This afternoon a couple dozen local geocachers gathered to view the top 18 picks for this year's Geocaching International Film Festival. The festival started in 2013—a small outdoor affair in Seattle, geocaching HQ, featuring (usually) silly little amateur videos celebrating our favorite light-hearted sport. It has continued on, despite a hiccup or two during the Covid years, with a creative array of fun shorts. I shared the featured films for 2016, 2017, and 2018 here. Now I'll catch up with a few more. No doubt of no interest to anyone but me, but I guess I wasn't curious about anything today!
Anyway, I start with a 40-second trailer for this year's GIFF. You can spare 40 seconds! It might make you smile. Or scratch your head. Or both.
And here is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of one of today's shorts, by the Australian geocacher Seemyshell:
And finally, some longer features, that I, no doubt, will enjoy watching again one day, on a slow rainy afternoon.
The 2019 film reel:
And 2021:
And finally, Best of, 2013–2019:
I enjoy the creativity, the silliness. Today, though, one of the shorts was a "true story" of a man in Australia who had suffered some sort of trauma—the depiction was impressionistic: he may have been a police officer who had witnessed one too many accidents or crimes—and geocaching helped him regain a solid footing and find fun in life again. The film ended with the message to take depression and anxiety seriously, and seek help. For this fellow, an active outdoor hobby was the help he needed.
Maybe I do geocaching a disservice when I call it silly.
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