Film fest speaker to lift ‘bad*** women climbers’ profile in the great outdoors
Credit to Author: Dana Gee| Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2020 17:00:42 +0000
When: Feb. 21-March 1.
Where: Various locations.
Tickets and info:vimff.org
Rock climber and upcoming Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival (VIMFF) speaker Shelma Jun sees the great outdoors as a great way to empower women.
Through her organization Flash Foxy and the Women’s Climbing Festival (WCF), the New Yorker is all about celebrating a growing community of “badass women climbers.”
A former urban planner and community organizer, Jun decided it would be great to get women together for an organized weekend of climbing, conversation and camaraderie. It turns out other women thought that was a great idea, too.
“I thought there would be like 40 of us and it ended up being 200,” Jun said of the first event in Bishop, Calif., in 2016. “The Women’s Climbing Festival has been amazing. It always sells out (and) there is several hundred women on the waiting list. The second year we had 800 on the wait list.”
The WCF is held annually in two locations: Bishop and Chattanooga, Tenn.
Since beginning Flash Foxy in 2014, Jun has gone on to be an outspoken and successful advocate for women climbers.
One of the ways she does that is by working with the American Mountain Guide Association to help create opportunities for women to become guides. That initiative is just part of Jun’s goal to get more women outside and more women listened to once they do get outdoors.
Jun will be talking about the push for an equitable outdoors when she delivers her opening-night presentation at the VIMFF on Feb. 21 at 7:30 p.m. in North Vancouver’s Centennial Theatre.
“I am really proud of creating a space that is challenging the status quo and creating opportunities for women, especially women from underrepresented groups, to have a voice in the outdoor space,” Jun said recently from her home in Brooklyn.
She also makes movies, and those gathered in North Vancouver for her festival appearance will get a look at her latest work, Duality. The short film follows Jun on a climbing trip to her native South Korea.
‘I am really proud of creating a space that is challenging the status quo and creating opportunities for women, especially women from underrepresented groups, to have a voice in the outdoor space,’ says Shelma Jun.
“The idea was, if I go Korea and climb with Korean climbers, what will I feel? Will it feel different? Will I feel more connected? Or will it not?” said Jun, who moved from South Korea to California at age five. “That was kind of really the premise of this trip. Obviously there were some unexpected discoveries and situations, so this presentation I am doing on opening night is really about my story of being Korean American, of being a climber going on this trip and kind of what I started to discover from that and what I learned from it and how I am feeling moving forward.”
The short film follows Jun — who counts as one of her main sponsors North Vancouver’s high-performance outdoor equipment company Arc’Teryx — all over South Korea, including a climb near the border with North Korea.
“I think it is a very relatable story of using the landscape to connect and just having multiple identities,” said Jun.
Jun grew up in California, and after completing her masters degree in urban planning at UCLA moved to New York City about eight and half years ago. Once in NYC she decided to take up rock climbing. And yes, she sees the irony of leaving California only to fall in love with rock climbing while living in Brooklyn.
She also discovered through climbing that she wanted and needed more meaningful relationships with women.
“I found climbing here and an amazing group of women that I started climbing, learning and growing with,” said Jun. “I talked about it a little bit in other articles and things, but just kind of growing up a self-proclaimed tomboy I have always had these complicated relationships with women.”
Those relationships began to change with each rock faced scaled.
“I think it is the kind of partnerships that climbing allows. I think it is being in my 30s and I think it is having the women I have found here. I think having female mentors, I think it was a perfect storm of a lot of things in my life that really allowed me to appreciate this and value this group of women that I found through rock climbing and that’s what kind of started Flash Foxy. It started out not meaning to be anything specific, just my girlfriends and I climbing and celebrating that.”
Then this thing called Instagram really took off and suddenly Flash Foxy was 40,000 followers strong.
“I think a lot of people that thought they were the only ones discovered all of these people through Instagram,” said Jun. “They found people who were like them and enjoyed things they enjoyed.”
Shelma Jun, shown climbing in South Korea last year.
Jun feels climbing is the perfect activity to help encourage and empower women. Her festivals welcome women, ranging from those who don’t know a carabiner from a nut to those who have a lifetime’s worth of chalk under their fingernails.
“It’s cool we can be all different levels and we can go out together and each of us can challenge ourselves and have a good time. That’s one of the really special things about climbing,” said Jun.
For her hard work, Jun in 2017 was named as one of Outside magazine’s 40 women who have made the most impact on our world. In 2019, Conde Nast Traveler put her on its 30 most powerful women in travel list. But those accolades, while nice, are not why she’s in the game. She sees her life much like climbing, in that she makes one small move at a time, moves that will result in a bigger-picture win down the road.
“I know I can’t change the world at large but I am really lucky to be able to try to create the world I would like to see. I think that’s a privilege not everyone has,” said Jun, adding her focus is how she works hard to create workplaces where she would actually want to work.
“I’m running this stuff. I’m running these businesses. I’m running these things. It is kind of a little bit of a challenge to make it in a way that feels good for me. You know, is it the kind of place where I would want to work even if I wasn’t running it?”
Jun is just one of the nearly 30 accomplished storytellers and adventurers who will be taking part in the nine days of VIMFF. Founded in 1998, the festival presents 70 films from B.C. and around the world.
The VIMFF also includes a rich program of clinics, workshops and fun outdoor activity days.
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