After a high and cloudy Colorado premier at Denver’s Oriental theatre last month, critically-acclaimed documentary Low & Clear—by Kahlil Hudson and Tyler Hughen of Finback Films—continues to kill it.
In addition to breaking Michael Dunaway’s “The 15 Best Filmmakers of 2012” list and scoring the Audience Award at last March’s SXSW film fest, noted conservationist and fishing scribe David James Duncan just chimed in with this:
“Low & Clear” is as stealthy as the fly fishers it portrays. Though its premise sounds innocent—two skilled pals sally forth to catch and release a few fish—trouble sneaks into the equation and the filmmakers follow it deep. Where does meaning lie? How can fishing with a friend so easily become fishing against that friend’s entire approach to life? Bard vs. Bubba. High Church vs. Low. Meditation vs. Predation. Norman vs. Paul Maclean, Hemingway vs. Everyman, Lee Wulff vs. some imaginary “record.” Funny, poetic, beautifully filmed, and as mercilessly revealing as a fine Broadway drama, the fishing adventures of JT and Xenie are a classic study of a sport that can move friends, fast as weather, from camaraderie to rivalry, delight to ruefulness, deep satisfaction to borderline rage.
Vimeo the trailer after the jump… and get your mitts on the full feature, here and soon here.
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.