Today In Stoke: Adventure Film Festival opens at Boulder Theater

​The Adventure Film Festival opens tonight at the Boulder Theater with two shorts and two feature-length films to kick off the four-day festival. Here's what's in store for adventurous film fans tonight:

​Skateistan: To Live and Skate in Kabul
Grain Media shot this 10-minute documentary short for the Diesel New Voices campaign, following the unlikely success story of Skateistan, a skateboarding-based NGO working with young people in Afghanistan.

'Skateistan: To Live And Skate Kabul' trailer from Grain Media on Vimeo.

​Eastern Rises: A Fish Story

Felt Soul Media and The Fly Shop travel to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Far East Russia to reel in an epic fly-fishing adventure. The Volcanoes of Kamchatka are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the area also features the Valley of Geysers' Kronotsky Biosphere Reserve, the Southern Kamchatka Wildlife Reserve and some of the world's best fishing, including the world's greatest diversity of salmon (chinook, chum, coho, seema, pink and sockeye) as well as the rainbow trout these guys are mostly after. If you thought the Adventure Film Festival was all climbing porn and ski porn, think again: There's fishing porn, too.

Eastern Rises | teaser from Felt Soul Media on Vimeo.

Desert River

Director Ben Sturgulewski's 5-minute short, produced by Sweetgrass Productions and presented by Adventure Film Festival sponsor Patagonia, explores the skiable mountains and high desert terrain around the Chilkat River in Haines, Alaska, in springtime.

Desert River from Nicholas Waggoner on Vimeo.

​Australis: An Antarctic Ski Odyssey

Aspen-based skier, author, filmmaker and Warren Miller Entertainment regular Chris Davenport is best known for more local projects like his Ski the 14ers (he skied all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks in 2007) and his most recent tome Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America. This time he headed as far out of his way as he could get to lay ski tracks in places that had never even seen footprints.

Australis: An Antarctic Ski Odyssey from Granite Films' Jim Surette on Vimeo.

Tickets for tonight's show are $20; full festival passes are $50. We'll post a guide to the rest of the weekend's films tomorrow morning, but don't miss the filmmaker's workshop on Friday at REI Boulder (1789 28th Street) from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. -- Adventure Film Festival founder Johnny Copp gave his festival the motto "Make your own legends" for a reason: He liked to surround himself with participants.