Award-winning film from Lancashire-based climber, performance artist, photographer and film-maker Alastair Lee and trust us, it's a cracker.
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Twice Upon A Time In Bolivia DVD
Tested
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Price: £17.99
plus £2 p and p, so that's erm, £19.99 plus
£450 air ticket.
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Weight: 100 grammes (including
box)
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Features:It's a
DVD with extras including Alastair's video short 'I Am
Climbing', winner of People's Choice Award at the 2004
Kendal Mountain Film Festival.
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Funny, original, entertaining and Bolivian too.
Made us want to go back to Bolivia
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The Concept Alastair Lee is a Lanchashire-based climber,
photographer, film maker and stand-up artiste as well as being a
one-time OM contributor, and Twice Upon A Time in Bolivia is his
latest DVD, so called because - surprisingly enough - it's the story
of a climbing trip to Bolivia's Cordillera Real with two mates. Or
more accurately two trips since it also contains footage from Al's
unsuccessful honeymoon attempt on 6,000-metre Huayana Potosi. And all
in a broad Lanchashire accent.
The film won the People's Choice Award at last year's Kendal
Mountain Film Festival and, a few weeks back, the 'Jury's Award' at
the Vancouver Mountain Film Festival.
Features It's a DVD which, along with the actual film also
includes Al's video short 'I Am Climbing'. And it comes with a free
plastic case.
In Action For some reason Twice Upon A Time disagreed strongly
with our iMac's DVD-player and so spent many weeks gathering dust
under a pile of press releases. A big mistake on our part as it's one
of the best and most original climbing videos we've seen.
You can forget about the dry, 'trying oh so hard to be epic'
climbing films you've had injflicted on you in the past; Twice Upon A
Time In Bolivia is a far more realistic account of 'three no-hopers
from Lancashire's grimmest corner (Burnley)' climbing normal routes
on beautiful mountains in an extraordinary country. Some really
stunning mountain footage is nicely bound together with great gobs of
dry northern humour and some funky graphics.
It's a very funny, entertaining, lively film that anyone who's
been on a foreign climbing trip with mates will instantly relate to.
You get all the classic ingredients of high altitude mountaineering -
altitude sickness, cold, suffering, frostbite - but Alastair's
special extra touches including computer-generated graphics, deranged
dead-pan dialogue and most crucially, an awareness that you don't
have to be climbing death routes to have a good time, take the film
to another level.
Forget self-sacrificing pushes to Camp Six and stoic suffering in
the face of insurmountable odds, the Burnley boys are always happy to
admit that they're shattered or sick,elated or pissed off and hey,
isn't that what it's all about?
Like your own memories of an Andean climbing trip by proxy. The dull
bits are whisked over in a blur of humour and computer graphics and
the highlights burn bright in your memory, warts and all. This is a
thoroughly original, very funny and highly entertaining climbing film
that makes up in creative ability and imagination what it lacks in
budget. Totally recommended to anyone who likes mountains and wants
to see normal people climbing at altitide. We like this a lot.
You can download a Quicktime or WMV taster from the DVD at the
Posing
Productions site.
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Performance
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Value
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Pushed for time:
Brilliant, funny, dry, Lancastrian film about climbing
in the Bolivian Andes. Buy it.
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