Review: The Scene DVD

Chuck Fryberger has been on a mission to inject some style into climbing and climbing films. I enjoyed some of the mega footage from his last film Core and was eager to see his latest climbing flick ‘The Scene’. Chuck has based himself in various modern centres where the world’s best climbers seem to be gathering right now such as Innsbruck, Catalunya, Boulder and various other areas around the USA. There are some quite nice interviews with the best climbers of the moment talking about what fires them up and why they have chosen their particular path within climbing and settled in their chosen area.

The climbing: We kick off with some nice trad crack climbing around Moab with Steph Davis among others. This was my least favourite part of the film although friends I watched it with thought it was great. A blaze of excellent bouldering sequences around the US follow - very inspiring. Nalle Hukkataival reminds us just how strong the human body can be with a few muscly genes and a life of travelling about between world class boulders. It was also great to see more of Dave Graham, still clearly a powerhouse of enthusiasm. Before we leave the US, there is a nice chapter on trad headpointing and a really nice 8b trad ascent by MAtt Wilder which I enjoyed watching a lot.

Then we go to Innsbruck and get a glimpse into the Red Bull fulled and funded life of Kilian Fischuber and friends on the boulder comp scene. Lots of flashing lights, cool people, cool music and impressive displays of plastic crushing strength. A branch of climbing that is clearly becoming further and further removed from it’s old-school roots. The leading competition section is led by a profile of the machine that is Ramonet. The climbing sequences make it fairly obvious why he’s exerting his dominance over everyone, even Ondra in the comp world right now. He looks like he’d be a world class athlete in whatever sport he chose.

Finally we are back in the ever thriving scene of the Catalunya sport crags with Dani Andrada, Daila Ojeda smoothly dispatching an excellent 8c and Chris Sharma, just as impressive as ever trying and completing a monster 9b pitch at Oliana. 

A subtle education of the current direction of climbing, and a great pre-training session flick of psyche. Already watched it three times since my stock of DVDs arrived last week. It’s avaible in the webshop right here.