Capturing the Women on the Mountain
Broken lives and budding filmmakers are converging on Africa's highest peak
By Josh Fitzwater |
|
One microscopic drop of blood is all it took to paralyze Erica Davis from the waist down, forever changing the course of her life. Her athletically defined legs now rest in the cold confines of a steel wheelchair. Without warning and without cause, she suffered a rare spinal cord hemorrhage that leaked a dewdrop-sized speck of blood onto her spine, causing paralysis.
Matt Peters and Chris Theibert of Captured Life Productions
Happenstance occurred again, almost at that very same time, when Tara Butcher was involved in a pedestrian automobile accident that resulted in what doctors could only describe as a leg that had "exploded," a busted ovary, and internal decapitation - her head was literally severed from her spine. Miraculously, she lived. However, due to the severity of her injuries, Tara lost her leg. And like Erica only several months earlier, Tara's life began to take a new path.
These two Californian women, bound together by life's unfortunate affinity to pair the penalty of coincidence with an accident of life-altering magnitude, are trying to make sense of their tragedies, while attempting to redefine the extraordinary circumstances in which the human spirit thrives.
They will do this by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa, and rewriting all the history books in the process.
As you are rifling through this issue of (614), a documentary film crew from Columbus, Ohio, aptly named Captured Life Productions, has set out to tell the unwavering story of these two women's astonishing journey to stand upon a country's roof, the very throne of Africa. The title of the film, Through the Roof, eloquently and metaphorically encapsulates the voyage.
Captured Life Productions was born out of necessity in 2006, when artsy entrepreneurs Matt Peters and Chris Theibert, both graduates from Ohio University with degrees in video production and business communications, were facing the dilemma most recent grads encounter - working for "the man" or becoming "the man." They chose the latter, and a chance encounter transformed the production outfit from dreamers with a high-end video camera to filming a documentary poised for the Cannes Film Festival.
While working odd jobs to keep a monetary income steadily feeding their video aspirations, Chris and Matt met Derek Gates while working as surf instructors in the Outer Banks. It was this meeting that gave way to Captured Life Productions' opportunity to make ambition a reality.
"We had all moved back [to Ohio] and almost immediately had to move out of our house. I was pretty down in the dumps about it," said Chris. "Derek called me out of the blue - it had been years since we'd seen each other - the day I was moving, and said he had a possible job for us."
"We knew that something very special had been presented to us when Derek called and said that the company he was now with [the Chek Institute] was interested in hiring us to film the first-ever female paraplegic to climb Mount Kilimanjaro," interjected Matt enthusiastically. "We knew we had the opportunity to possibly be a part of history!"
Mutual feelings of excitement and utter petrification at such a daunting task seeped into both visionaries.
"The first thing I did was Wikipedia 'Mount Kilimanjaro' and rent as many things from the library as I could," Matt joked.
What won them the job over all the other video companies chomping at the bit for a chance to film this documentary was that this would not be Chris and Matt's first rodeo on the Dark Continent. After a chance encounter last year at an Apple store with nationally prominent artist Anne London, she sent their bags packing to film her escapades all over Africa.
Keeping with the theme of capturing and seizing moments as they happen, Captured Life Productions added professional photographer, Phil Chester, whose eye for abstraction and breathtaking angles has placed him all over the world - from Iraq to California to Kyrgyzstan to New York City.
But the climb itself has been a year in the making for CLP. Two trips to San Diego - where the Chek Institute resides - a million emails, ten thousand phone calls, and two female handicapped climbers later, they, now with a team of eight (including a representative from Overstock.com, Zack Ralphs, whose company is a major sponsor and has financed the expedition), set off on a week-long adventure to scale the 19,320-foot-high peak.
The sum of their experiences have placed them at the forefront of a very short list of documentary filmmakers that could handle all that Africa's Mother Nature could throw at them. Chris, Phil, and Matt are just as much a part of the documentary as the fearless female climbers that reside at the film's core. They made no qualms about an early decision to record the entire group's experience as they climb - leaving no one hidden by the camera and exposing everyone's struggle with the mountain, even their own.
"We chose the title, Through the Roof, because Mount Kilimanjaro is known as the roof of Africa," said Matt. "But it also has this double meaning of breaking through expectations and limitations."
"Erica's limitation is that she is in a wheelchair and we want to show her go beyond that - beyond anyone's expectations of what she can do. That, in the end, is the nucleus of this documentary. People can go to great lengths to accomplish anything. It's such an inspirational story," declared Chris.
The fascinating thing about Captured Life Productions is that they are truly capturing life as it happens - showing us incredible moments in human existence as they unfold right before their wide-angle lens. Their conceptually moving documentary, Through the Roof, is a platform to illustrate the raw and untamed emotions of humility, perseverance, tragedy, and triumph - all the ingredients that make up life.
To learn more about Captured Life Productions' incredible journey, and to view the trailer for Through the Roof, visit www.throughtheroofmovie.com.
Originally Published: February 1, 2010
