In its second year of touring U.S. cities, the Women’s Adventure Film Tour (WAFT), with its stories highlighting remarkable women and their exhilarating adventures, will screen eight new short films on March 14 at 7:30pm at The Arts Campus At Willits (TACAW).
It began years ago at an adventure film festival when Toby Ryston-Pratt was asked a poignant question by his young daughter: Why are there no women or girls in these films?
Ryston-Pratt, whose home base is Sydney, Australia, said, “I started researching the proportion of women in films with sports content, which was significantly lower than that of men.”
Mother’s Day 2017 was coming up, and “we thought, why don’t we put something together for a one-off event to celebrate, and I went about sourcing films.” The event drew 800 attendees.
While Ryston-Pratt said he “was a bit shocked by the turnout,” he knew he was on to something, and with that, founded WAFT.
They collaborated with a few women’s groups and toured Australia.
“The pre-target marketing [for WAFT] began to spread like wildfire in the United Kingdom and Europe and places like Singapore and Hong Kong,” he recalled.
He connected with a group of film distributors and built a worldwide infrastructure through his founding of Adventure Entertainment, whose “mission is to inspire people to get out and adventure via world-class outdoor adventure film content, events and media offerings.”
Film lineup includes…
- “NGR: The Fabulous Life of Nancy Greene Raine” which chronicles the remarkable journey of the Canadian skiing legend, Olympic gold medalist and former senator in the Canadian Parliament. Raine was voted as Canada’s Female Athlete of the 20th Century.
- In “For My Daughter’s Sake,” fly fisher, block print artist and mom Danielle said she wanted “to teach my girls to be their own person, and to like their own things, and not lose themselves as they get older because society tells you that you have to like these things or you have to do these things as a woman.”
- “The Destiny of a Sherpa Woman” follows Yangji’s poignant journey back to her impoverished village in the Mount Everest region, after escaping mountain life as a teenager, to return as a seasoned mountain guide. One of Yangji’s goals is to promote women into leadership roles in Nepal.
- Nine years ago, cyclist Anna Lena Kempen began the Frigid Bitch Race, an annual alley-cat-style cycling event geared toward women and underrepresented genders in the cycling community. In “A Bitch of A Race,” Kempen said about the event, “I love the way the competitiveness and the badassery manifest” as women find an inclusive space to display their determination and toughness.
- “Solo” follows Edinburgh, Scotland-born endurance athlete Jenny Tough, who, in 2021, became the first person to run across a mountain range on six continents, solo and unsupported. Tough narrates, “I was definitely raised that there is only one life path in this world, and that is [to] get good grades, go to a good university, graduate, get a job, get a husband, get a house. Do those things and then just coast it out until you die,” she continued. “Leave the hometown that you’re from and go explore the world — no, that was never encouraged; it was never seen as a prospect.”
- The WAFT film roster rounds out with: “The Girl That Found Happiness,” where an aerial silks dancer performs while in flight under a hot air balloon; “The Ascension Series: Morag Skelton,” which follows an ice climber who doesn’t let deafness limit her adventures; and “Extreme Minds: Freediving Segment,” which explores the stories of athletes who have come to understand the psychology of adventure therapy and the transformative power of extreme sports to improve mental and emotional well-being and build resilience.
“It’s a very diverse group of people and cultures represented in these films … The stories, with every demographic, we get insights into their lives and them doing incredible things,” Ryston-Pratt said.
Doors open at 6:30pm for the all-ages, seated show. Tickets are $15 for members, $20 in advance and $25 on the day of the show, with a limit of four tickets per purchaser. For more information, go to tacaw.org