Just Announced! Patagonia’s Founder Yvon Chouinard Special Guest at SYRCL’s 2011 Wild & Scenic® Film Festival
Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard on the cover of Fortune Magazine
Yvon Chouinard – the famed rock climber, environmentalist, and founder of the outdoor apparel and equipment company Patagonia – was confirmed this week as one of the special guests attending SYRCL’s Wild & Scenic® Film Festival this year. Patagonia, has been a long time supporter of the Wild & Scenic Film Festival and it’s touring festival, which travels to over 100 stops throughout the US, Canada and Australia. This is Chouinard’s first time attending the Wild & Scenic home festival and we are extremely excited to share our hometown audience with him.
Chouinard will be supporting the film 180° South: Conquerors of the Useless. Directed by Chris Malloy, 180° South: Conquerors of the Useless follows writer and photographer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia. Along the way he gets shipwrecked off Easter Island, surfs the longest wave of his life – and prepares himself for a rare ascent of Cerro Corcovado. Jeff’s life turns when he meets up in a rainy hut with Chouinard and Tompkins who, once driven purely by a love of climbing and surfing, now value above all the experience of raw nature – and have come to Patagonia to protect it. The film strikes so deeply into the heart of Patagonia’s wilderness we come to feel at home there.
Chouinard joins other special guests including Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder, Rainforest Action Network founder Randy Hayes, Dr. Kevin Danaher co-founder of Global Exchange, renowned filmmaker and explorer Jon Bowermaster, filmmaker and food activist Deborah Koons Garcia, professional kayakers and filmmakers Trip Jennings and Andy Maser, Ian Cheney director of King Corn and the new film Truck Farm, and Felt Soul’s Ben Knight and Travis Rummel, among others.
