Rocklands Movie

One thing I have come to realize about Colorado College is that there is SO much funding available to students if you know where to look.  Separately the friends and family of CC students Ritt Kellogg and Jerry Alberg have created two funds that help the outdoor programs keep running.  One can get money for everything from library materials to hiring a guiding service (college insurance) to take new climbers outside to getting complete funding to explore backcountry bouldering in the high Sierras or Alaska during the summer.  I have recently requested a number of new items for the library, including the Bishop and Red River Gorge guidebooks, the movies Spray and Rocklands, and a book of essays and photos about bouldering called Stone Play.  I just watched the movie Rocklands today and thought I would tell people a little about it considering I had not heard much about it besides that it was on an area where even a poorly done movie could still be rad.  As it turns out, the movie is really very good.  It balances interviews (the good Memento kind not the bad stoned Chris Sharma kind) with lots of footage of classic looking problems from V4 to V14. The movie was made a few years ago but just recently was released outside of South Africa.  The filming techniques take advantage of some straight Hollywood shit (well beyond what Big Up is doing right now, defiantly watch the "Making Of" section).  The movie was also filmed on actual film, like Memento, but does not have the crispness of High Definition.  The movie follows Fred Nicole, Bernd Zangerl, Scott Milton and others on what I believe was their first trip to the Cederberg Wilderness Area after being convinced it was the future of bouldering by Todd Skinner.  The only thing that left me hanging a little bit was the Dave Graham project dot dot dot-esk finish to the movie when Fred Nicole fails to complete what may now be the hardest problem in the world, Amandala.  Needless to say, even the footage of Fred not doing the problem is very impressive.