We sent Ben (honorary girl) to report on the Hungerpain première, here's his report and video...
It was with no small sense of anxiety that I boarded the bus to London to attend the première of Hungerpain’s latest film, Otium. Attending the event alone and with a lot of interviews to attempt to capture, I was worried about whether I would come away with anything usable. However, my camera was soon working harder than the staff at the busy foyer bar, and it’s funny how small the snowboard scene is so soon after my arrival I had bumped into several old friends, and made a few new ones too! When the time came to sit down and watch the film, the crowd was anxious, having waited longer than expected due to some of the featured riders turning up late from working at the Ski Show in Olympia. However it was worth the wait...
Having dropped the ‘documentary’ style format taken last year with The Playground, the film took a more traditional rider section approach. Although, as is often the norn with UK films, the riding standard did not quite reach that of the big international films, the film was anything but typical - Pete Ellis had put in a lot of hours in the edit room to create a genuinely different film, with a lot of interesting effects and creative techniques to keep the action varied and the crowd interested right until the end.
The film has a good balance of fun, without feeling forced, and banger riding footage. However, I’ll be buggered if I can actually remember much of it, getting so caught up in the buzzing atmosphere of the evening resulted in me struggling to remember the finer details of the film. Nonetheless, there were definitely some high points which stuck with me. The aforementioned editing, coupled with clever animation and effects, was top notch. The invisible boards section, first seen in Girl Skateboard’s Yeah Right, was superbly done and added more to the film than just a gimmick. Toward the end of the film were some beautifully filmed evening kicker sessions, reminiscent of the Mammoth Mountain evening footage in DC Mtn. Lab.
The best bit is it’s available as a free cover mount with the November issue of Whitelines, available now, so go get your snow-starved mits on a copy to build those stoke levels for the fast-approaching winter!
Come back tomorrow for a behind the scenes chat with some of the people behind the film.
