The Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival, featuring mountain film screenings, live multimedia presentations, photography exhibitions, workshops, seminars and other special events, runs Feb. 9-17 at various venues around the Lower Mainland including Centennial Theatre, Kay Meek Centre and Hollyburn Lodge. Info and tickets: vimff.org. Freeride mountain biker and filmmaker Darcy Hennessey Turenne’s documentary The Moment screens Feb. 15, 7:30 p.m. at Centennial Theatre.
Freeride mountain biking filmmaker Darcy Hennessey Turenne and her cast of characters, including North Shore legends Todd “Digger” Fiander and Wade Simmons, will make you dizzy with disbelief.
Turenne’s recently released film, The Moment, pushes these pioneers into the spotlight and focuses on the origin of a high-octane sport in our mountains.
In the mid-1990s freeriding was gaining ground on the North Shore, with these adventure seekers anonymously carving their paths in history – in a pre-Instagram, pre-internet era.
The Moment pays homage to a small movement of mountain bikers and filmmakers, who rose up, challenged the status quo and turned the sport of cycling on its head.
Driving the film with their firsthand accounts of landing massive wheelie drops and barrelling along cedar-slat ladders on a style of trail that came to be known worldwide as “North Shore” are Digger, Simmons, Brett Tippie, “Dangerous” Dan Cowan and prolific photographer Sterling Lorence.
“They are the riders and contributors that have significance today in the mountain bike industry,” says Turenne.
Most of The Moment features archival freeriding footage from the 1990s, captured with eight-millimetre cameras mounted on equally bulky helmets.
Digger took the highlights and built an audience for the freeriding crusade through his North Shore Extreme series, which he would peddle at Cove Bikes and other shops around town.
Turenne talks about her filmmaking process and weeding through hundreds of hours’ worth of old footage shot over a defining decade in North Shore mountain biking history.
Something in particular Turenne learned about the movement shocked her.
“I was surprised by how much resistance they had from the mountain bike industry,” she says. “Nobody really wanted to embrace the (freeride) sport at the beginning and there was a lot of resistance because racing was considered the end-all, be-all.”
Turenne had been there, done that and was bored with the sanctioned side of the sport.
The former pro rider grew up shredding the trails in the Comox Valley in the ’90s. When Turenne was in Grade 7, her school’s librarian started an all-girls mountain biking club and she was stoked.
“I guess just the freedom of being out in nature with my friends, feeling like there weren’t any rules,” she recalls. “It was just a lot of fun to go fast and fly through the forest on a bike.”
At first Turenne’s parents were not supportive of their daughter’s love affair with the high-octane sport, but she says they came around eventually. Mom and dad stood on the sidelines to cheer Turenne on in her mountain bike races, and then beside her in the hospital when she would occasionally break her wrist.
“It definitely made me stronger and I saw that I could overcome things like that,” says Turenne, of shaking off the injuries.
Turenne eventually broke free from the biking course and focused on freeriding. The two contrasting sides of the sport are laid out in gritty detail in the film, which slants towards the freedom in freeriding and taking chances in the forest.
“I was so bored of being told where I could ride, how I could ride, when I had to ride. Racing to me is not about creative. And I’m a pretty creative person,” says Turenne, explaining why she made the shift.
Turenne was in her teens the first time she pointed her bike down Mount Fromme. The terrain had a familiar aura and reminded Turenne of the trails back home on the island. Many of the so-called North Shore-style stunts had been replicated there.
“But it definitely had an air of significance because you heard so much about it in the media,” says Turenne of the North Shore Mountains.
Hard to go unnoticed are past conflicts in the area among the different trail users and opposition from residents whose homes fringe the forest and the wonderland of trails. Turenne says shocking cases of trail sabotage are covered in the film.
The Moment also zeros in on Kamloops, where freeriding was also gaining momentum in the 1990s and the scene of seminal mountain biking movies and magazine articles.
Whereas freeriders have more obstacles to contend with on the North Shore in very technical, wet and extreme conditions, in Kamloops some of the trails are wide open gravel pits with terrain similar to a ski slope.
Turenne first picked up the video camera six years ago while studying at Royal Roads University and recovering from ankle surgery related to a biking injury. It was a fortuitous accident because it led Turenne to filmmaking.
Since then, Turenne has written and directed short films, commercials, and music videos in exotic locales and close to home for clients ranging from Coca-Cola to Patagonia to Jive Records. Her latest short, Jackieland, was accepted to the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
Meanwhile, The Moment premiered at the Whistler Film Festival in December, with upcoming screenings scheduled throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Bringing more validation to the sport that pushes boundaries and educating people on the humble beginnings of freeriding is what Turenne hopes to achieve through the documentary.
“I think that in order for a sport to know where it’s going, it’s good to know where it’s come from,” she says. “History gives legitimacy to a sport.”
Freeriding has had a huge impact on mountain biking as we know it today, says Turenne, with its own culture that includes fashion and festivals.
Turenne’s VIMFF talk will revive interviews from the cutting-room floor and praise unsung heroes of the movement, including North Shore freerider Carys Evans.
“She was schooling the guys and riding just the most incredible stuff you could ever imagine,” says Turenne.
After her presentation, stars of the film including Simmons and Tippie will join Turenne on stage for more inside scoop about how they changed the direction of mountain biking.
Ultimately, Turenne hopes the high-adrenaline film will have the audience feeling the rush that comes from unbridled adventure in the forest.
“That’s the goal,” she says.
