Congrats to Felt Soul’s Ben Knight & Travis Rummel, Winners of this year’s John de Graaf Enivronmental Filmmaking Award
Travis Rummel and Ben Knight met in Telluride, Colorado, while both shooting stills for the Telluride Daily Planet. After witnessing the power of film to inspire and affect change at the Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, the two founded Felt Soul Media to create films that make a difference. Now five years later with one award-winning feature and several award-winning shorts under their belts, the pair continue to pursue making films full time. Past Wild & Scenic films include favorites, The Hatch and Red Gold.
Congratulations to Travis and Ben – they were selected as this year’s winners of Wild & Scenic’s John de Graaf Environmental Filmmaking Award.
“The John De Graaf award is a huge honor for us. Ben and I created Felt Soul Media with the vision of film as a powerful agent of change. We never really set out to become environmental film makers, but it is where we have ended up – mainly thanks to our film Red Gold and our work creating films for non-profits like 1% For the Planet and the Rainforest Alliance. If anything the award helps reinforce our continued desire to bring attention to the environment through film.” – Travis Rummel
This prestigious award is given to filmmaker(s) who have excelled in environmental filmmaking. The presentation of the award takes place Friday evening in the Miners Foundry’s Great Hall with the screening of their films Eastern Rises and One Percent of the Story. Be sure to catch Ben’s third film this year, too, Scattered Flurries.
Eastern Rises is about a wild band of fly fishermen who risk life and limb in one of the last wild places on earth, the Russian Far East. They brave Cold War helicopters, grizzlies, massive mosquitoes, and even Bigfoot to explore rivers that have never been fished before and search for the ultimate fish story. Eastern Rises has already won the Mountain Sport Award at Banff Mountain Film Festival and Best Action-Sport Film at the Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival.
