Movie night fundraiser for canyon trail

Gateway to Glacier Trail is hosting a fundraising movie night event March 1.

“Movie Night with Leif Haugen: Lookouts, Polebridge and Pastry,” takes place at 7 p.m. at the Belton Chalet in West Glacier.

Haugen is the focus of an award-winning short documentary film, “The Lookout,” by Brian Bolster. Bolster’s film takes place in the Flathead National Forest’s Thoma Lookout above the North Fork of the Flathead River drainage, just south of the Canadian border. It received the Big Sky Award at Missoula’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in 2012.

This is only the second time the film has been publicly screened in the Flathead.

Haugen will speak about his 18 years’ experience as a forest fire lookout and present the film. He will also show “Mercantile,” Bolster’s newest short documentary film about the Polebridge Mercantile.

That film premiered Jan. 18 at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah and played this week at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The March 1 screening is the film’s first public screening in the Flathead Valley.

The event also features a chance to purchase sweet treats before the films and a pie auction afterward. Cost to attend is $6 per person or $15 per family.

All proceeds go to help build the Gateway to Glacier Trail, a paved, separated bike and pedestrian path along U.S. 2 from Coram to West Glacier.