Marah's effort to save Carl Boenish's BASE Films
Hey BASE world and spectators.
I put the post below on the BASE jumper only forum but forgot to put it on this public forum. It's a good cause. The real history of modern BASE is in Carl's films. I've jumped and filmed BASE jumps with Carl and I'll tell you, no matter who you were, if you ended up on a jump where Boenish was there, you would be wearing at least a helmet mounted camera. With Carl, the film was everything. He loved the thrill of a good BASE jump, but would give up his slot anytime to make sure the cameras were rolling from the angles he wanted. In 1983, we nearly wrecked a car in the West Texas desert, stopping so fast, so Carl could get out and hide the first train jump film of Phil S and Kevin V under a cactus, since we knew the sheriff had been called. Joy and I were in the car and I've never seen Carl move so deliberately. Anyway, I'm sure that the new DVD that comes out about the early days of Carl Boenish and the start of BASE, will be good.
For any old skydivers out there, Carl's old 16mm skydiving films like Skycapers, Masters of the Sky, Wings, have been salvaged and digitized and will soon be coming out in cleaned up DVD form, again thanks to the efforts of Marah Strauch and Jean Boenish. Carl's early skydiving films were all about the new radical sport of Relative Work. Before then, the USPA, didn't even recognize RW since it was too dangerous and radical from the old style and accuracy. Hell, if you sent your logs books into USPA in the early to mid 70's with a thousand freefalls to qualify for your Gold Wings, if any of the signatures had SCR numbers by the names instead of USPA license numbers, they crossed them out and didn't count them for your Gold Wings. This is about the time a lot of us old relative workers decided USPA awards like Gold Wings didn't mean much if they didn't recognize that an experienced relative work jumper with an SCR or SCS number wasn't counted to verify in your log book that you had made a jump. It was also about the time the concept of fixed object jumping with no outside rules also was born. Politics and team sponsors were kiliing the old RW spirit at some big DZ's and some of us just wanted to find the old rush we started jumping for in the first place. No politics on the edge of an object in the early days.
Back to Carl's skydiving films. It was Relative Work, and Carl's early films that transformed skydiving from a stunt like, old military sport activity of the 50's and 60's into modern skydiving. Relative work films expanded USPA membership and the number of skydivers getting into the sport very quickly. My twin bro Randy and I learned to skydive at the University of Iowa in 1971 and got a one hour credit in Physical Education since it was actually a Phys Ed course. (Progressive University). Our club used Carl's movie, "Masters of the Sky" to recruit new students and it is still great. Anyway, look for it later this year if you'd like to see some of the greatest old skydiving footage. I'm sure most know Carl filmed the old skydiving classic, "Gypsy Moths" in the late 60's starring Burt Lancaster, Gene Hackman, Debora Kerr, and a few others. It was a great movie, based on a 1957 book about old skydiving barnstormers but set in a late 60's using Paracomanders and some really special filming for the time. Jean intends to try to get some of Carl's classic skydiving films out later this year but look for Gypsy Moths on old Cable channels.
Below is the post I put on BASE jumpers ONLY site about our donation of BASE number money going to restore Carl's BASE footage.
"Hey BASE Jumpers and skydivers. Joy and I want to let everyone know we very much support Marah's efforts to restore, edit and digitize Carl's original BASE footage. I've seen the trailer she put together and the material is very good and has a real personal side of BASE, not just a bunch of jumps. I spoke to Jean Boenish yesterday and we all agree that we will donate the money we've been collecting this past year for issuing the BASE numbers and cards to Marah's effort. Until further notice, we will continue sending any money we collect for issuing the numbers to help the cost of restoration. As I'm sure most of you know, Carl was the world's best skydiving photographer in the late 60's and all through the 70's and everytime you made a BASE jump with Carl, you were going to wear at least one helmet mounted camera. Folks, this stuff has to be preserved before the film gets any older. Marah intends to make DVD's once the work is all done and she needs support. "
Thanks and remember, Drive Fast, Take Chances. For those who don't know, it means, be careful out there.
Rick and Joy Harrison
BASE 38
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Originally Posted by modernmarah01
Re: Marah's effort to save Carl Boenish's BASE film
Re: Marah's effort to save Carl Boenish's BASE film
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