Boulder International Film Festival Recap
My Experience at BIFF
A few weeks ago I attended my first big in-person film festival: the Boulder International Film Festival. I had been accepted to five other film festivals before this, but never had the chance to visit any of them since I was busy shooting other projects. There’s a lot to unpack but, in summary, it has been so beautiful to watch audience members learn more about Ignite Adaptive Sports and get inspired to help it thrive
Filmmaker Networking Parties
Boulder International Film Festival begin for me on Friday night with a handful of filmmaker networking parties. They took over a couple awesome venues downtown and gave us nearly a dozen free drink tickets and let us loose. Although I am definitely an extroverted person and enjoy socializing at these types of things, I admittedly had a bit of social anxiety and imposter syndrome walking into this room. The other films that have been accepted were completed by filmmakers that, on average, had about 25 years more experience than I do. The average age of the festival also put me in a significantly younger category and but it was still fun to interact with everybody all weekend nonetheless.
After attending some blowout parties on Friday, I went to the Adventure Shorts Pavilion to watch some of the other Adventure films and chat with the other adventure filmmakers after the screenings, some of whom I just met at those parties a couple hours before. Then, the after parties began. You can kind of glean from the weekend that there was a lot of socializing. There seemed to be an endless stream of parties held for us filmmakers to get to know each other and the people that are watching our films.
Showing my Film
On Saturday, my film was being shown at 3 PM so I decided to take the morning to go on a trail run with friends and get some free breakfast at the festival organizers provided for us filmmakers. By the time my screening came around a lot of the nerves of the weekend has subsided. After nearly a decade of getting on stage for music performances and film presentations I never get nervous in front of large crowds anymore. I feel a lot more comfortable talking on stage in front of hundreds of people than walking into a party that I didn’t know anybody but after doing both this weekend, neither ended up being too bad. My film screened at the Adventure Shorts Pavilion on Saturday along side Free to Run, Flow, Haulout and a couple others.
The joy of being local
After my film screening is over, I chatted with some fans in the lobby then headed home. One of my favorite parts of this weekend was that because of the locations of the theaters, as well as the central location of my home in Boulder, I was able to walk to everything. There were a number of filmmakers that had flown in from various parts of the world but I got to spend my free time hanging with my girlfriend or close friends in town. Having this festival take place with a lot of my friends and fellow Boulder locals in the audience was super great.
On Saturday night, the Reel Rock premier went down that I maybe should’ve gone too but I was pretty burnt out at that point. I helped edit one of the Reel Rock films this year with Sender Films and have been through every single frame of those films so watching them again after spending over four hours each day watching films during the festival, I wanted to spend some quality time with some friends that were in town visiting.
Finding Balance
By Sunday, a lot of the activities were beginning to slow down for me so I spent the morning volunteering at church with some of the kiddos. One of my favorite parts about working with kids is that you can forget what’s going on in your normal life and really focus on having fun with them. They had no idea that the day before I was on stage presenting my film for a few hundred people. For me, a lot of those big moments need to be complemented by beautiful small moments to make life feel balanced and fulfilling.
At the end of the day we had a closing party that I was hesitant to go to because I was so exhausted from a weekend of not much sleep but I’m happy that I made the effort to go. The filmmakers behind Free to Run, now new friends of mine, had won the award for best adventure short so it was really fun to celebrate them and their achievements on an incredible film and a huge effort. For real though - you should watch Free to Run, super incredible storytelling!
Representing the Boulder filmmaking community
All in all, this weekend was really special for me. There were definitely a lot of moments where I felt a lot of imposter syndrome and didn’t feel that I was playing in the same league as the older more experienced filmmakers, but I learned a lot and felt super honored to be there representing the local Boulder filmmaking community. The following weekend my film screened in Nederland as a part of the Backcountry Film Festival which allowed me to connect with a more outdoors focused crowd up in the mountains.
After all those screenings and in-person events feel free to check out the film for FREE below!
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Roo is a commercial/documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Boulder, Colorado but travels all around the world for his filmmaking career. He has produced films for Outside Magazine in Ireland, camera operated for Netflix in the Rocky Mountain West, photographed among indigenous communities in Peru and Ecuador, directed videos with professional climbers in Mexico and has received notable recognition in his hometown of Orcas Island in Washington State for his work telling uplifting stories in the outdoor space.
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