The Call of the River... A Hundred Years of Whitewater Adventure

Kent Ford May 13, 2009

In the new documentary by Kent Ford, nearly 16 million Americans now participate in some form of whitewater paddling every year, all of whom will benefit from this look upstream at where the sport’s been and where it’s still going.

The Call of the River... A Hundred Years of Whitewater Adventure from Kent Ford on Vimeo.

Whitewater’s history has as many twists and turns as the canyons its pioneers explored. Its story is a collage of unexpected influences, from building boats in friends’ basements to bribing damkeepers to release water. World champions defect from communist regimes and then utilize military by-products for boat materials. Curiosity, ingenuity and outright audacity thrived as paddlers started exploring virgin runs and experimenting with designs and materials to make the sport easier.

Featuring vintage canoeing and kayaking footage, in-depth interviews with eclectic pioneers and captivating narrative, this documentary takes a behind-the-scenes look at what inspires paddlers to answer the call of the river.

The film chronicles the world of whitewater from its early beginnings in Europe through its position as a major outdoor sport in the world today. From the inaugural FIBArk race on Colorado’s Arkansas River in 1949, to Grumman Aviation entering the aluminum canoe business, the sport’s history is riddled with watershed moments, all of which have been painstakingly documented through more than 100 sources of footage spanning 80 years of history.

Learn how paddling exploded in the 1970s, spurred by the movie Deliverance, slalom’s inclusion in the 1972 Augsburg Olympics, and the advent of nearly indestructible plastic kayaks. Follow along as this cult-classic takes you from world champion defections from communist-occupied countries to the summer camps and clubs that fueled the sport’s early growth and continue to do so today. From early explorations in fragile wood and canvas boats to today’s multi-manufacturer line-up of creek, play and river-running kayaks, nowhere has the sport’s journey from obscurity to mainstream been so thoroughly unveiled.

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  1. On August 05, 2009 Mike Martin wrote

    I missed the DC-area premier at the Arlington Cinema and Draft House a few months ago but eagerly ordered the DVD. And for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed the flick for all the boating history and lore it captured from the great interviews, footage, etc. By the time I was done watching it, however, I was disappointed by the fact that any casual observer could reasonably conclude that no one has paddled a canoe in whitewater since durable kayaks were created (except for a frame or two inserted as an afterthought near the end, it would seem) -- or if we do, we’re still running rapids in Grummans. This is inexplicable to me on several levels: First, because the film really focused on boat-building technology, and ABS, kevlar layups, and new designs revolutionized canoeing as well, and continue to. Second, because Kent Ford is a former world champion single-blader, and the OC1 videos he made with Bob Foote and Wayne Dickert in the late 80s continue to be a go-to source for ww canoe instruction. Third, ww canoeing remains an internationally organized, competitive sport, and is still taught by world class paddling schools like NOC and Madwaska. I was expecting at that some point, for instance, there would be some mention or footage of the likes of Nolan Whitesell and others showing that for practical purposes, not much can be run in a kayak that can’t be run with half the blade in a C1 or an open boat by great paddlers. It may well be that the canoe market continues to shrink as the kayak market grows, at least in the U.S., but that should have been part of the story, IMHO, as should have some reference to the many advantages and disadvantages of one craft vs. the other, which newbies seldom hear from kayak-only retailers and schools. Or perhaps I missed this discussion when they showed the film at Potomac Paddlesport?

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