one (for a quick lesson in what Priggee may mean by this, do a quick google search of 'Mitt Romney binder memes'). In addition, Priggee will share some of his strips that didn't make the cut and the stories that influenced them.
If you go: Milt Priggee, Culture Club, 411 Union St, Oct. 20, 11:30 a.m., free
