quincytheodore There's an interesting charm of defying gravity and plummeting oneself from extreme places, swirling away from the nature, crowd and traffic below. Sunshine Superman is documentary about Carl Boenisch's life and his drive which pioneers extreme sport of base jumping. It's a humble, true to life outlook on his passion which is fascinatingly infectious and inspiring.The movie depicts early days of base jumping before it was even called that. Using plenty of Carl's and his crew's perspective to display the thrill and deliver the brief few seconds where men take flight. Many of the clips come from retro films, which have surprisingly refined technical effect considering they had no advance tech or even GoPro back then and even had to use makeshift tools.There's a bit of narrative to string everything together, aside from the actual interviews or personal clips. Contrary to the dangerous vibe the sport might present, Carl is a modest man. He's warm and avid about the life style, one can't help to be engage by his sheer energy. Many testimonies further set his personality, and even though he's not involved directly in this documentary, audience can still connect to the man.It gives some ideas to casual viewers about the sport, how it began, the original team behind it and what kind of tribulation they went through. The movie is easily accessible, using simple terms and approachable real life people. Some of its high octane first person view of the sport is classic yet still exhilarating.Sunshine Superman is a simple story about energetic man and the origin of intense sport. It presents the extraordinary nature of jumping from great heights and translates it into inviting and friendly experience for all viewers.

Red-Barracuda The Sunshine Superman of the title is Carl Boenish, who was a recreational skydiver who developed a new offshoot extreme sport which would go on to be called BASE jumping (Buildings – Antennas – Spans (bridges) – Earth (cliffs)). This sport involved the participant diving off vertigo inducing heights in order to free-fall for a number of pulse-pounding seconds only to pull a parachute as late as is safely possible. The sport became Boenish's life and he went on to plan a series of jumps including the El Capitan cliff-face in Yosemite and skyscrapers under construction in Los Angeles. Needless to say, he was (quite reasonably) at odds with the authorities who were very nervous about the safety of such a new and seemingly dangerous pastime. Of great benefit to the film-makers here, Boenish made recordings of most of the dives he was involved in; in fact he said that the recording of it was completely integral to it. Aside from a few dramatic re-enactments with actors, this is all original material. As such, there is a lot of great footage to be enjoyed here, including some stunning new aerial photography made specifically for the film, where we sweep over cliffs and latterly follow a man in an extraordinary flying suit. This is a very handsome looking documentary, which is also sound-tracked to a selection of very well chosen contemporary music.While this is primarily a celebration of its main character and the sport he created. It also has an important love story too. Boenish met his wife Jean at one of the early screenings of his films and they would go on to become an important team who would ceaselessly promote BASE jumping. This led to them travelling to Norway to take part in a television event where they broke the world record after jumping off the imposing Trollveggen cliffs. The following day Boenish died while attempting a second jump off a cliff he had previously considered too dangerous. His reasons for doing so remain largely a mystery.BASE jumping is certainly a very cinematic sport, with the incredible visuals it offers. These days it perhaps seems second nature to make these dives with helmet cameras but back then it was a new idea and Boenish had to attach bulky cameras to himself in order to achieve it. And in the film's most uncomfortable event we watch him climb a home-made ladder device which extends way out into space over the sheer drop of a huge cliff. We watch him climb this with no safety harness and then turn awkwardly around at the top to sit on a bike seat so that he can film his friends jump off from the best angle. I'm getting feelings of vertigo just thinking of this, it was so absurdly daring. Boenish, of course, looked like he was having a laugh.

David Ferguson Greetings again from the darkness. When at a dinner party someone introduces themselves as "an engineer", we don't typically settle in for a long evening of tales describing their daredevil and death-defying hobbies. Filmmaker Marah Strauch teaches us being too quick to judge could cost us the exhilarating story of Carl Boenish, the father of BASE jumping.Mr. Boenish was an engineer turned cinematographer turned skydiver and cliff jumper. Despite his unbridled energy and enthusiasm, his engineering background (Hughes Aircraft) provided the analytical foundation that helped him plan "safe" jumps for years. And it was his love of film and cinematography that produced a treasure trove of film clips from some breathtaking jumps … beginning with his 1978 leap from Yosemite's El Capitan.The film is about Boenish's thirst for the next big jump, but it's also about his jumping partner and wife Jean, and the bond between them. GoPro cameras have spoiled us today. We are accustomed to film clips of just about anything that involves speed, height or any person looking for a thrill. Thirty plus years ago, such clips weren't possible … except with Boenish and his clunky cameras strapped to helmets on these jumps.BASE jumping is an acronym for Building, Antenna, Span, Earth … the types of jumps required to join the ranks of Boenish's group. We witness the fights against national park Rangers, and the clandestine operations that led to jumps from under construction skyscrapers in Los Angeles and Houston. Boenish truly pushed the Nature's Law vs. Man's Law conflict.Director Strauch takes us through the Guiness record jump at Norway's Troll Wall, and we even hear Jean stating that Carl would have been right there with today's wing suit jumpers. The final shot of a modern day "flyer" is quite the contrast to those early Boenish jumps. The film answers "How and Why", and leaves little doubt that the genetic make-up is quite different for this group of thrill-seekers than for the rest of us … and being an engineer doesn't exclude one from either group!

subxerogravity It was a really good film that did a good job of capturing a moment in time and sketching out one man's contribution to Earth's history. It's the exciting portrait of Carl Boenish, once an engineer, found the job boring in comparison to his hobby of Skydiving and while turning this, and his love of film, into a career he help to create BASE Jumping.A lot of the footage from the movie was filmed by the subject himself, as he loves to film his jumps as much or more than he love to jump. All this personal footage made for a very personal documentary, especially as his friends and family narrated the entire film and told their own personal accounts of him.One of the things I noticed about documentaries about subjects that are barely thirty to thirty five years old is that they have a lot of footage they can use. Boenish was enough of a celebrity in his own time, that the doc was able to use footage from TV and news coverage of the man as well as his own cinematography. And like other contemporary docs they used a lot of different forms of medium, like reenactments of things that did not happen on camera.Which was not a lot. The filmmakers job was fairly easy as Carl love to document his life, and what a life it was, filled with nothing but joy and happiness, and inspiration to live life to the fullest to the very end. Without doing much expect having the people still around to tell his story, tell it story, it became an up tempo doc that gets your spirits high after watching it.