Now Playing: Mountainfilm

Ever flip through your television channels only to discover that nothing is on? It happens to me all the time: I’ll click through the listings until I finally succumb to yet another predictable piece of programming. Fortunately you can avoid this endless cycle by planning ahead, so consider this your primer for the week. Enjoy watching dynamic independent documentary films? Care to have your mind stimulated by some of the world’s greatest artists, activists and athletes? Then tune into Outside Film Festival: Mountainfilm, hosted by me and Lynsey Dyer now airing on—where else?—Outside Television.

On Thursday we’ll begin airing Last Paradise, a film from director Clive Neeson that traces how several teenagers playing in the New Zealand wilderness eventually created a worldwide extreme sports movement. It includes footage from 45 years of extreme sports pioneers, surfing huge waves and leaping from bridges before anyone even coined the term bungee-jumping. Adrenaline junkies won’t want to miss this one.

That night we’ll begin airing American Outrage, a documentary from veteran film makers George and Beth Gage that profiles two elderly Western Shoshone sisters who confront the U.S. government and local mining interests to protect their land from being destroyed. I had the great pleasure of interviewing the Gage’s while at Mountainfilm last year and their passion for this project is unsurpassed—clearly, another must see.

Friday features two films from vastly different worlds but both equally moving. The first is Barefoot to Timbuktu, about a Swiss-American artist and real estate mogul who returns to the Sahara sixteen years after a three-year stay to help villagers build a network of wells and gardens. The second is Wipeout, which follows extreme sports athletes whose lives have been changed after suffering traumatic brain injuries. If you like to skate, ski or mountain bike, this film is sure to make you reconsider leaving that helmet at home.

The artistry continues on Saturday with Throw Down Your Heart, a travel film for music-lovers that follows American banjo virtuoso Béla Flek on his journey to Africa to explore the roots of the banjo. “I thought it was important for people to realize where the banjo comes from,” he says in the film. “A lot of people from the United States don’t realize that the banjo is an African instrument.” Indeed it is, and it’s inspiring to watch Flek perform his music with indigenous African tribesmen of all kinds.

Finally, that night don’t miss The Linguists, a hilarious and poignant chronicle of two scientists racing to document languages on the verge of extinction in Siberia, India, and Bolivia. It’s really an amazing story: With a $520,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support the film, David Harrison and Gregory Anderson set off on a three-year journey to capture the dying bounty of human vernacular.

Inspirational films across the board and clearly the reason why Mountainfilm in Telluride is known for celebrating indomitable spirit. For program times be sure to check out our schedule page and to get Outside Television in your area, use our handy zip code locater found at the top right of our homepage.

To learn more about David LaHuta's life in Bermuda read Bermuda Shorts at http://DavidLaHuta.blogspot.com

And to follow his adventures on Twitter visit https://twitter.com/DavidLaHuta