Hood to Coast
Documentary Feature, Spotlight Premieres
D: Christoph Baaden, Marcie Hume;
with Katy Ryan
Sometimes the race is secondary, Baaden and Hume tell us in this beautifully shot and heartfelt doc about an annual team running event from Oregon’s Mount Hood, past Portland and on to the ocean’s edge. Instead, as in most successful documentaries, it’s the personal stories that draw viewers in. Here those include Kathy Ryan, an experienced runner in her 60s who collapsed and died for two minutes during a previous race. She is back – against the advice of her doctor – a year later to do it again. Then there are the grieving survivors of a 30-year-old man whose own heart gave out from an undiagnosed defect just before his wife was to give birth to their son. He ran the race with his father as a 12-year-old; now his widow, mother, and brother trudge along and remember. Shot with 25 cameras, you can taste the sweat, feel the pain, and relish the humanity.
Saturday, March 20, 2pm, Lamar 2
This article appears in March 19 • 2010.