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Filmmakers will show extreme feats during TBIFF

ALPENA — Filmmaker Elizabeth Kaiser said true life creates more interesting stories than anything conceptual.

That is why she and her husband, Kyle Maddux-Lawrence, focus their efforts on documentary film work. One of their projects includes their film “Big Five Dive” that will be shown during the Thunder Bay International Film Festival.

The festival takes place Wednesday until Sunday.

“When we make these films it’s a piece of me really. I get to share it with everybody,” Kaiser, who lives in Georgia, said. “I’m proud of being from Alpena and Michigan. Unfortunately for work this is where we need to be here. Getting the opportunity to make these films and share them with everyone, I get to connect again with my roots.”

The 30 minute film follows a group of Alpena women as they attempt to scuba dive all the Great Lakes in 24 hours in July 2016.

They first connected with the big five story when one of the divers saw one of their other films.

“We both realized adventure documentary filmmaking is our favorite genre. We made a film about the Brown Trout festival. We shot it in 2014 and it’s called ‘Big Brownie: The O’fishal Story.’ Once we did that, what we did was out there, people started to take notice that documentary films are what we’re good at and Stephanie (Gandulla) contacted us. We said absolutely. We brought some crew upt here filmed for three weeks total for the dive day and did interviews as well,” she said.

Because of the nature of the dive Kaiser said they discussed the timeline, but the day was somewhat chaotic until they fell into a routine.

“I don’t know there was a way to prepare for this without doing this in the past. None of us had done this,” Kaiser said. “Me and the director of photography, she and I did all of the camera work on shore. My husband dove with the women.”

She said there’s not as many women divers, so she was glad to show their journey.

“There’s not as many female dive masters. It parallels with filmmaking, right now women are gaining momentum. It’s rare to find women in positions of power. My husband was the only man on the crew. It was important to me to be able to do this, doing this crazy adventure. They just wanted to show they could easily do one dive. It then went above and beyond what you would normally do as a diver and they still did it,” Kaiser said.

Filmmaker Corey Adkins’ film “Crossing Lake Huron” also documents an extreme feat on one of the Great Lakes.

“There’s a group in the Traverse City area a group of three guys who have a passion for the Great Lakes and anything for fresh water. They like to protect the freshwater. How they do that is they do paddle boarding. In 2015 they did 60 miles across Lake Michigan then they did 90 miles across lake Huron,” Adkins said of the group Stand Up for the Great Lakes.

He documented the whole 28 hour trip.

“It has its highs and it has lows. Almost every emotion they’re going through during that trip,” he said.

Adkins met the group at the film festival last year and they talked about the project, which led to the film.

“You just get as much as you can. You tape and tape and tape. I liked to have fun with them, continue to do interviews as the night goes on,” he said.

He said before the trip he thought he would be bored and brought his iPod.

“Then I found 28 hours was over in hour. It started picture perfect then it rained for five hours,” he said. “If you want to see three people test their limits to the extreme, these three did that. We had an EMT on board because he was ready for cold water rescue. If you want to see someone who believes in what they’re doing, and stand up for what they’re doing it’s a good film to see.”

Crossing Lake Huron will be shown during the Friday evening session while Big Five Dive will shown during the Saturday evening session.

For a full list of the film times go to the website at www.thunderbay.noaa.gov/filmfestival/.com

Jordan Spence can be reached via email at jspence@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5687.

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