In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Reel Paddling Film Festival, we checked back with a few filmmakers whose films we’ve featured over the past ten years. You can find more stories on past filmmakers in the pages of our Early Summer issue to catch up with them and find out what they’ve been up to since their films embarked on our annual world tour.
“Starvation, dismemberment, death—it’s all there, Graham Island,” Frank Wolf says by way of introduction in the opening scenes of Shining Island.
Later, with weather delays and failing equipment having developed as recurring themes, a voiceover narration hails the month-long expedition as an “overwhelming test of courage, strength and sanity,” concluding without a trace of irony, “A journey close to the fine line between life and death as we know it.” As we know it?
In 2005, when Wolf—then 34 and paying the bills with a retail gig at Vancouver’s Mountain Equipment Co-op outdoor store—planned the circumnavigation of Haida Gwaii, a remote archipelago in northern British Columbia, he was already an experienced adventurer: canoeing 8,000 kilometers across Canada in 1995, cycling 2,000 kilometers along the Yukon River in the dead of winter in 2003, and paddling across Scandinavia in 2004. But after just a couple years of working in television, he was still finding his footing as a filmmaker.
“Shining Island was the last film I did under the thumb of a production company,” he says. After airing on the network television series X-Quest, “The awful writing and over-the-top narrator the production company inserted into the film convinced me to strike out on my own.”
It’s a move that has worked out well for Wolf. In the decade since, he’s independently conceived, written, directed, edited and produced five award-winning adventure documentaries. His breakout effort, Borealis (2008), shared the endearing story of an epic canoe journey with inexperienced co-paddler Taku Hokoyama. Wolf followed up with two more films documenting northern canoe expeditions, Mammalian (2010) and Kitturiaq (2013). In 2011, On the Line brought him acclaim outside the paddling community for delving into the issues surrounding the controversial Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. Wolf says this environmental and cultural awareness is his most significant evolution since Shining Island.
“My films then were just about the expeditions, but now they’re equally about issues affecting a region and what we can do to preserve these wildernesses far into the future.”
Other things haven’t changed. Wolf continues to work a couple days a week at Mountain Equipment Co-op in the winter season. “Outdoor filmmaking is definitely more of a lifestyle than a living,” he says, “so a job that kicks in a steady bread-and-butter income is still a necessity.”
He also remains close friends with his Haida Gwaii trip mates Keith Klapstein, 41—a fellow Vancouverite and regular mountain biking partner—and Todd Macfie, 42. “They both have families now though,” he adds, “so long expeditions are out for them.”
Wolf, however, remains addicted to expedition life. His recently released film, The Hand of Franklin, looks at climate change in the Arctic in the context of a 55-day rowing journey through the Northwest Passage. The challenges of living and filming on the move in hostile environments are many, but that’s precisely why he loves it.
“I do a big expedition every year, but ideally only make a film every two years,” he says. “I like to have a mental space between films. I think I’d burn out otherwise.”
The Film: Shining Island
Jarring made-for-TV hyperbole makes this film less enjoyable to watch than Wolf’s later independent productions, but it took Best Sea Kayaking Film at RPFF 2007. Gale-force winds, dwindling food supplies and a frightfully close whale encounter are some of the high- (er, low?) lights. 46 minutes, 2006; frank-wolf.net
This article first appeared in the Early Summer 2015 issue of Adventure Kayak magazine.
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