A local filmmaker's movie could possibly cross the pond and appear at a festival in the U.K.
Graham Nelson, who is originally from Olds, produced the 2011 film, Selah Vie, and he's lobbying for it to be played in August at the Adventure Travel Film Festival.
ìThis would be our first festival premiere of the film so we're pretty excited about that,î Nelson said. ìIt's an important step in terms of the life of the film.î
He said the festival will help gain acceptance for the film, adding ìgetting people in other countries to like it a lot is also encouraging too.î
Selah Vie is a documentary that follows two of Nelson's Calgary friends, Mike and Joel, as they embark on their dream of going on a long-distance sailing trip. The film shows how the two save up money after graduation, buy a used sailboat, fix it up and take it out into the Pacific.
According to Nelson, he pitched his documentary to Austin Vince, the festival's founder, when they met at the Overland Expo last year in Arizona.
Vince was looking for films that are shot by travellers and Selah Vie fit the bill, Nelson said.
The documentary's title was inspired by wordplay and a compilation of multiple meanings. The word ìSelahî comes from ancient Hebrew, meaning to pause for reflection. That was the name of his subjects' sailboat, Nelson said.
Mike and Joel discovered the phrase ìC'est la vie,î which refers to living with hardship.
ìDealing with difficulties and understanding that's just part of life kind of became one of the themes of the trip,î Nelson said.
Selah Vie cost $12,000 to make and took 14 months to produce, he said.
Nelson wasn't actually on the trip. He and his director, Aaron Janzen, supplied their subjects with the tools to document their adventure.
Instead, Janzen and Nelson had to whittle down the footage into a coherent story.
ìWe ended up with 60 hours of footage,î Nelson said. ìWe just had way too many stories to tell.î
Nelson grew up in Olds, graduating from Olds Koinonia Christian School and then earning an engineering degree from the University of Alberta. He later completed his master's degree at the University of Calgary.
These days, he works with startup technology firms, doing filmmaking part time on weekends and evenings.
He is currently finding ways to distribute his films.
