And...We're Back!

Talk about a hiatus. Traveling to and from Telluride is usually a fairly easy endeavour—if you don’t live in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, that is. More than one week and five airports later Bermuda Shorts is back with the latest and greatest from Bermuda’s sunny shores. But first a bit about MountainFilm, because really, how can I not tell you about this amazing confluence of artists, activists and athletes. What started out as a few mountaineers who wanted to climb during the day and watch films at night has, over thirty years later, turned into an inspired gathering of aware people doing aware things. Like Nico Calabria, a one-legged boy who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money and wheelchairs for mobility-impaired people in Tanzania (watch his triumphant ascent in the short film, Nico’s Challenge). Or filmmaker Josh Fox, whose documentary Gasland exposes the toxic side of natural gas drilling (in case you hadn’t heard, it causes some Americans to have flammable tap water—now just imagine if you drank it). And perhaps most moving of all, director Louie Psihoyos whose film The Cove won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, a movie which uncovered the horrific practice of dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan (Long story short: over 23,000 dolphins are brutally murdered in Japan every year and their mercury-poisoned carcasses were being fed to local schoolchildren, until this film exposed it all. Chilling). If I’ve at all piqued your interest—and I sure hope I have—then the good news you can watch these films and more on Outside Television, the brand new network that will air Outside Film Festival: MountainFilm, starring pro-skier Lynsey Dyer and yours truly this November. And in case you don’t get Outside Television, have no fear. The network should be coming to a TV near you very, very soon. And so my friends, thanks for your patience. Your island news and tropical updates will officially return tomorrow.