“Wildwater: A Love Story”: a new film about the soul of whitewater

Forge Motion Pictures has just finished shooting action and interviews for “Wildwater: A love story” a film about the soul of whitewater. In the film we show what this love affair with beautiful rivers is, what is so compelling about flowing water, and why people are so drawn to rivers.

Filmmaker Anson Fogel teams up with Doug Ammons to tell this love story, and more, using incredible Hollywood level high definition footage from scenic desert rivers to super-charged steep creeks and jungle rivers. The film is shot in the Grand Canyon, Yule Creek, jungle rivers in Ecuador, Tumwater Canyon in Washington, and the North Fork of the Payette in Idaho with a wide assortment of kayakers and river runners. Insightful commentary is taken from dozens of interviews and woven into the visual stream. It is a deep look at what draws us to rivers and what we find there.

The full length film should be done by the beginning of August, and will be submitted to the Banff Film Festival, other festivals, and then released for showings in various premiers. Doug and Anson intend to do introductions at specific venues. At some point it will be available commercially.

You can view several teasers showing footage from the film on Vimeo. The easiest way to do this is google up “Vimeo North Fork of the Payette teaser”. I believe you’ll be amazed – you then can select from the other teasers, from Ecuador and the Grand Canyon. The first two weeks after the North Fork teaser was put online, it had more than 50,000 views. When you watch it you’ll see why.

You can also view selected other teasers by going to Anson’s website, “Forge Motion Pictures”, select “Film” and then select “teasers” on the next screen.

A few quotes from the “Wildwater” interviews with Doug Ammons
These are examples of comments within the movie
In this interview, I was answering the questions:

       Why are waterfalls special?
       Why is kayaking special?

“What paddling has done for me is put together everything I ever wanted to do into one single activity. It has music, it has challenge, it has athleticism, excitement, problem solving, it has quiet, it has undercurrents and subtlety, it has poetry, it has everything for me. It took all the different currents, all the different threads of my life and put them into one kind of experience.

“Even to do it on a fairly simple level demands that the person learn some pretty substantial things. And it also demands an openness to potentially threatening experiences that a lot of people don’t like. I mean some people can look at it as a mind blowing, door opening experience into the natural world, which is what I felt. But other people are much more threatened by the sense of, perhaps, losing control and getting hurt. But I'm excited by it. I'm fascinated by that edge because it’s this crux point about learning, you know, you feel like you are touching the key to the universe when you're out there. For some people it becomes this passionate love affair, this thing that you can’t get enough of, that you must have, this incredible sensory experience, as if the river is drawing out of you this core part of your being.”

“Being on a big rock wall with huge peaks all around you is an unbelievable experience. Hearing the carabineers and the protection clang against the walls, it’s this beautiful harp-like sound from the heavens. You're up there, you're seeing every crystal, hearing the wind through the rope, against the edge of the cliff, around the corner.”

“And the same kind of thing is true when you're on the water, you're hearing this roar from the river, and if you tune your senses in, you can hear every little whisper from every eddy. What happens is that you get this intricate sense of being woven into the surrounding world. Every one of your decisions reflects that surrounding world and every one of them makes a huge difference, even determining whether you live or die. You're constantly learning, your moment to moment decisions and judgments keep you safe, and allow you to live there in those spectacular, improbable places. That’s an incredibly inspiring thing.”

“What it means most of all, is freedom. Freedom in the biggest sense. That you're able to step out into a different world, under your own power – a kayak is as close as you can get to having your own private spaceship while still being on this planet.”

“Why are waterfalls special? That’s one of those simple questions that are easy to ask but not always easy to answer. Waterfalls are probably the single most dramatic thing that anybody could think of or do in paddling. They’re really in a class of their own. I think part of that is how it sums up the sport visually. For example, when you see a paddler in a big rapid, especially if you're a non-paddler, you can’t tell what's going on. The water’s chaotic, it’s exploding, the guy is aiming this way, his paddle’s in a weird position, and you can’t tell what the hell he’s doing. But if you see the guy suddenly launching off this massive waterfall with the water plunging down and he is this tiny little frail person up there - he’s flying. You can see the whole rapid, it’s all expressed there in the height, plunging into the abyss. You can just look at it and go “wow” – this small human, this massive power, and it’s right there visually and instantaneous. Anybody can understand it.”

“And also it’s a great experience. You know you’re literally cutting free from the water into flight. It’s a beautiful symbolic thing. It’s a grand gesture about human freedom. …”

“So waterfalls have a special place because visually they're just spectacular. They can concentrate what appears to be all the difficulty and drama of a huge natural cataclysm into one single picture that makes your jaw drop. That’s not the case if you have a big cascade and have a paddler struggling through it, even though it might be much, much harder.”

“So waterfalls seem to condense everything down in this one spectacular, beautiful image and experience. It all happens within a few seconds in a beautiful, sweeping, single shot, whereas running a difficult complicated rapid or river might take minutes, hours, days, weeks, and you can’t express that complexity in a single shot or even a full movie.”

“What is so special about kayaking? To me there are many, many aspects to this, but here are two things that I consider to be beautiful statements about what kayaking is and the freedom that it gives you. The first one is just getting in a boat and pushing off the bank. Once you’ve pushed off the bank you are in this fluid world, you are in an alien but deeply beautiful world that works by completely different rules from the solid world you’ve left behind. Even if you are only a few feet off the bank, you have just entered a different universe.”

“And the other one is launching off a big waterfall, because you're going from a fluid environment into flight, into the air. And I believe those two things are expressions of the most beautiful desires that humans seek: that we separate ourselves from this world and go into a greater world. You know, imagining ourselves stretching into the great unknown on the uncharted ocean in a ship, or imagining ourselves becoming a bird and flying. I mean it’s this symbolic escape from the human condition.…”

“Paddling puts you in a situation where you have the possibility of being completely ripped out of control and spewed out, torn down into the heart of the planet by an elemental force that you can’t control. That’s the threat, but it’s also the beauty, because if you can shape the threat through the skills you develop, which is what our sport does, it is what all of our techniques do, then it allows us to enter one of the primal forces of the planet, work with it and understand it in the deepest sense, and that is a profound experience…”.