On Friday, March 6, the University of Northern Iowa’s Film Appreciation Club, Philosophy Club and Green Project will co-host a film festival called MountainFilm On Tour. This event will be held in Kamerick Art Building Room 111 and is free to the public.

Representatives from MountainFilm will visit UNI and allow screenings of two and half hours of their short films, which run about fifteen minutes each. Hunter Friesen, junior accounting major at UNI and Film Appreciation Club President, said “[MountainFilm On Tour is] a company based in Telluride, Colorado and they have […] an annual film festival there […] and then after that, they go on the road and take all those films and they just go around the country and [UNI is] going to be one of those spots.”

Each of the MountainFilm short films originates from different cultures and countries across the globe.

“They’re from like all over the world. Like one’s from […] Nepal. It’s about this guy who climbs Mount Everest […] Some are from  Spain and quite a bit are from America,” Friesen said.

According to Friesen, the films each serve as a part of a larger narrative about how humans interact with the environment, whether that be through sports, hiking or culture.

Friesen explained that audience members learn about “different people, different areas around the world and how they interact with the environment and how the environment interacts with us.”

“You can […] see all these different things you just didn’t think about either. Like, there’s this one we’re going to do; it’s about this boy in Tibet. He is super interested in hockey but Tibet has no hockey, so it’s just his journey of playing hockey in Tibet and how he can use the environment around the mountains to help play it,” he said.

Due to how the films’ focus on the relationship between humans and our environment, UNI’s Film Appreciation Club teamed up with Philosophy Club and Green Project. Last year, they worked together to bring MountainFilm On Tour to UNI for the Cedar Falls community to experience MountainFilm. This will be the second time MountainFilm On Tour has visited UNI.

According to Friesen, nearly 100 people turned up for MountainFilm On Tour in 2019. Due to last year’s high turn out, Film Appreciation Club, Philosophy Club and Green Project decided to host MountainFilm again this year.

“It’s just a really fun time. You get to see all these stories from different walks of life. […] People think documentaries sometimes are a little boring, but these are all adventurous ones. I know there’s skiing; there’s one about mountain biking, motorcycles and stuff. It’s […] very interesting and exciting stuff but you also learn something as well. […] You get to socialize with people. […] It’s just a fun [series of] movies to watch,” Friesen said.

For more information on MountainFilm, visit https://www.mountainfilm.org/. To learn more about UNI’s upcoming  MountainFilm on Tour event, see the Facebook event at https://www.facebook.com/events/376804856521706/.