SPOTLIGHT FILMS: The Crash Reel
By Contributor
On Tuesday March 25 at 7:30 pm Spotlight Films will be showing “The Crash Reel” at the Gem Theatre. This film is done verite style, which combines improvisation and camera to unveil a truth or highlight subjects hidden behind crude reality, in this case the explosive issue of traumatic brain injury. This is a telling tale of a darker side of extreme winter sports, ski and snowboard cross, aerials, half-piping, etc.
Fifteen years of film footage show the epic rivalry between half-pipe legends Shaun White and Kevin Pearce, childhood friends who become number one and two in the world leading up to the Vancouver Winter Olympics, pushing one another to ever more dangerous tricks, until Kevin crashes on a Park City half-pipe, suffering massive head trauma and barely surviving. Park City is where Canadian Aerialist, Sarah Burke was killed during a practice run January 19 2012. Burke is celebrated in this film………small comfort.
As Kevin recovers from his injury, Shaun wins Gold.
This eye-popping, jaw dropping, yet intimate, story exposes the potentially high price of participating in extreme-action sports. After the accident Pearce’s tight-knit Vermont family flew to his side, and together they began an intensive process of trying to rehabilitate him and help him rebuild his permanently damaged life. Kevin’s determination and the tireless support of family and friends kept him focused on recovery. But when he insisted he wanted to return to the sport he loved, his family objected. As an elite athlete, Kevin was a professional risk taker, but as a brain-injury survivor, his skills were now impaired, and even a small blow to the head could kill him.
This deeply emotional film, directed by Lucy Walker (“Wasteland” and “Devil’s Playground”) and produced by Julian Cautherley, won seven awards, including Dallas International Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival for both Walker and Cautherly.
This nicely filmed piece of art premiered at the XGames in 2013, in Aspen, the first ever movie to play as a featured part of the event.
Thanks to IMDB (Internet Movie Database), Rotten Tomatoes, Dylan Fittock, our patrons and sponsors and to Maureen and Marius Paquet of the Gem Theatre.
