Everyday Activist - Born To Fly

Posted on Tuesday, May 26, 2015 at 07:00 PM

"Wanna Fly?"

Review: Born To Fly

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

I knew this film was coming to Arts Common's Art!Flicks since January, as I was posting the 2015 documentary series onto our meetup site. As luck would have it PBS also decided to screen the film on Independent Lens last week, May 11th, 2015. In the opening scenes Elizabeth Streb muses over the concept of time. Watching the film, I thought about timing too. For those in the climbing world, Dean Potter lost his life in a wing suit accident on May 16th, 2015. He loved human flight as much as Elizabeth does. If you go to her website, she has a beautiful tribute to him. He won her Action Maverick award, which celebrates people who push the limits of the human experience. As such, a dinner and ceremony to honor Dean Potter was held on May 18th, 2015 from STREB. 

Given the amount of harnesses seen in this film, it’s easy to make the climbing connection to Elizabeth Streb’s dance choreography, though that’s not initially where my mind went. At first I wanted to compare her work to Cirque de Soleil, but her works aren’t elegant in the way we think of dance or aerial circus acts; instead they are pure, raw, blue collared emotion spilled onto the stage. Her father was a brick layer and when you watch the shows in the film, you can see the “industrial influence” in her choreography. You can sense the determination to “push through” the pain of life to discover the joys of the other side. I can only imagine what a live performance would feel like.

Director, Catherine Gund, made wonderful choices of exhibiting a cross section of pivotal works throughout Streb’s career, which spans four decades. The early stuff was gritty (though she uses the word grizzly) and physically demanding. The later ones were still physically demanding, but I felt like they required more reflection. In 2012, Streb's work was at the London Olympics and will be seen on this side of the ocean at another sporting event in Toronto, the Pan Am / Para Pan American Games in mid-July 2015. Speaking of Cirque de Soleil, since Montreal is relatively close to Toronto, her company will also perform at the Just for Laughs festival at the end of July 2015.

If you missed this film on PBS, you have the opportunity to see it in a beautiful theatre with lots of people, pick up your FREE tickets at Arts Commons for June 11th, 2015 for the 6:30 pm / 8:30 pm shows as part of their Art!Flicks program.

Calgary Local Scene: Art!Flicks: Born To Fly >