Movie night redux brings back documentaries
<p>Leif Haugen, an 18-year veteran of Northwest Montana firefighter lookouts, is the subject of the documentary, "The Lookout," that will be screened April 26 at the O'Shaughnessy Center. Filmmaker Brian Bolster will also have another film screened that evening: "Mercantile," a documentary about the Polebridge Mercantile. </p>
Gateway-to-Glacier Trail is offering a redux of movie night, this time at the O’Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish, to give those who weren’t able to last month a chance to see two documentaries by Brian Bolster.
The original movie night in March was so successful, attendees had to be turned away because the room capacity was exceeded. This movie night, scheduled for April 26 at the Whitefish venue, will feature Bolster’s Northwest Montana documentaries.
Leif Haugan will show “Mercantile,” Bolster’s short documentary on the Polebridge Mercantile, featuring an inside look at the Merc’s baking operation in a rustic setting. It premiered in January at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and played at Missoula’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in February. This will be the documentary’s second public screening in the Flathead.
Haugen is the focus of the second award-winning documentary film, “The Lookout,” which features the Flathead National Forest’s Thoma Lookout, above the North Fork of the Flathead River Drainage, a few miles south of the Canadian border.
“The Lookout” received the Big Sky Award at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in 2012. It premiered at the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival and played at several other independent film festivals around the country. This is only the third time it has been publicly shown in the Flathead. Haugen will show the film, then speak about his 19 years as a forest fire lookout and share some of his personal photos.
Refreshments and a silent auction of homemade pies, gifts, handicrafts (including quilts) and other desserts will be available in the lobby.
Doors open at 6 p.m., and the films will be shown starting at 7 p.m. Tickets are $8 in advance, or $15 for a family of four, at Wheaton’s Cycles in Kalispell, Glacier Cyclery and Bookworks in Whitefish, and The Shops at Station 8 and Glacier Wallflower and Gifts in Columbia Falls.
At the door, admission is $10 per person or $20 for a family of four.
The event is sponsored by Black Diamond Mortgage and North Valley Hospital in Whitefish, George’s Distributing in Helena, and Hungry Horse Liquor Store and Storage in Hungry Horse.
Bolster is sharing his films and Haugen is donating his time for this event to help raise funds for the Gateway-to-Glacier Trail. The trail will be a separated bike and pedestrian path along U.S. 2 to connect the Flathead Valley with Glacier National Park. Funds are being raised to build a section connecting Coram with West Glacier, approximately seven miles.
A separated path will be a safety benefit for locals cycling to Glacier Park and cross-country cyclists visiting the park on their tours. Completion of the full trail will connect Glacier National Park with more than 100 miles of trails in Flathead Valley and beyond.
The trail organization needs to raise a total of $180,000 to make this vision a reality. So far, $65,000 has been raised, and Gateway-To-Glacier Trail has been awarded a Flathead County Community Transportation Enhancement Program grant of $840,000 for trail construction costs. In order for the trail to have access to this CTEP program grant, the remaining $115,000 needs to be raised within a year.
For more information, find the organization on Facebook, visit www.gatewaytoglacier.com, or contact Biddy Simet at 250-4188 or biddys@hotmail.com.