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The Boulder-based crew at Sender Films won the Radical Reels People’s Choice Award at the 2013 Banff Mountain Film Festival for “The Sensei,” a 26-minute short chronicling Daniel Woods’s trip to Borneo for an apprenticeship with climbing legend Yuji Hirayama after the local bouldering prodigy won an opportunity to train with him in Japan. The documentary is now on the road with the Radical Reels Film Tour, which is making a stop at the Colorado Mountain Club’s American Mountaineering Center, 710 Tenth Street in Golden.
At first, “The Sensei” feels like an updated Karate Kid, from Hirayama’s opening lines — “In Japan, there is a Shinto idea that all natural objects have a life: For example, when we go climbing, we worship the rock” — right down to Hirayama calling Woods “Daniel-san.” But forget “Sweep the leg, Johnny”: By the time the duo is scaling the spires of Mount Kinabalu, this film is its own thing entirely.
Other festival highlights include kayaker Ben Stokesberry’s “Walled In;” Norwegian ski epic “Supervention;” Celin Serbo’s “Off-Width Outlaw,” a profile of crack climber Pamela Shanti Pack; and “Outlines,” an unbelievable short starring World Wingsuit Champion Espen Fadnes. The eleven-film program will be shown at 7 p.m. tonight, then repeat nightly through Saturday. Tickets for Radical Reels are $15; visit cmc.org for information and reservations.
Oct. 9-11, 7-10 p.m., 2014
