No Man’s Land Film Festival: Celebrating Adventurous Women

The 8^th annual Flagship Festival, a premier featuring all-women adventure films, is proud to be celebrating all women and gender-nonconforming athletes through community and film here in Denver. The festival took place the weekend of March 3. No Man’s Land Film Festival (NMLFF) hosts this festival once a year to inspire change in the outdoor, sport, and film industries. They seek to do this through providing a space for collaboration and by encouraging intersectionality in the outdoor adventure arena. Aisha Weinhold, the founder of No Man’s Land Film Festival, shares her passion for the festival in an interview with OFM.

Where did the idea for No Man’s Film Festival come from?

I was in college, and I decided to do a sailing program. I was desperately trying to get out of conventional school and was sailing across the Pacific Ocean. And I live in Carbondale, Colorado, where 5Point Film Festival is based out of, and they’re another adventure film festival. I remember seeing this one film about women—It was the only film about women in the entire four days of programming. I really want to do more of this—so I had that on my mind as something I was interested in. I was on the sailing trip, and I had the idea kind of out of nowhere. You know what I think? I think the answer is a women’s adventure film festival, and one that specifically caters to us and what we want to see. And the rest is history.

Are you a big adventurer yourself?

Yeah, I’m from Colorado so I’m really lucky to grow up skiing, running, climbing, and boating. I’m really fortunate to have had access to all those sports since I was little.

Are all the featured films adventure films?

They’re primarily adventure films. We definitely stretch the definition of an adventure sometimes. Years ago, we had a film about skateboarding. They’ll vary a little bit, but there’s always a core of outdoor adventure and sport.

Is the festival always in Colorado?

When I was initially running the festival, I held it in Carbondale because that’s where I’m from, and it made the most sense to me. When Kathy Karlo, our current executive director, took over in 2019, she moved it to Denver.

How did you meet Karlo?

I was actually interviewing people for the No Man’s Land tour director position in 2016. Kathy had a film called For The Love of Climbing, and it was this really beautiful film that someone had sent me. There was one line in it where she says “wish on everything.” I was like, “I love this woman.” So I put the film in the film festival, and she came out to speak about it. Later that year, I put out a job listing for a tour director, and she was the first person I interviewed, and ultimately the best person.”

What are some of the greatest challenges you’ve faced thus far?

When we first started, it took me two years to find enough content to fill three hours. There weren’t films out there, so it was really challenging to put something together, and the general sentiment around these films that did feature women was that they would be emotional or uninteresting or not bad-ass enough. That was really hard to overcome, but ultimately we did, and we’ve seen this huge upswing in films that feature women. And now one of the biggest challenges is that there is so much content. In this program in Denver we have 22 films and our lineup on tour is 95 films. There’s so much more content out there and so many more stories being told, and that’s really really exciting.”

What have some of the highlights been?

When Kathy took over, she expanded the mission statement to include the LGBTQ community instead of it be strictly women. We’re all united in that we’re often overlooked and don’t have the representation that we deserve and that we need. And it really bonds people together. That’s one of my favorite things about the festival. Especially at our Flagship—filmmakers, athletes, attendees—it’s such an intimate small space that everyone has a chance to connect. We’ve seen so many people who meet at No Man’s Land who have come to our Flagship event and are doing films together, or become best friends, or going on trips, and they bond at this really deep level around something that brings them so much joy and is core to who they are. It’s really special—It’s incredible.”